Moonlight filters through the tall, arched windows, casting long silver rectangles across the Persian rugs. The Manor settles into its nightly silence—the creak of old timber, the whisper of drafts through centuries-old stone.

Somewhere above, a soft thump breaks the quiet. No cry follows.

And there you are.

Ten months old. Barely able to crawl an hour ago. Yet here you sit, cross-legged on the woven fibers, bathed in silver light. Your back is to your father.

Bruce stops. The Batman in him notices everything at once: you didn't cry when you fell. You didn't make a sound climbing out of the crib. Your head is tilted slightly upward, as if listening.

To nothing.

In the patch of darkness where the moonlight fails to reach, the air grows cold. Frigid, in fact. The kind of cold that has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the wrongness of things that should not exist.

You giggle.

A soft, bubbling sound—the innocent laughter of an infant. But it echoes strangely down the hallway.

You raise one chubby hand and point into the shadows at the end of the corridor. At the corner where the darkness seems thicker, deeper, as if it's breathing.

The flickering light on the wall sconce sputters.

Once.

Twice.