The clang of hammers rang through Gotham's industrial quarter, where the new steelworks coughed smoke into the night sky.
Sparks danced like fireflies from towering furnaces, raining over soot-streaked men who toiled long after sundown. Jonathan walked among them, the stink of molten iron filling his lungs, the memory of the tunnels gnawing at him like a fever.
The factory belonged to Gideon Reese, one of Gotham's wealthiest industrialists and, Jonathan suspected, a benefactor of the Owe.
Reese had transformed this district into a city within a city miles of clanging machines, endless smoke, and tunnels of piping that carried steam beneath Gotham's streets.
It was here, Jonathan believed, that the Owe buried their rituals in plain sight, hidden beneath the machinery of progress.
Scrap kept close at his side, wide-eyed at the monstrous furnaces. "Feels like the devil lives 'ere," he muttered, voice swallowed by the roar of molten steel.
Jonathan nodded grimly. "You're not wrong."
At the far end of the yard, Reese's overseers drove workers harder, shouting over the din. One man slipped, his arm caught in a grinding gear.
The scream tore through the factory, but instead of rushing to help, the overseers yanked him away like a broken tool and dragged him toward a side chamber.
Jonathan's jaw tightened. He moved to follow, but Scrap tugged his sleeve.
"Careful they'll spot you."
Jonathan ducked behind a stack of slag crates. From the shadows, he watched as the injured worker was carried into a low iron door one Jonathan recognized from the sketches he had pieced together in the tunnels.
The map hadn't lied beneath this steelworks, more passages spread like veins.
"Scrap," Jonathan whispered, "I need you to circle around. Find a way inside that chamber. Watch for anything unusual."
The boy nodded reluctantly and darted into the smoke
Jonathan slipped closer, the roar of the furnaces masking his steps.
He pressed his back against the hot iron wall, listening. Chanting low, rhythmic, and wrong floated from beyond the door. The injured worker's groans silenced quickly, replaced by the hiss of blades and the crackle of fire.
He forced the door open a sliver. Inside, the chamber glowed red from a pit of molten slag. The overseers stood in a circle, faces masked with soot-stained cloth, as Father Mordecai Vale raised a ledger above his head.
His voice carried like a sermon.
"The blood tithe binds the fire! As it was with the Founders, so it is now! Coin, body, and flame Gotham's foundation!"
The injured worker lay on a slab of iron, his lifeblood dripping into the molten pit.
Vale's chants grew louder as Elijah Blackthorn himself stepped forward, clad in a black coat that gleamed with oil and ash. He held the Owe's symbol aloft, etched into steel.
Jonathan's pulse hammered in his ears. He had stumbled upon one of their rituals, hidden not in shadowed tunnels but in the heart of Gotham's industry. They were feeding the city's progress with human sacrifice.
"Burn him clean," Blackthorn ordered.
The slab tilted, and the man's body slid into the molten fire.
A roar of heat filled the chamber, sparks bursting upward like a fountain of souls Jonathan turned away, bile rising in his throat.
Then he spotted Scrap in the rafters above, eyes wide with horror. The boy met Jonathan's gaze and shook his head, mouthing silently: Too many.
Jonathan agreed charging in would mean death but he would not leave empty-handed. He reached for a piece of chalk from his coat pocket and sketched part of the symbol he saw, marking it against the wall before slipping away into the roar of the furnaces.
The screams of steel and sacrifice followed him back into the night. Gotham was not simply a city of corruption it was built upon fire and blood, its very progress forged by the Owe's hand
Jonathan swore then and there: he would rip the truth into the open, even if it burned the whole city down with him.