Gotham City.
Not dawn. Not a day. Just another gray hour between nightmares.
In a classroom filled with dread, Gotham University's psychology students faced their final exam.
Evans handed out the papers. A chorus of groans rose—then died the second they heard heels on marble.
Click. Click. Click.
Schiller entered, folding his umbrella like he'd just stepped out of a Bruegel painting.
He scanned the room. Every head down. Pencils moving.
Good.
He planted the umbrella beside his desk, rested a hand on the handle, and said:
"The exam is one hour and forty minutes. You may leave early. But if you do, I'll start grading immediately."
He let that hang.
"At the very least, write enough that I'm still reading when you walk out."
Then, flatly:
"No whispering. Legible handwriting. No cursive. And for God's sake—write your legal name. Not 'King Chaos.' Not 'Shadow Vengeance.' If I see one more nickname, I'm failing everyone on principle."
A beat.
"Begin."
Silence fell like a shroud.
Only the scratch of a pencil on paper broke it.
No classroom at Gotham U had ever been this quiet.
This focused.
This afraid.
Bruce Wayne glanced up.
To his right: the nephew of the East Side Hyena—a kid who'd been smoking since ten, brawling by twelve, expelled from three schools. A purebred gutter rat.
Yet here he was. Ten minutes in. Still writing.
Either the boy had changed.
Or fear made even roaches grow brains.
To Bruce's left: Lenny, the campus graffiti ghost. Known for tagging dean offices, turning library bathrooms into surrealist murals, and once spray-painting Principal Sheldon's face onto a donkey mid-sermon.
Now? Stuck on Question One. Doodling in the margins.
Bruce leaned slightly. Peered over.
It was Schiller.
But not mocked. Not ridiculed.
Back turned. Standing before a black sun. Arms outstretched. Strange glyphs swirling around him like orbiting dust. Golden fire rimmed the void.
It wasn't art.
It was an omen.
Bruce wondered: would Schiller give extra points for atmosphere?
Half an hour passed.
Two-thirds still wrote.
This was unprecedented.
At Gotham University, finals usually went like this:
First, half the class didn't show.
Two minutes in, someone wrote their name and walked out.
Ten minutes in, the rest guessed the multiple-choice and fled.
By twenty? Empty desks. Nappers. Dreamers. Kids texting their alibis.
Now—forty minutes gone—and half the room still scribbled furiously.
No one dared submit early.
Even those clearly scraping the bottom of their skulls sat frozen, chewing pens, praying their brains could squeeze out one more sentence. Anything to soften the blow when Schiller read answers that danced between illiterate and delusional.
Truth was, intro psych wasn't easy.
Theories. Terms. Names. Definitions.
Even Ivy League kids prepped for weeks.
For Gotham's academic refugees—most of whom hadn't opened a book since orientation—this was war.
And memory? A muscle long atrophied.
An hour passed. Most stopped writing.
Bruce pulled out scrap paper. Quietly listed those still going.
Future members of the Psychology Club.
His secret project.
He hesitated—then added Lenny anyway.
Every cult needs a prophet.
At 1:40 sharp, Schiller spoke one word:
"Time."
It hit the floor like a tombstone.
The room exhaled—gasping, trembling, some literally clutching their chests.
Papers were collected.
Stacked.
Counted.
Still, no one moved.
Only when Schiller gathered the exams, checked names, and left without a word did the dam break.
"Crap! I blanked on half the fill-ins!"
"I stayed up all night memorizing definitions—none of them were on the test?! I wasted hours!"
"I wrote Essay Two in Essay Four's box! I'm getting zero on essays!"
"Did anyone apply to grad school? Evans, did you? My dad said if my brain gets in, we might as well hope our corgi learns to climb trees."
"I've got two papers due before break. If I don't finish, I'm spending vacation in purgatory…"
A few huddled around Bruce's desk—his first recruits.
Lenny adjusted his neon-yellow headband. "He'll love my drawing. I can tell—he's got taste."
Bruce arched a brow. "He might prefer correct answers."
"Please," Lenny sniffed. "Memorization pollutes the mind."
Green eyes. Freckles. Reggae shirt. Smelled faintly of turpentine and rebellion.
"And who says answers have to be words? Art speaks louder. I'm passing."
Bruce studied him. Then said, "I'll pay you to make a poster. Big. Bold. Unforgettable. For the club. Name your price."
Lenny snapped his fingers.
"Rich boy—you came to the right man. Nobody in Gotham knows shock and awe better than me."
Whispers buzzed. Heads leaned in.
"What? You mean you're actually going to—"
"You're a genius…"
"Count me in."
"This'll be legendary…"
"Maybe he'll pass us just for this…"
—
Days later, Schiller graded in silence.
Rage built with every paper.
He'd expected incompetence.
But not this: misspelled terms, made-up theories, one student claiming Freud invented telepathy.
To avoid permanent brain corrosion, he decided to finish all grading tonight—then fail 90% of them.
Mercilessly.
Then—outside—screeeech.
A sound like a bat caught in glass.
He looked up.
Lights swung across the ceiling. It wasn't yet dark. Streetlamps shouldn't be on.
He stood. Walked to the window.
Below, voices called his name.
Across the quad, the side of the humanities building had been wrapped in tarp for weeks. Renovation, someone said. He never paid attention.
Now, as he reached the sill—
The tarp fell.
A mural exploded into view.
Seven stories tall.
A black sun blazed across the brick—its surface etched with spiraling glyphs, rings of gold flame licking its edges.
And standing before it—back turned—was him.
Silhouetted. Swallowed by shadow. Or perhaps… casting it.
Floodlights flared beneath. The whole wall glowed like a cathedral lit for judgment.
Schiller blinked.
Schiller: "…."
Symbiote: "…holy shit."
Along the side, bold white letters:
"Join the Psychology Club.
Stare into the human heart—
stare into the black sun.
—Blue Ghost Lenny"
Below, a crowd waved. Psych majors. Rebels. Bruce Wayne, hands in pockets, smirking.
Schiller stared.
The image pulsed. Hypnotic. Wrong. Beautiful.
It wasn't just art.
It was true.
He remembered: "Gotham" meant "fool's village."
A city of madmen, lost souls, criminals who thought they were artists.
But also geniuses.
Madness sharpened to a point.
Creativity born from collapse.
This mural? It wasn't vandalism.
It was a revelation.
They'd seen him.
Without theory. Without textbooks.
With nothing but instinct.
And they'd drawn his soul.
Because yes—
A black sun is still a sun.
Not bright. Not warm.
No light. No heat.
Just gravity. Pull. Void.
He was never meant to be a hero.
Not a savior.
Not a therapist with answers.
He was absent.
The thing you stare into when you stop lying to yourself.
And they knew it.
Before he did.
Minutes passed.
Cold breath fogged the glass.
Schiller lifted a finger.
Wrote four words:
"You all pass."
Below, the crowd erupted.
Under the black sun, they screamed, jumped, clung to each other—like disciples reborn under a new god.
Or maybe just kids who finally beat the system.
Either way.
Gotham had spoken.
And for once,
The professor listened.