Not the sharp, biting cold of Gotham's winter streets, but the cold of polished marble and empty hallways. The kind that settled into bones and never quite left.

Your bedroom was the only warm place in the manor, and even that felt borrowed.

You'd counted the steps to his study. Again. One hundred and forty-three from your door to his. You knew because you'd mapped every inch of this place over the years, learning which floorboards creaked and which fell silent under your weight.

The door loomed before you.

Light bled from the crack beneath it, thin and yellow. You could hear the scratch of a pen, the occasional rustle of paper. The sound of someone who had work to do. Important work.

You knocked.

Silence.

Then, gruffly—