The first sensation was pressure.
Not on his skin, but in the air around him—an invisible fist squeezing the world and releasing it too fast, like a bubble snapping back into place. Elias felt the distortion before he saw anything, a strange, breathless compression that made his lungs seize.
Then light fractured in front of him.
Thin ribbons of pale luminescence cut across the darkness, arching and collapsing like brittle threads. They flickered once, twice, and vanished. Something soft and damp lay beneath him, and a sour chemical smell soaked into his nose.
Cold metal. Bleach. Rust.
His eyes snapped open.
Bars.A cot bolted to concrete.Stained walls patched with institutional paint.A flickering fluorescent light buzzing overhead like a dying insect.
A cell.
Elias pushed himself upright slowly, disoriented. His hands trembled. His wrists were restrained—thin metal cuffs attached to a chain anchored into the wall.
"What…?" he whispered.
His voice cracked.
The air bent again—barely, subtly, as if someone pressed a distortion filter against the world. The lights flickered in sympathy.
Somewhere down the hallway, a man laughed.
Not a sane laugh.Not a comfortable laugh.A laugh that broke and mended itself mid-sound, erratic like a marionette tugged by the wrong strings.
Elias turned.
Across the hall, behind reinforced glass, a thin man with pale skin and green-tinged hair sat on the edge of his cot. His smile stretched too wide, too knowing.
Jack Oswald White.
His eyes gleamed.
"Well now," Jack said, clasping his hands together like a delighted child, "someone new has wandered into the madhouse. And so young, too."
Elias's stomach dropped.
Arkham Asylum.
He hadn't wanted to believe it, but the pieces clicked sharply into place. The architecture. The smell of industrial cleaners. The distant screams. The humming of locked electric doors.
This was the asylum.
The place every Gotham villain passed through—briefly, usually violently.
"Why am I here?" Elias whispered.
Jack chuckled, tilting his head. "Oh, kiddo. Everyone asks that question at least once. The funny ones keep asking it."
Elias backed up until his shoulders hit the cold wall.
Movement caught his eye on his left. Another man leaned into the light of his cell—tall, dark-haired, with calculating eyes that didn't blink often enough.
Edward Nashton.
Edward looked Elias up and down with the precision of a scientist observing a rare specimen.
"You weren't processed through intake," he said. "No paperwork. No chains except those cuffs. No escort. And yet here you are." His eyes narrowed. "You appeared. That's statistically improbable."
"I didn't appear," Elias muttered. "I—"
But the words failed.
What had he done?
The last thing he remembered—Watching the fight.The wheel.The survey.The light swallowing him—
His thoughts spiraled, and the air around him pulsed in response. Light bent outward from his body, faint, like heat shimmering off asphalt but cold instead of warm.
Edward stepped closer to his glass.
"Fascinating," he whispered.
Jack leaned nearer as well, resting his forehead against the window with a deranged grin. "Look at the way reality wiggles around him. Like it's afraid."
Elias's breath hitched.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing something," Edward corrected, voice low. "There is a disturbance around you. Subtle distortions. Visual displacement. Air pressure irregularities. And those flickers of light—"
"They're not light," Jack said playfully. "More like… cracks."
Elias flinched.
Jack clapped. "Oh, he didn't know. This is priceless."
A new voice echoed from down the hall.
"Jack, leave him alone."
Elias turned to see Harleen Quinzel approaching, lab coat brushing her knees, clipboard tucked under her arm. Her eyes were tired—compassionate, but weary in a way that made Elias wonder how long she had been trapped in a place that dissolved sanity like acid.
She stopped in front of his cell.
"You're trembling," she said gently. "Are you in pain?"
Elias tried to answer but choked on a breath.
The distortion around him intensified.
Air pressure deepened.Edged light burst across the walls like thin cracks of white lightning before disappearing.The fluorescent above him hummed loudly, flickering twice in confusion.
Harleen took a cautious step back.
"What the…?"
Edward's tone sharpened. "There. That. A localized distortion unhindered by physical contact. This is not telekinesis. This is not a meta-gene gone wild. This is—"
"A miracle!" Jack shouted.
"—a problem," Edward finished.
Elias clutched his chest.
Something inside him—the force he inherited, the rules he barely understood—was spiraling out of control. It was as if the fabric of the world refused to accept his existence and New Order fought back by trying to define him.
Reality flickered at the edge of his vision.
His skin buzzed with static.
"Stop," he whispered to no one and to everything. "Stop. Please."
Harleen pressed the intercom button on her belt.
"Riley, I need medical on cell block C. The new patient is experiencing a neurological episode."
"Copy that, Dr. Quinzel."
Jack leaned so close his breath fogged the glass.
"Oh, he's not having an episode. He's waking up."
Elias's knees buckled.
He fell onto all fours.
The light around him warped, sharp lines flickering across his skin and the floor in patterns that didn't feel drawn so much as forced into existence—unintentional, partial shapes that looked like symbols but weren't complete enough to be read.
Edward's eyes widened, voice dropping to awe.
"He is bending space."
"I'm not," Elias gasped. "I'm not trying—"
But the force inside him didn't care what he intended.
It responded to panic.
It responded to fear.
It responded to his impulse to stabilize, the instinct to keep himself from dissolving into the strange world he'd been thrown into.
Words formed in his throat.
Not because he chose them.
Because his power dragged them out like a drowning man coughing up water.
"My body—"
His voice cracked.
The inmates leaned forward.
Harleen's eyes widened in alarm.
Elias tried to swallow the words back, but his lungs convulsed.
He couldn't stop it.
"My body—stabilizes—!"
The world buckled.
For a fraction of a second, everything went silent.
Truly silent.
No humming lights.No distant cries.No breathing.No sound at all.
As if the universe held its breath.
Then—
Pressure.
A crushing backlash tore through Elias's ribs. Pain erupted through his side. His vision blurred into pale static. The distortion collapsed inward, drawing light with it in a fast, sharp vacuum pop.
He collapsed sideways, coughing violently.
A metallic taste flooded his mouth.
Harleen shouted, "Get the med team here NOW!"
The guard sprinted down the hall.
Edward pressed his palm against his glass. "He redirected the distortion inward. Not outward. That's why it hurt him."
Jack laughed, delighted. "Oh, he's going to be fun."
Elias couldn't speak.
His ribs burned with every breath.
The world slowly regained normal weight, normal sound. The lights stopped flickering.
But a new sound echoed down the hall.
Bootsteps.
Slow, measured. Heavy enough to command silence.
Harleen froze.
Jack's smile twitched with thrilled hunger.
Edward stepped back, straightening.
Even the guard fell silent mid-stride.
A shadow slid across the floor before the man appeared.
Not a cape.Not armor.
A suit.Dark. Expensive. Perfectly tailored.
The man who stepped into view carried himself like a storm in human shape—restrained, coiled, deadly.
Bruce Wayne.
Not in costume.
But unmistakably him.
His eyes landed on Elias—and stayed there.
Harleen swallowed. "Mr. Wayne. I wasn't told you were inspecting today."
"I wasn't scheduled." His voice was low, controlled. "There was an anomaly in the Asylum's structural sensors."
Edward muttered, "Figures."
Jack whispered, "Daddy's home."
Bruce ignored them all.
He stepped slowly toward Elias's cell.
Elias forced himself to sit, back pressed against the wall, breathing shallow and uneven.
Bruce spoke without raising his voice, but the sound resonated like a command.
"What did you just do?"
Elias couldn't answer immediately. Everything hurt. His ribs felt damaged. His throat burned.
"I… didn't mean to," he managed.
"Meaning isn't the issue," Bruce said. "Capability is."
The air around Elias still felt subtly wrong—like heat shimmer but colder, more focused. Pale lines flickered across the floor beneath him before dying out.
Bruce's eyes tracked every micro-distortion.
"Your presence here isn't natural."
Harleen stepped forward. "He's sixteen. He's terrified. He may not even understand what's happening."
Bruce studied Elias—a long, uncomfortable silence full of calculation.
"I don't think he does," he admitted softly.
But there was no comfort in his voice. Only assessment.
Evaluation.
Threat analysis.
Elias's fingers twitched.
Something in him—instinct, fear, desperation—reached for the force inside him again. It pulsed once, enough to make the overhead lights dim.
Bruce's expression sharpened instantly.
"Do not," he said, "attempt whatever that was again."
Elias froze.
He wasn't sure he could control it anyway.
Before another word could be spoken, the world… shifted.
Not literally.Not physically.But inwardly, in a way only Elias felt.
A pulse.Soft.Echoing.Faintly violet.
A voice brushed the edge of his awareness, distant, quiet, and very, very old.
"Your soul does not belong in this dimension."
Elias's eyes widened.
He wasn't hallucinating.
Somewhere across the city—far above the ocean—in a tower shaped like a T—
A girl with purple hair stiffened, eyes opening from meditation.
Raven whispered:
"…something has crossed the veil."
Elias trembled.
Bruce noticed immediately.
"What was that?" he demanded.
Elias whispered the truth, though he didn't understand it himself.
"…someone saw me."
Jack giggled.
Edward frowned.
Harleen drew a sharp breath.
Bruce Wayne's eyes darkened—not with anger, but with understanding that something much bigger than Arkham was happening.
Something dimensional.Something dangerous.Something unprecedented.
And Elias, bleeding, breathless, and terrified, realized the harsh reality of his situation.
He hadn't just been dropped into a new world.
He had been dropped into the most dangerous place in it.
Arkham Asylum.Surrounded by madness.Observed by the Bat.And sensed by the girl who touched the realms of demons.
He was sixteen.
He had no allies.No identity.No training.No control over the impossible power curling inside him like a nervous serpent.
And yet—
He was here.
Alive.
Barely.
A boy with a fragile rule on his lips.
A reality that bent when he whispered.
And a destiny already moving around him like gears.
This world didn't know him yet.
But it would.
It always would when reality began to… warp.