The scroll smelled of rust and rot, as though the ink itself had been steeped in gravesoil.
Jonathan unfolded it by lantern light while Crane steered their carriage through Gotham's drowned streets. Every line curved like veins on a corpse, guiding them toward the southern outskirts where the city thinned into swamp.
At midnight, they found it a crumbling field walled by brambles, half-forgotten among warehouses. No markers, no crosses, only the uneven swell of earth. The air tasted of iron.
Crane spat. "Not on any map I've seen. Vale led us to hell's back door."
They climbed the mounds. Beneath Jonathan's boots, the ground shifted strangely, as if hollow. His lantern threw pale gold over jagged stone an entrance. The shaft descended like a throat.
Inside, the air was colder, wetter. The walls bore marks not carved, but clawed, scratched by desperate hands. Jonathan's stomach turned. They had not buried the city's debtors here. They had sealed them alive.
A chamber opened before them, vast, lined with heaps of bone. Some still clutched rusted chains, collars eating into jawbones. Others bore the same double circle cut into skulls, etched with cruel precision.
Crane's voice trembled despite himself. "This… this is no graveyard. It's a ledger written in flesh."
Jonathan knelt beside one skeleton, brushing away ash. The circles were burned into the bone, layered again and again. Whoever had done it believed the mark must be carried into death.
But at the chamber's heart rose something worse a pillar of limestone, bound with iron, covered in names. Jonathan traced one with shaking fingers. Elias Wayne his great-grandfather's signature, etched deep, as if branded by fire.
He recoiled.
"Your blood was not just bound," Crane muttered. "It was built into the foundation."
A sound stirred then not echo, not wind from the heaps of bone, a whisper like dry reeds filled the cavern.
The chant Jonathan had come to dread the bones themselves seemed to answer, rattling faintly, shifting against stone as though remembering their torment.
The lantern flickered. Jonathan gripped Crane's arm. "We shouldn't be here."
The whisper grew louder, layered with grief and fury, until the ground shook. From the pillar, blood seeped fresh where none should flow.
A red line crawled across Elias Wayne's name.
Jonathan staggered back. "They know we're here."
The bones clattered, collapsing into grotesque shapes. Empty sockets stared from shifting skulls as the dead rose in mockery of the living. The Owe had left their victims here not only to rot but to guard.
Crane fired, the shot echoing. Bone shattered but re-formed, crawling across the stone. Jonathan slashed with the knife Nina had given him, the blade ringing cold against bone.
For every heap they scattered, another rose, dragging chains that clanked like bells.
They fled toward the shaft, Jonathan clutching the scroll tight to his chest. Behind them, the dead whispered, circling, calling.
When at last they burst into the open air, dawn bled faintly across Gotham's skyline. Jonathan fell to his knees in the grass, lungs burning. The chant still rang in his ears.
Crane dropped beside him, pale and trembling. "Mass graveyard," he whispered hoarsely. "Not just for the forgotten. For anyone who ever owed. The city was built on this pit."
Jonathan stared at the rising sun, though it gave no warmth. The scroll felt heavier than stone. His blood, his family, his city all chained to the pit below.
And now the pit knew his name.