+𖥔 Bruce Wayne — Sleeping Curse

Gotham had known its share of nightmares — twisted clowns, megalomaniacs with too much money, scientists with too much power — but the arrival of Morvus, the Weaver of Night, was something else entirely. For months, reports poured in of people driven to the brink of insanity by visions no one else could see. Neighbors claimed they’d heard their friends screaming at shadows, clawing at the walls, or sobbing to people who weren’t there. The city morgue’s numbers spiked, not from murder in the usual sense, but from sheer psychological collapse — suicides born of terror so raw it broke people in half. His ability to manifest a victim’s deepest fears, twist their worst memories into unending loops, and make them indistinguishable from reality turned Gotham into a breeding ground of paranoia. Some victims swore they could feel his presence in the room, whispering in their ear, dragging them deeper into the abyss. Others saw loved ones’ corpses rotting in front of them or relived their most painful traumas until they couldn’t stand it anymore. The police were useless — they couldn’t fight an enemy who didn’t leave fingerprints or bullets behind. And for every night Morvus roamed, the shadows of Gotham seemed to stretch just a little longer.

Bruce Wayne, under the cowl of the Batman, had been tracking whispers of Morvus for weeks. Files covered his desk in the Batcave: blurry security footage of figures convulsing in the street, morgue reports describing “stress-induced organ failure,” ancient documents from forgotten Gotham cults that spoke of a “Sleeper’s Curse.” He had seen Gotham’s darkest faces, but this was different. This wasn’t a physical war — it was a war on the mind. After cross-referencing crime scene photos, old Arkham records, and even occult texts from Constantine’s network, Bruce finally pieced together a possible weakness: Morvus’s illusions thrived in darkness. Light — not ordinary light, but an intense, focused spectrum — could disrupt his tether to his victims. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was something. He gathered the Batfamily in the cave, his voice low and clipped as he briefed them. “We neutralize him, we flood the area with light, and we end this before anyone else dies.”

That night, the Batfamily moved as one. Dick, Jason, and Tim took point — their job: locate Morvus and keep him contained long enough for Bruce and the others to set up the light arrays. Cass, Duke, Damian, and Steph stayed close to Bruce, hauling the heavy equipment through the dim, decaying warehouse district where their intel placed him. The air inside the old steel mill was cold and damp, shadows stretching like living things. When Dick’s voice crackled over comms — “Target engaged!” — the world erupted into chaos. Jason’s gunshots echoed, Tim’s smoke grenades filled the space, and for a moment it looked like the plan would work. The brothers had Morvus cornered, pinned in a snarl of collapsing shadows. Bruce moved in, heart pounding, ready to give the signal for Cass to fire up the light. But Morvus… smiled.

Bruce barely registered the motion — the flick of a pale hand, the hiss of something ancient spilling into the air — before everything slowed. He had been the closest. The most obvious target. And Morvus took the shot without hesitation. A cold pressure slammed into Bruce’s skull, his vision fracturing like cracked glass. A high-pitched ringing, like an endless piiiii, filled his ears, drowning out the shouts of his family. Cass’s voice cut through — “Bruce? BRUCE!” — followed by Damian’s angry snarl, Steph’s panicked call to “hit the lights!” But the lights never came. The floor swayed beneath him, the shadows closing in not like darkness, but like water flooding his lungs. His limbs wouldn’t move. His body wouldn’t listen. He fell to one knee, his gloved hand scraping the concrete, and through the blur he saw Morvus’s eyes — cold, purple flames burning in the sockets.

Then came the whisper, right against his ear, though Morvus stood several feet away: "Sleep, Dark Knight. Let your own mind be the cage."

The last thing Bruce felt was the presence of his children around him, the frantic weight of their voices tangled with fear, and then… nothing. No light. No pain. No time. Just… silence.

When Bruce’s eyes opened again, the ceiling above him was sterile white. The faint beeping of machines filled his ears — not the high, shrill piiii from before, but a slow, steady hospital monitor. His body felt… wrong. Heavy. Unfamiliar. He reached for his cowl instinctively, but his fingers met bare skin. He was in a hospital gown, not the Kevlar layers of the Batsuit. His immediate thought was that one of the kids had dragged him here — stripped the suit to protect his identity. He sat up slowly, scanning the room: a single bed, IV lines, a chair in the corner with a folded blanket. He pressed the call button on the bed.

The door opened, and a doctor stepped in — then froze. His face shifted from professional neutrality to stunned disbelief. “…Mr. Wayne?” he said, almost breathless. “You’re… awake.”

Bruce frowned. “Obviously. What’s wrong with me? How long was I out?”

The doctor hesitated, then stepped closer, shining a penlight into Bruce’s eyes, his hands trembling slightly. “Sir… you were one of the civilians affected by the Sleep Curse ten years ago. We thought… most of us thought none of you would ever wake up. But… Morvus is dead. He was finally stopped. The victims have been waking up since last week. You’re one of them.”

The words landed like lead in Bruce’s chest. Ten years. A decade stolen in a single breath. His mind raced — ten years of Gotham without him, ten years of his family growing, changing, bleeding without their father, their leader. The plan… his plan… had failed because he hadn’t known Morvus’s true power. He hadn’t accounted for the curse. He had walked straight into it.

As the doctor adjusted the monitors, Bruce barely heard him. His thoughts were already far away — on the cave, on the city, on the faces of the people he had sworn to protect. But above all else, one thought drowned out the rest: the Batfamily. Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, Damian, Steph, Duke — what had the last ten years done to them? Were they all still alive? Did they still need him? Or… had they moved on?