Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Titans Tower stood like a beacon against the skyline, eclipsing the horizon. It was an unmistakable T-shaped monolith of brushed steel and mirrored glass that caught the late afternoon sun and threw it back in golden ribbons. Perched atop a private island just off the coast, the tower was surrounded by shimmering ocean on all sides, lapping quietly against a ring of sculpted rock.

Inside, the air was cool and crisp, humming faintly with hidden tech and energy fields. The floors gleamed, polished to a mirrored sheen, and the wide windows let in clean, unobstructed light. Everything had a purpose, whether it be the sleek corridors that stretched on and on, or the open-plan lounges filled with worn-in couches and scattered bean bags, or the high-tech consoles that glowed with readouts. In the main room, sunlight streamed through the two-story glass walls, bathing the space in warmth. A familiar scent lingered, something between ozone and popcorn, a strange mix of combat training and downtime. And yet, despite all the warmth and life, there were pockets of stillness. Quiet moments tucked between missions and laughter, where the weight of memory settled like dust. Titans Tower was many things, but even a sanctuary could feel like a stage when grief stepped onto it. And grief would.

Sat, curled on one of the modern, plush sofas, with his legs tucked beneath him and coffee cup cradled in both hands was a young man. He had the kind of beauty that snuck up on you. He appeared sharp around the edges but softened by something quieter beneath, His black hair was messy in a way that appeared deliberate, falling across his forehead and curling slightly at the ends. His cheekbones were pronounced, sculptural almost, like something out of a marble bust, but they weren’t severe, more so they were striking. His skin, whilst not entirely ghostly, was fairly pale, like he didn’t spend a lot of time in the sun and didn’t mind it that way. He carried a subdued energy with him, like a man with limited patience but the inability to care enough to do anything about something that annoyed him, like a candle burning low in a locked room. His clothes were a casual patchwork of styles: oversized black hoodies with subtle arcane symbols stitched into the hem, layered over band tees and threadbare long sleeves; he wore black jeans with worn knees and beat-up sneakers adorned with scuff marks. He wasn’t unkept by any means, but there was always something a little undone about him. He looked like the kind of person who had seen strange things, and didn’t flinch at them anymore. Zander stared down at an envelope that had arrived in the mail, hidden amongst credit card statements and fliers for restaurants in the city. The envelope was old, the paper yellowing, and pressed into the red wax that closed it was a familiar seal: an eye with a crystal where the pupil and iris should be – his father’s seal. Out of place in this modern space – so out of place it pulled Zander with it.

It wasn’t just the seal. It was the feel of it. Like the envelope had been waiting, not mailed, not sent, just waiting, for the right moment to appear. There was something too still about it, like it hadn’t traveled through normal hands.

The world around him seemed alien, the room’s built-in screens silently displayed news footage, flashing between Jump City skyline shots and hero updates. Even his boyfriend who stood nearby, reviewing mission data on a transparent interface projected in the air, seemed alien. The letter had blurred his periphery. It crackled with something old, something odd… Something wrong. And suddenly, Titans Tower, with all its safety and clarity, felt like a thin sheet of glass waiting to shatter.

Dick glanced up from the interface, his boyfriend in the corner of his eye pulling his attention away from mission logs and satellite feeds. Zander hadn’t moved in minutes – he was still curled on the couch like a cat in a storm, coffee long gone cold in his hands, eyes locked on the envelope like it might open its mouth to speak. Something about him looked distant. Not scared, exactly, not that Dick would know what that even looked like, but somewhere else. There was a tension in Zander that wasn’t there a second ago. A tightness to his shoulders, like the memory of something heavy had landed on his chest. Dick knew that look. He’d worn it himself once or twice. “Zan?” Dick asked softly, taking a few steps closer. Zander didn’t answer right away. His fingers tightened around the paper just slightly, as if he’d only just remembered he was holding it. His thumb hovered near the seal but he didn’t break it. “Whose seal is that?” Dick asked, leaning over the back of the couch, looking over Zander’s shoulder. “Your dad?”
Zander’s voice came out low, like it had been pulled from somewhere deeper than his throat. “Yeah”. He paused for a moment, letting a beat pass between them. “I… uh… I haven’t opened it.”
Dick hopped over the couch to sit beside him, his gaze dropping to the paper. The seal was unmistakable, old-world and arcane. “Nice of him to come back to the land of the living,” Dick joked, getting a slight ‘mhm’ from Zander as he looked at the envelope, expecting something new every time he read over his name and address. Dick squinted at it. “What is it, like a trust fund or something?”
“You good?” Dick added.

Zander blinked slowly, not looking up. “It shouldn’t be here,” he murmured. “He wouldn’t just…” he trailed off, swallowing hard. His eyes flicked toward the window, the far-off look returning. He wondered if his sister had received the same letter. Dick watched Zander with growing unease. There were few things that unsettled Zander, fewer still that made him hesitate. And this wasn’t just hesitation, it was like a weight had fallen on Zander. Like dread passed down in blood. Returning his gaze to the letter, he stared at the seal for a moment longer. Then, without looking at Dick, he slid a finger under the envelope flap and broke the wax with a soft crack. The sound was small, but it seemed to echo in the room. He unfolded the thick parchment inside. The paper had weight to it, like it had been pressed and aged in some place that didn’t obey normal time. Dick leaned in slightly, trying to read over his shoulder, but the handwriting was peculiar, like something copied from a grimoire, with dramatic swirls on the ends of letters and curling strokes, like an old-world script. It was the kind that looked beautiful but made every word harder to read. Zander’s eyes scanned the page, his lips parting just barely.
“By my passing, I return this burden to blood. Zander, you are to come home immediately. The house awaits. The terms will be made clear upon arrival…”

The realisation hit Dick like a lightning strike and he felt his heart sink. He barely breathed, feeling something inside him shift like a creeping awareness that this wasn’t just a family mater. This was a summons, cloaked in inheritance, veiled in command. Zander, on the other hand, continued to read, his tone barely shifting. “Do not delay. The days grow thin, and the hours between them thinner still. You must be present before the new moon. No proxies. No refusals. You are heir to what remains. Whether or not you accept or not is irrelevant, the inheritance moves through blood alone. All keys have been reset. Entry will only be granted by those bound by name and intention. Zatanna has been informed. She is… expected. I trust the house will behave in my absence. If not, you’ll have to remind it who we are. My condolences, should they matter…”
Zander fell silent. He didn’t look up. Dick didn’t speak. The room suddenly felt colder than it had a minute ago. Silence passed between them like wind along still water. “The house awaits?” Dick echoed. “What is that, some kind of family motto?”
Zander shook his head once, very slowly. “No. It’s a warning.”

Dick opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t ask what kind of house needed reminding. He didn’t ask what “bound by name and intention” meant. He just felt the instinctive tightening in his gut — the one that always came before a bad mission. The silence continued to stretch. Long enough for the hum of the Tower’s ambient systems to make itself known: a low, rhythmic buzz beneath the walls, like a heartbeat deep underground. Outside, waves lapped quietly against the island’s edge. Inside, time hung suspended between two held breaths. Zander didn’t move. Dick didn’t press. It was the kind of silence that didn’t invite words. It just sat there, dense and unmoving. Ancient. Finally, Zander exhaled slowly, his voice quiet but certain. “I’m going to go pack.” He stood with the letter still in hand, his half-empty mug now on the table, forgotten. Dick rose with his hand reaching out instinctively, “I’ll take you.”

Zander paused at that. He didn’t argue. But he did turn to face Dick for the first time since opening the letter. His expression was unreadable; it wasn’t cold but it was certainly guarded, like something old behind glass. “If you come with me,” he said, “you need to understand something.” Dick waited. Zander’s eyes didn’t blink. “My family is not like yours. There’s something my Dad always said, ‘We don’t have legacy. We have consequences’. They don’t pass down purpose, they pass down damage, secrets, curses, and oaths never fulfilled. The house… it remembers things. It keeps score. There’s a reason me and Zat’ haven’t been back since we were kids.” For the first time, Dick saw it. Not just sorrow, not just tension, but reflection and history. Zander carried it in his bones like a second skeleton, something built from trauma and spells and things no child should have grown up inside. He lets the words settle, then he turned and walked down the hall. He stopped and turned back to Dick before he spoke once again. “And it doesn’t like strangers.” With that, he continued down the hallway, vanishing into the halls of the tower. Dick stared after him, the seal still vivid in his mind. The house awaits…

Chapter Text

“And Zander?” came the voice on the other end of the line. The voice was calm, low, and marked with the kind of steady concern only a long-time friend could manage. The kind of voice that talked Dick down from rooftops, back into reason more times than he could count.

Looking out onto the water as they spoke, Dick took it all in as the sky burned with the last light of the day. It was a slow, golden sunset that softened even the harsh, steel edges of the tower. Shadows stretched long across the driveway, casting warped reflections on the polished black car waiting just outside. The air smelled faintly of salt as the wind, the only other sound breaking the silence along with the faint sound of water lapping against the island, swept across the ocean and through Dick’s hair. He’d grown so used to the smell that he only noticed it now he was about to leave. The tower loomed behind him, silhouetted in fading light. Inside, the halls would be empty at this hours. Dinner dishes rinsed. Training rooms powering down. The others had offered their well-wishes earlier, some more awkwardly than others. No one knew exactly what this trip meant, but they understood enough not to press.

Dick stood near the driver’s side, one hand resting on the roof of the car, the other holding a phone up to his ear. In a few hours, he’d find himself in a completely different environment to this, and if he was being honest with himself, he was apprehensive. He’d offered to go, as anyone would in the situation he and Zander had found themselves in, but everything in that letter and everything Zander had described… Gotham City or Bludhaven were becoming increasingly desirable locations to him. There was always something so grounding about the tower. It was a fixed point. A place to return to. But as he looked it now, the building felt more like a monument than home. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t expected the whole thing to feel so… heavy. He hadn’t even met Giovanni Zatara, though he was good friends with his daughter, and obviously even closer with his son, but the man was a mystery to him. And if Dick felt the weight of it all, he wondered how Zander was holding up.

“I couldn’t even tell you to be honest, Barb. He’s not emotional but it’s like all the warmth he exuded left when he read that letter… naturally of course,” Dick replied.
Above, the sun dipped closer to the water, bleeding amber into violet. The breeze was gentle, just enough to pull at his jacket.
“Grief does strange things,” Barbara replied. “Not everyone burns the same way. Bruce pushed us all away when Jason…” she trailed off. “And Dad thew himself into his work when my Mom died. It’s just… he’ll come to you when he’s ready.”
Dick exhaled slowly, eyes tracing the silhouette of the tower against the darkening sky. “I know,” he said. “It’s just… I can tell he’s scared, but he won’t say it. Won’t even look like it. It’s like he’s folded something up inside and locked the door behind it. And I’m not sure if I’m helping, or just… hovering.”
There was a pause, the soft static of long-distance quiet.
“Then don’t hover,” Barbara said softly. “Walk beside him. Not in front. Not behind. Just… beside. Sorry, I know I sound corny.”
Dick swallowed. “No, this is helping.” She always grounded things in something simple but true.
“You’ve always had this habit of trying to carry people,” she continued. “But not everyone wants to be carried. Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you love is just to be there. Let them have their silence. Their edges. If he wants to talk, he will.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. The ocean breeze was colder now. “And if he doesn’t?” Dick asked quietly.
Barbara’s answer came without hesitation. “Then you sit in silence with him. Until he knows he’s not alone.”
A beat passed between them. “Thanks, Barb,” Dick said smiling.
“Anytime,” Barbara replied warmly, as if she could sense the smile through the phone.
He heard the faint rustle of her shifting in her chair on the other end of the line, then her voice again, warmer this time. “Hey, Dick? Be safe. And keep your head.”
“Always,” he replied. The call ended with a soft chime.

Dick slid the phone into his jacket pocket, staring down the driveway where the tower’s shadow stretched long behind him. He played with his keys absentmindedly for a moment before the doors of the tower opened and Zander exited with a backpack and a suitcase. “We always said we should go for a road trip,” he said, with a soft, tired smile. He opened the trunk of the car, putting his suitcase and backpack in next to Dick’s luggage. “Wish it was under better circumstances,” Dick replied.
“I’m just pretending it’s a family barbecue,” Zander said with a wry smile, shutting the trunk with a click. Dick was glad to see the sense of humour was still somewhat present despite everything. Dick slid into the driver’s seat of the car followed by Zander who slid in the passenger side next to him. Doors shut but no engine. Just the low drone of waves and the tick of the cooling hood. A full minute passed like that. Then Zander broke the silence.
“Do you remember that storm last year that knocked the power out for like, two days?”
Dick glanced over. “Hard to forget. You tried to heat soup with a batarang.”
Zander smirked faintly, “It was very hot metal. I had a system.”
“You scorched the table.”
“Correction. I scorched one corner of the table.”
Dick let out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh. Zander looked out the window, “I dunno. That night… it was freezing, and everything was dark, but it felt… nice. No alarms. No mission briefs. Just…candlelight and you reading off that dumb trivia book like it was life or death.”
Dick smiled to himself, “You got competitive.”
“I always do,” Zander said. Then, after a pause: “It’s weird the stuff your brain pulls forward when things feel heavy.”
Dick didn’t respond right away but something in him settled. Zander leaned his head against the seat.

“Okay,” Dick said. “Let’s go, let me load up the nearest town on the maps.”
Dick was puzzled slightly, “We aren’t going to the house?”
Zander shook his head, “Nah, the house doesn’t exist on the map. Technically, it doesn’t exist at all. It just… manifests itself. And it chooses to manifest itself in the Appalachians of all places.” He gave a dry laugh, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Another thing my Dad always said was that mountains are older than sin. Places where fog never lifts and towns vanish without explanation. Superstitions outnumber people up there.” He paused, his voice quieter now. “There’s something about that range. Remember how I said the house remembers? It feels like the land does too. The forest doesn’t feel untouched, it feels used. And not by people. There are towns that were abandoned a hundred years ago and never reclaimed. Just left to rot. But they don’t fall apart the way they should. Things don’t just live there, they linger. Sounds travel weird through the trees. You hear footsteps behind you when no one’s there. Doors close that you didn’t open. And every local has a story about something in the woods, but no one agrees one what. Just that you shouldn’t go looking.”
Dick frowned. “Sounds cozy.”
Zander gave a crooked smile. “Yeah. Not exactly a tourist trap.”
He leaned back and tapped the map screen. “But it’s where the house always shows up. Can’t tell you why. Just does. Like it knows it belongs there.”
Dick turned the key in the ignition, unsettled but trying not to show it. “For what it’s worth, Dad also said it’s the kind of place where maps stop mattering and stories start breathing.”
Dick looked at him. “That’s comforting.”
Zander smirked, faint. “Yeah. Thought you’d like that.”
And with that, Dick pressed the accelerator and the long journey to the ancestral home of the Zatara’s began. The road ahead of them would be long, winding through dusk and deeper shadows, the kind of drive where the world slowly slips into something stranger, and nothing waiting at the end feels quite human.

Chapter Text

The sun filtered through the high arched windows of the study, casting golden patterns across the ancient rug, worn thin by years of pacing feet. Dust motes danced lazily in the light, drifting between shelves tacked high with crumbling tomes and curious artefacts. The room , cavernous but cosy, smelled strongly of incense, of ink, of wax, varnished wood and something more elusive – the brittle sweetness of old magic. It was the scent of petrichor clinging to crumbling vellum, of dried rose petals pressed between grimoires and dust charred with memory. It smelled like time itself had scorched the walls in places no hand could reach. Not unpleasant, but uncanny. Bookshelves stretched to the ceiling, some bowed under the weight of their contents, their spines in a dozen languages, whether it be Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, Enochian, some written vertically, others stitched in strange spirals that turned the eye too long. A pair of ladders leaned against the shelving, affixed to iron tracks, but only one looked safe to climb. On a nearby pedestal, a brass armillary spun lazily of its own accord, ticking softly with each rotation. An ink-stained work table sprawled beneath the largest window, cluttered with half-melted candles, brown glass vials, a cluster of quartz crystals, and an open notebook in Giovanni’s distinctive, slanted script. A mirror stood propped in the far corner, draped in a black velvet cloth. No one ever dared touch it. There was movement in the shadows too, not from people, but from the peculiar way magic collected here, pooling like water in corners, drifting like dust through the shafts of light. Every so often, the air shifted without cause, and a low hum passed beneath the floorboards, like the house was breathing. Something ancient had settled in the foundations, and though it never threatened, it never quite slept either.

Zatanna sat cross-legged on the floor, her black hair tied up in a loose braid, sleeves rolled to her elbows. Zatanna was twelve and already carried herself like she was older; confident in the way she sat, shoulders square, chin tilted with the faintest hint of inherited theatrically. Beside her, Zander knelt with a furrowed brow. Barely ten, Zander was full of restless energy trying hard to be still, his brows knit in intense concentration, lips moving silently as he rehearsed the words in his head. Where Zatanna was composed, Zander was expressive; every flicker of emotion crossed his face like weather over water. He wore a faded knitted sweater that had probably once been Giovanni’s, sleeves too long and cuffs chewed on from nervous habits. He held his palms out over a shallow ceramic bowl filled with water. The surface trembled, vibrating with some inner tension, a magic not yet fully mastered.
“You’re trying too hard,” Zatanna murmured, nudging his elbow. “It’s not about force, it’s about focus. You can’t brute force clarity.”
“I’m not!” Zander whispered, glaring at the bowl. “I’m focusing really hard.”
“Watch,” Zatanna said as she muttered a spell comprised of words reversed, pronounced backwards. She clapped her hands sharply, sending a ripple through the air like the room itself had inhaled. Wiggling her fingers over the ceramic bowl between them, the surface of the water quivered, and then twisted upward in a narrow column, coiling like a snake charmed from a basket. A soft blue glow pulsed from its centre, faint as breath on glass. Zander leaned forward, wide-eyed.
Zatanna grinned. “It’s intent. Try it.”
“I have intent,” Zander mumbled, scooting closer. “I intend for it to work.”

Clapping, the water in the bowl did nothing then sloshed once, aggressively, before Zander. He grumbled quietly. Zatanna rolled her eyes. “You’re trying to control it too much.” Zander stuck his tongue out at her, then turned back to the bowl. He furrowed his brow, whispered under his breath, and from a place he couldn’t even recognise, he stammered through a Latin phrase, unrehearsed, like he’d finally opened himself as a conduit for magic. He flicked his fingers over the water. For a heartbeat, he trembled. Then a single droplet leapt upward and burst midair with a soft pop, sending the smallest droplets flying on Zatanna and Zander, warranting a small giggle from them.
Giovanni let out a low whistle from behind him. “Better. Still sloppy.”
He stepped between them and tapped the edge of Zander’s bowl. The water stilled instantly.
Zander pouted. “You’re showing off again.”
Giovanni crouched between them, placing a steady hand on Zander’s back and another on Zatanna’s shoulder. “Magic doesn’t like to be wrestled, my children. It’s a river. It wants to be guided, not damned. Try with your eyes closed,” he said, crouching beside his son. “Let the shape of the spell form in your head first. Not like a command – like it’s second nature. Like what you just did, but don’t fight the feeling of letting it take you with it.”
“Why does Zee get it right every time?” Zander muttered.
“She doesn’t,” Zatanna said quickly, “You didn’t hear me mispronounce ‘evaporate’ backward yesterday? It flooded the tub instead…”
Giovanni chuckled. “She’s older. And she’s had more practise,” he said, his tone warm but measured. “Now… try again. Remember, magic isn’t as a race. It’s a conversation, one between who you are and the world around you. When you stop trying to be perfect, you’ll hear it better. Let it take you with it.”

Zander obeyed, screwing his eyes shut. The room went still except for the crackle of candlelight. Zatanna watched him with a faint smile, fingers laced around her knees. Zander’s expression softened just a little. He stared into the water again. Slower this time, he whispered a phrase, not backwards like Zatanna’s, but softly in Latin. A shimmer passed over the surface. The air began to shift again, ever so slightly — and the water responded. It lifted, not as a column but in a bubbling dome, pulsing gently like a heartbeat. Giovanni raised an eyebrow, impressed. Zander peeked through one eye and a moment later, an image appeared: a tiny flickering candle, just like the one lit across the room. He gasped. Giovanni gave his shoulder a squeeze. “See? It’s already listening.” Zander looked up, his face broke into a smile that was real and full of quiet pride. Zatanna grinned at him, nudging him again, this time fondly. Suddenly the dome collapsed with a wet splat. He yelped as it soaked his lap. Zatanna burst out laughing, “That was almost cool!”
Giovanni didn’t scold him. Instead, he clapped Zander on the back with a laugh. “Almost is how it starts. That was excellent control. Next time,” Giovanni said, standing, “we try something a little harder.”
“Like making the rug fly?” Zander asked, eyes wide.
Zatanna rolled her eyes. “You’re going to get us grounded.”
Giovanni laughed, shaking his head as he moved toward the desk. “Maybe. But that’s part of the magic too.”
Zander beamed, despite himself, wringing water from his sweater sleeves. “I made it breathe,” he said, amazed.
“You did,” Giovanni nodded. “Try again, but this time, shape it into something. Something familiar.”
“A rabbit?” Zander offered immediately.
Zatanna groaned, “You always want rabbits.”
“They’re classic!”
“You are so basic.”
Giovanni held up a hand. “Rabbit it is. But only if it hops on its own.”

Zander cracked his knuckles like a tiny showman, then bent over the bowl again with renewed enthusiasm. Zander took a deep breath, steadied himself, and whispered again; this time slower, with a sense of rhythm. The Latin flowed like a quiet melody, threading through the air. The bowl began to glow faintly from within, water rising in delicate streams that bent and curved like ribbons caught in the wind. Zatanna leaned in, eyes wide, her teasing forgotten. “You’re doing it.” The water shimmered, folding over itself in midair. The ribbons merged, forming the vague shape of a rabbit: long ears, round haunches, suspended in a dance above the bowl. It wasn’t solid – more like a liquid caught between phases, silver and translucent, flickering with candlelight. Giovanni didn’t speak. He watched with quiet pride as the form solidified further – not with weight, but with intention. The rabbit’s chest lifted once in a breathless motion, and then it moved. A twitch. A hop. Then another. It landed gently on the surface of the water, which held it like it weighed no more than a feather. Zander gasped. “It worked!”
“Don’t lose it,” Giovanni murmured. “Stay with it.”
Zander’s brow furrowed again, the rabbit perked up its ears. It turned, sniffed the air, and blinked up at him like it was no longer a mere puppet of spell-work but something real, living and breathing. For a moment, it was like the rabbit was thinking and dreaming and then with a ripple of its watery paws, it dissolved into mist and vanished with a soft chime like the final note of a lullaby. The silence that followed felt truly sacred. Zatanna exhaled softly and remarked, “That was beautiful.”
Zander blinked, breath caught in his throat. “It felt… like it wanted to be.”
Giovanni nodded slowly. “That’s what I mean, when I say magic is a conversation. It’s not about commanding the world to change. It’s about listening to what it wants to become and helping it get there. When you cooperate with magic, it tends to cooperate with you. You bend to each other’s will.” Zander was quiet, not wanting to say anything that might scare the magic away.

Giovanni stood and flicked his fingers towards the curtains, drawing them, and then towards a stack of unlit candles around the room. Each one burst into a flame with a soft pop, light blooming like petals. The shadows retreated, and the study became something else entirely: golden, warm and alive with magic. Then with a murmur, he raised both hands and spun a thread of light between his fingers. It unwound like silk, brilliant and blue. With slow, graceful motions, he shaped it into constellations, stars moving where stars never should, orbiting his fingertips like tiny dancers. Zatanna and Zander watched, transfixed. “This,” Giovanni said softly, “is why we protect it. Not because magic is dangerous. But because it’s precious. This is our inheritance. Not just spells. Not just power. But beauty. Meaning. Something older than fire.” He looked down at them both, the lines at the corner of his eyes crinkling with warmth. “And you,” he said, “you are part of that. Always.”
Zander reached for Zatanna’s hand and didn’t even seem to notice he’d done it. She gave his fingers a squeeze. For a moment, there was the simple feeling of what it felt like to be loved completely, a feeling that felt like it would be forever rather than fleeting. The room was still glowing when Giovanni lowered his hands, the constellation spell gently unravelling into nothingness. Silence settled again. Zander still held Zatanna’s hand, his smile lingering until Giovanni’s expression changed. “Now,” he said, more serious, “there’s one more thing I want to show you.”

Zatanna’s smile faded. She sat up straighter. Giovanni stepped over to a narrow cabinet built into the wall. It was carved from deep, dark word and bore a sigil that pulsed faintly with reddish-gold light. Zander had always thought it was a decorative, strange lock or magical signature, but now it flickered with something like a heartbeat. Giovanni whispered a word too old for either of them to understand. The sigil dissolved, the cabinet creaked open. He reached inside, and when his hand emerged, it held a glass jar. Inside was something that, at first, looked like black smoke but thicker. It churned, shapeless and slow-moving. Tiny red veins of light flickered in its depth that appeared like crimson bolts of lightning. Zander instinctively leaned back. “What is that?”
Giovanni did not set the jar down. He held it steady in both hands. “This,” he said quietly, “is magic too. But not the kind that listens or dances. This is what happens when power is stolen instead of shared. When someone takes more than they’re meant to carry.” The smoke twitched, forming something like a mouth that was far too wide and far too sharp and pressed to against the glass. The room grew colder. “Is it alive?” Zatanna asked, almost whispering.
“No. Not anymore,” Giovanni said. “But it remembers. It remembers pain. It’s a curse without a voice, an echo of someone who tried to force magic into obedience.” Zander couldn’t stop staring. The jar looked small but the thing inside felt big as if it had been folded in upon itself and squeezed into the jar. Giovanni looked at both of them. “Magic is a gift. But it’s also a burden. It reflects what you bring to it. If you are impatient, it frays. If you are cruel, it breaks things. If you are selfish, it rots.” He locked eyes with Zander. “That’s why I correct you when you rush. That’s why we study, why we practise slowly. Because if you don’t learn to respect it, it will unmake you.”
Zatanna swallowed hard. “Why keep it at all?”
Giovanni turned to her, then gently placed the jar back into the cabinet. As he sealed it shut, the light around the sigil faded to nothingness until it was just the mere sigil that Zander has always taken it for. He paused, as if trying to rekindle his own thoughts. “So you never forget it’s real,” he said, finally, “Magic isn’t just sparkles and parlour tricks. It’s power. And power always has a cost.”

He returned to them, lighter now, and ruffled Zander’s hair, a gesture that almost made Zander forget the jar entirely. “We’ll finish the lesson tomorrow,” he said, reaching for his cloak. “You’ve both earned a rest.”
Zander looked back at the cabinet one last time as his father turned away. The water rabbit had felt like a dream. The jar had felt like something watching him from within. And both, somehow, inexplicably, were magic.
Zander blinked.

The study, the dancing constellations, the warmth of Giovanni’s hand, all of it dissolved like smoke in sunlight. He opened his eyes to harsh daylight and motion. The hum of tires on dry road replaced the whisper of spell-craft. They were back in the car. Outside, the desert stretched endlessly in every direction: flat plains broken only be the occasional rock outcrop, a lonely highway sign, a cactus or a tumbleweed. Sunlight bleached the world pale gold, and the heat shimmered on the horizon like a mirage trying to form something real. The car’s AC was on, but faint. Zander shifted, adjusting he seatbelt digging into his shoulder. Dick glanced over. One hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely on his thigh. “Good sleep?”
Zander exhaled through his nose. “Yeah. And a nice dream.”
“Yeah?” Dick smiled, not pressing.
“Yeah,” Zander nodded in return. Zander watched the road unspool ahead of them, so straight it could’ve been drawn with a ruler. The same desert they’d been driving through for hours. And yet, something felt different now. As if the memory had stirred up dust not just in his head, but under his skin. “He used to show us things, my Dad,” Zander said suddenly, “Things that were so beautiful. And then things that weren’t. To keep us grounded, I guess.”
Dick nodded slowly, eyes still on the road. “That sounds like how Bruce or Zatanna would describe him too.”
“He kept this jar…” Zander went on before he trailed off as if he was holding himself back. “It was cursed. Now I can’t stop wondering if that kind of thing ever really goes away.”
Dick let the silence stretch just longe enough to mean something. Then he said, “Magic leaves scars, right? Even the kind that time heals.”
Zander tilted his head, watching his reflection faintly in the wing mirror. “Yeah,” he said. “It does.” Zander leant his head against the window, the glass warm from the sun. For a moment, he just watched the dust rise off the highway, watched the way the light made it shimmer, just like in his father’s study. Then he said, almost absently, “He used to sing when he he cooked. My dad. Off-key. Horrible vibrato. It drove Zee crazy.”
Dick chuckled under his breath. “Let me guess. Opera?”
“Always. Even for pancakes.”

They both laughed, soft and short. The kind of laugh that curled around something bittersweet. Zander let it settle, then sighed. “It’s weird what you remember. Not the big stuff. Just… humming. His sleeves always pushed too high. The smell of cloves when he hugged me. I just keep thinking if I remember those things, I can try and remember him for who he was when me and Zee were kids, not the man who disappeared and never told us why… Just hoping I can bring that version of him back a little. Just for me.”
Dick reached over and without a word, tapped his fingers gently against Zander’s knee. Not quite a squeeze, not quite a pat, but grounding. “Them keep remembering.” Zander nodded, and this time, when he looked out at the desert, he felt the weight of everything unresolved but for the first time in years, it didn’t crush him. It just pointed the way forward.

Chapter Text

The sun glared down on the desert as Dick’s car drove across the road, kicking up dust clouds in the car’s rear view . The desert itself was painted with a vast, golden light beneath a sky so blue it looked like a painting. The road unfurled endlessly ahead of them, black asphalt bleeding heat in ghostly ripples that made the horizon shimmer like a mirage. Mountains crouched low in the distance, hazed by dust and time, and the sun hung heavy overhead, glaring down with its eternal glow. Inside the car, the air conditioning murmured against the warmth outside, but the windows were cracked just enough to let in the dry scent of sunbaked earth and creosote. Cacti rose like sentinels along the roadside, a sting long shadows that slanted with the sun. Every so often, a faded billboard loomed out of the dust, usually peeling paint adorned with sun bleached slogans. Zander watched the scenery drift by as he drove, having taken over the drive from Dick, who’s music played softly through the speakers. Dick sat with one foot propped up on the dashboard, hand curled loose around a bottle of soda. Every few minutes, Zander’s hand would flick the wheel, adjusting just slightly, and the car would hum on, continuing along the desert road that stretched out before them. They hadn’t spoken in a while. It was the kind of silence that wasn’t strained but was comfortable instead. The next song bled in through the speakers, soft and mournful. A lone voice over a drifting piano, heavy with a kind of sadness that didn’t beg for attention but seeped in anyway. Zander thought he recognised the song from the first few chords on the piano but when he heard the first lyric, “Nobody wants to be alone, but that is not why I want you,” the song began to make something in his chest ache like a bruise. He let it play for a few seconds, his fingers tightening just slightly on the wheel. Then he exhaled, slow and dry. “That one’s too depressing,” he muttered, eyes still on the road. “Can you change it?”

Dick didn’t say anything at first. Just looked over at him, quiet, like he could feel the edge Zander was toeing but chose not to press. Then he nodded and reached for the phone. He scrolled for a second before a different song started. Zander chuckled the minute he heard it. The new song came on a glittery burst of synth and an unapologetically pop beat. Zander laughed as he turned to Dick, “Oh my god, are you playing that song?”
Dick didn’t answer but the side of his mouth tugged upward. Zander hummed along before the verse hit, his voice lifting with the next line, pitch climbing into a deliberately girlish lilt: “And the girl I used to be is still the girl inside of me!”. He even added a dramatic hand to his chest for effect. Dick let out a short laugh, caught somewhere between fondness and secondhand embarrassment. Zander shot him a sideways smirk. “Don’t pretend you didn’t add this to the playlist.”
“I plead the fifth,” Dick said, shrugged, eyes back on the road now but smiling.

…

The world returned slowly – first as warmth against his face, then once more as Zander heard the low creak of the car door opening. Zander stirred in the passenger seat, the seatbelt pressing a faint line across his T-Shirt. His neck ached from the awkward angle he’d fallen asleep in, and one side of his hair stuck up rebelliously. “You alive?” Dick’s voice came in soft, teasing. Zander blinked against the sun. The sky outside had shifted again, the golden light of the late afternoon passing through the windshield, filling the car with its glow. He rubbed his eyes and sat up as the scent of something familiar wafted in. Dick leaned into the car, holding up a plastic bag like a prize. “I come bearing gifts.”
Zander yawned, voice still heavy with sleep. “What time is it?”
“Time for you to thank me you to thank me profusely,” Dick said, grinning, “Cos’ I raided the vending machines and found the holy trinity. I got spicy chips, lemonade, and those weird little chocolate moons you like.”
Zander smiled as Dick handed the bag. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
“Mm,” Dick said, crouching by the open car door, “Once. When I deep cleaned your suit after you and Raven held off that breaking dam.”
“I loved you then too but I think I love you more now,” Zander grinned.
Dick leant his arms on the car door, his eyes warm with affection. “Because of the snacks?”
“Because you remembered the chocolate moons,” Zander said, tearing into the bag. “That’s intimacy.”
“Oh, is that what we’re calling it?” Dick laughed. “Good to know I don’t have try anymore, just keep a stash of vending machine candy and our relationship’s golden.”
Zander popped one of the chocolate moons into his mouth, groaning dramatically. “You joke, but this is top-tier emotional support.”
Dick shook his head with a mock sigh, then stood and shut the door gently. He slid into the driver side. “Well, eat up. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Pretty sure the next stop is a ghost town with one working gas pump and a raccoon mayor,” he said, sitting down.
“Sounds charming,” replied Zander.

Dick started the engine and the music cracked back to life through the speakers, the soaring vocals of Amy Lee filling the space. The car rumbled gently as they pulled back onto the highway, the road stretching out golden and infinite in front of them. Zander leaned back, munching happily. “You’re my favourite road trip companion, you know.”
Dick glanced over, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Zander said softly, his voice half-swallowed by the hum of the wheels and music. There was a quiet reverence in his eyes now, something softer than the joking had left behind. Dick reached over without a word and found Zander’s hand resting in his lap. He laced their fingers together. Zander squeezed back. Dick’s thumb moved slowly along the back of Zander’s hand. “I love you too,” he said softly, “Just wanted to let the record show that.”

…

The desert opened wide around them, nothing but indigo hills and the yawning mouth of twilight. Somewhere along the drive, Dick had pulled the car off the road onto a gravel shoulder, guided more by instinct than destination. “Come on,” he said, his voice low and almost reverent, “You gotta see.” Zander followed as they climbed onto the hood of the car, its metal still warm beneath. Looking up, the sky stretched endlessly overhead with the stars dotted across the fading blue like pinpricks in velvet. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, leaving a bruised smear of pink and gold behind it.
“God,” Zander breathed, lying back on his elbows, “It’s like the sky’s been scraped clean.”
“Yeah,” Dick said, settling beside him, one foot braced against the windshield, the other hanging off the edge. “You forget how quiet the world can be, when you’re not listening to alarms or people screaming.”
Zander turned his head toward Dick and asked softly, “Do you think we’ll ever get out of this?”
“This drive?”
“No,” he replied, “This life. The running and the weirdness and the haunted inheritance or whatever the hell’s waiting for me back there.”
Dick was quiet a long time before he replied, “Who knows, but I’m just glad there’s nights like this between the messes, y’know, when the world wants to stand still so we can too. It’s nice to breathe…”
“Yeah, it is…” Zander smiled, reflecting on the days with the Titans. The laughter and the exhaustion and the way their lives had become a patchwork of chaos stitched together with friendship, dumb jokes and stubborn loyalty. He let the memories drift like passing satellites, soft and distant. A warm and dry breeze stirred the desert air, carrying the scent of dust and distant sagebrush. Overheard, the stars brightened by degrees, countless of them hung overheard, so bright and full and, despite being so impossibly far, it felt like if Zander reached out just a little bit further, he might be able to reach one. It felt surreal to be sat beneath it all. Zander laid back fully, his arms folded beneath his head, and exhaled. “I used to think peace would feel like… I don’t know. Finality or a clean slate, who knows, but it’s just this. A sky full of stars and a moment where no one needs saving.”
Dick leaned back too, close enough that their shoulders touched. “I’ll take it. Even if it doesn’t last.”

They were quiet for a while, letting the silence stretch. Not heavy but instead rather comforting like the Earth was holding its breath so they could exist untouched just for a minute. Zander turned his head again, looking at Dick, his face lit only by the starlight. “I’m glad it’s you that I get moments like this with. Sorry I know it sounds corny…”
Dick blinked, then smiled without looking over. “It’s not corny because me too,” he replied fondly, taking Zander’s hand and squeezing it.
And above them, the stars blinked their endless watch, as two tired souls lay side by side in the stillness, not escaping the world, but remembering, for one perfect moment, how to live beside the madness within it.

…

They’d been driving for hours; the landscape has shifted slowly around them, from wide desert to dusty foothills and trees that grew denser and darker the further they went. The sun had fully vanished now and, in its place, was a velvet curtain of night pressed in from every side. The road narrowed, flanked by forest that rose like blackened walls. Zander, now sat upright, had his gaze fixed ahead. Chills ran along his body making every hair on his arms stand up. He glanced up, his eyes narrowing. “It’s close. I can feel it. It’s pull…” he said with a reservation in his voice, a mix somewhere between acceptance that they weren’t far from their destination but also a sense of dread. His eyes suddenly caught something as the headlights caught something up ahead – just for a second. A figure standing at the edge of the road. Zander sat bolt upright.
“Did you see—?”
“Yeah.”

A similar sense of dread fell over Dick, who, usually, wouldn’t bat an eye at a pedestrian on the side of the walk but suddenly felt a drawing pull to investigate what they’d just seen. It had unsettled him for an unknown reason and it seemed to have done the same to Zander. Dick slammed the brakes, gravel crunching beneath the tires. Dust and shadows swirled in the beams. He could see the woman, her features obscured by how bright the headlights were in his mind, but when they looked, she was gone. Zander threw open the door, boots hitting the gravel shoulder. The woods were thick, brambled and still. The wind didn’t stir the leaves. It was too quiet. She’d only been visible for a moment, but, unlike Dick, her image had seared itself into Zander’s mind. She had been barefoot, standing unnaturally still, her arms hanging at her sides like she’d forgotten they were meant to move. Her dress had been black was old and worn, far from sleek, hanging off her as if it belonged to someone else. It clung to her like waterlogged fabric, and her hair was long and matted, in tangles over her sunken shoulders. Her face struck Zander in the gut. Hallowed and pale. Her cheekbones sharp as if sculpted and the skin beneath her eyes shadowed and bruised like something had drained her from the inside out. And yet there was something familiar in her face in the dark slant of her brows. The slope of her jaw. The mouth that used to sing lullabies. Zander stepped towards the trees, waving his hand he muttered the words, “Ostende veritatem.” The air around him tightened and then burst forth in a soft, shimmering pulse. Dust lifted from the ground as if disturbed by the invisible wind. For a moment, Zander thought he’d see her but nothing. No figure. No footprints. No trace. The road was empty, silent except for the soft ticking of the car’s engine cooling behind them. Dick looked at him carefully. “Anything?” Zander didn’t answer right away. His eyes scanned the trees one last time, like if he stared hard enough, she might peel back into view. But there was only the forest. “You saw her too right?” he muttered nervously.
“Mhm. Clear as daylight.”
“The spell should’ve revealed her if she was here…” Zander’s breathe came shallow. Behind him the car door creaked slowly shut on its own. Looking back at the now-vacant car, he felt his pulse quicken. Before Zander looked at his phone, he gave the forest one more scan. Checking his maps, he turned to Dick, muttering, “We’re fifty miles out…”
“From the house?”
“Yeah…” Zander’s voice dropped as he stared down at the phone, the GPS flickering once before stabilising. “The reach… it’s never stretched this far before. Not ever.” The woods around them seemed to lean in closer, shadows deepening between the trees like ink soaked through paper. The air had turned colder, subtly, but unmistakably, and Zander realised his breath was fogging. That shouldn’t have been possible. “This isn’t right,” he said, his voice thin. A wind stirred, sudden and sharp, carrying the scent of damp wood and something sour, like rotting fruit. It swept through the trees with a hiss, and the branches rustled, as if something was moving between them, just out of sight. Dick glanced behind them toward the road stretching back into the dark. “Get into the car.”
Zander didn’t argue. The moment his door shut, the windshield fogged over from the inside, the condensation spiralling into strange, looping shapes that vanished before they could be traced. Dick twisted the key in the ignition – once, twice – before the engine finally stuttered back to life. Zander was still staring at the woods. “If she wasn’t really there… then something wanted me to see her. Something powerful enough to project her that clearly, that far out.”
Dick’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. “Then whatever’s waiting at the house—”
“—is already coming for us.”

They drove off in silence, both watching the road but feeling the awful presence that lingered like a splinter caught in their skin. The further they went, the heavier the air became, the darker the woods, the weight in silence that had befallen everything else. Even the engine seemed to hum softer, like it too understood not to draw attention. Zander stared straight ahead, jaw set, hands curled white-knuckled in his lap. Dick glanced in the rear viewer mirror and there she was, stood in the middle of the road. Her form was motionless, black dress hanging limp like a shadow. Her eyes were two voids filled with something far worse. They didn’t reflect the light, they swallowed it and yet somehow they locked onto him, a direct impossible gaze that stabbed through the glass and into his spine. A pressure bloomed behind Dick’s eyes, slow and sickening. A whisper at the base of his skull, almost like a voice pressed just too low to hear. His foot eased off the base. Zander’s voice cut through the dark, sharp and raw, snapping Dick back to reality, as he said firmly, “Don’t stop.”
Dick didn’t answer, his gaze caught in the mirror before he stared back at the road, jaw tight. “Wasn’t planning on it…”
Behind them, the forest swallowed the figure. No movement. No fade. She was just gone like she’d never been there at all but the cold lingered and the feeling would not go away. Like something had seen them and marked them…

Chapter Text

The trees thinned as the road sloped downward, their branches reaching like ribs overheard until they burst open to an impossible view. The forest gave way to what could’ve been the edge of the world: a cliff so steep it was like the land had broken away, swallowed now by the sea. Waves crashed against the black stone far below. Wind screamed through the valley between the hills. Before them stretched the ruins of an old bridge, its cracked spire jutting out over the water like broken teeth. Chunks of it had collapsed into the surf, lost to rot and time. Dick bought the car to a slow stop. “…Is this it?” he asked, confused.
“This is where it’s always been,” Zander replied, opening the door and stepping out. The wind hit him hard, pulling at his coat and lifting strands of his hair like they were caught in a rising current. He stood tall at the cliff’s edge, unfazed, the ocean roaring beneath him like a growling. Then, slowly, he raised both hands. His voice was low at first, and he spoke deliberately, his hand movements precise. It was as if he was drawing runes into the very air itself. “Per voluntatem meam, per sanguinem antiqui, ostium redeat,” he uttered quietly. The once still air before it became filled with the arcane, crackling with a mystical sort of electricity. The cliff trembled beneath their feet – not violently, but enough to feel it. Like something massive had stirred awake beneath the surface. A hum started low in the ground, then climbed. Light cracked into view like a lightning without a storm as runes burst open in a ring of blue that cut through the mist. And then, as if peeling back a veil, an archway appeared. Solid stone, black and glinting in the sunless light, its inner edge lined with carvings that seemed to move when you weren’t looking. Through it, the broken bridge was whole again, stretching in clean lines across the sea.

Beyond, the road narrowed and twisted, clinging to a narrow sliver of land that had somehow risen up from the restless sea – a jagged island that almost defied gravity. Island rose from the sea like a blade, its base narrow and sheer where it met the crashing waves. It shouldn’t have supported anything, let alone the sprawl of land and stone above but it climbed, the land widened abruptly near the top, levelling out into a broad plateau that stood eye-to-eye with the mainland cliffs – as if gravity had been politely ignored in the island’s design. And at the end of the path, impossibly distant yet unmistakable was the gate. Zander lowered his hands. Behind him, Dick stepped out of the car. “That’s new.” he remarked.
“Funnily enough that spell doesn’t always work, it only works if it wants to. It only shows itself if it wants to. Once I had a play date and it hated the idea of an outsider so much that Dad had to try five times to get it to allow us through. Each spell was cast angrier than before,” Zander replied, somewhere between humorous and almost loathing of the house itself.
Dick looked at the arch, then back at the cliff’s edge beyond it. From there, it was still just wreckage and water but within the arch’s frame was the rebuilt stone and the gates of a house that shouldn’t be. “I have so many questions right now,” he said, his brows furrowed.
“Fire away.”
“How am I allowed if I’m an outsider?”
“I’m assuming because it’s desperate to have me back, it’s willing to take anyone – no offence.”
“None taken,” Dick replied, holding up his hands, “You had play dates… here?”
“My demon friends thought it was neat.”
“Now I have another question but we can circle back to that… The house is only visible from one direction?”
Zander nodded, “It’s how my ancestors made it. Hidden from the outside and sealed from the inside.” He turned to Dick, and for a moment, the wind died. “You ready?” Zander asked.
Dick’s fingers twitched at his sides, “…Are you?”
“Nope,” Zander said, humorously but filled with honesty. “Let’s drive in.”
They climbed into the car, the archway framing the fractured world behind them like a doorway between two realities. The engine roared quietly to life, and with slow deliberate movements, Dick guided the car forward. “Is this not gonna collapse?”
“Nah, it’s mostly stable.”
“Mostly?”

The road beyond the arch was unnervingly pristine: clean, black asphalt stretched under their wheels, untouched by time or weather. It curved gently toward the gate, as if the world there had frozen in a moment of perfect stillness. The farther they drove, the heavier the silence grew. No birdsong or rustle of wind through leaves, just the low hum of the engine and the faint crunch of tires on gravel. Ahead, the gate emerged from the mist. It was a skeletal framework of rusted iron twisting upward, its black paint long since surrendered to flakes of decay. Ornate scrollwork that must have been grand now hung limp, jagged shards clinging to stubborn vines creeping from the cracked stone pillars. Zander’s eyes narrowed as the car rolled closer. He draw a small circle in the air with his fingers and the gates opened without a struggle. Zander exhaled slowly, “This place remembers us.”

The air shifted suddenly, colder now, like the manor’s breath exhaling through the gate. Dick’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. Beyond the gate, the path vanished into progressively deepening darkness where the house waited for them. Zander turned to Dick, his voice barely above a whisper, “Ready for whatever comes next?”
Dick met his gaze, steady but tense. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” With that, they continued driving through the gate. Below, dark waves slammed against the sharp cliffs, carving the rock like a slow wound. The land beneath their tires felt impossibly thin, like a fragile spine stretching upward, twisting like a shard of stone thrust from the depths.
They saw the manor before they saw the moon. Zatara Manor loomed above the trees like a wound in the sky: jagged, sprawling and unnervingly alive. It wasn’t the kind of house that had been built. It looked more like it had been conjured, pulled from the ground and fed on time until it took root in the hills. It towered over the landscape, its silhouette a patchwork of mismatched spires, gables and chimneys stacked like bones. No two sections were alike. The manor appeared like it had grown and never stopped. Its base was impossibly old with Gothic arches and blistered brickwork blackened by centuries of rain. But above that, the house fractured into a grotesque collage of styles and centuries, one architectural fever dream stitched onto another. Tudor beams buckled beside baroque ornament. A greenhouse made of warped iron and glass jutted out like a ribcage. An entire southern wing slouched like it had been dropped their by accident, already sinking into the earth. Each addition had its own mood, its own temperature, as if the rooms themselves refused to share a spine. Bridges connected the manor’s upper levels, thin and crooked things suspended high above the ground. They were narrow stone passages, some roofed in stained glass, others completely exposed to the wind. They stretched between towers like veins, or scars, joining wings that were never meant to touch. Some were wide enough to walk comfortably. Others just looked barely wide enough to crawl across. They swayed when the wind hit them just right, groaning under the weight of time.

From the ground, it was impossible to tell how many towers there actually were. Some were squat, turreted things choked in ivy. Others climbed into the sky like needles, tapering into iron spires too thin to stand. The highest tower listed slightly to one side, as though drunk on its own height. From one of the broken windows, a shutter clattered open. And for a second, just a second, something crossed one of the bridges, a shape that was slow and shambling, there and gone before the eye could settle. The house was full of windows and most were dark. But here and there, light flickered behind the glass, not steady, but pulsing like a signal or a breath.
The gravel crackled beneath the car’s tires as it pulled into the overgrown drive. Neither Dick nor Zander spoke. The fountain at the manor’s centre had long since gone dry, but the broken angel statues still reached upward, hands outstretched, their faces half-worn away. Gargoyles lined the balconies and thresholds, their mouths caught in mid-scream, their stony wings outstretched like they might take flight. Vines crawled up the walls in spirals, clinging to the stone like veins under skin. There was no wind, but still the air moved, like breath pulled through lungs that hadn’t drawn air in years. Zander stared up at the crooked skyline of the house. “Those bridges weren’t there when we left.”
Dick didn’t reply. The manor shifted in the darkness, it edges somehow blurred. He couldn’t shake the feeling it was listening… Watching… Somewhere in the highest tower, a light blinked to life. Then another, farther down, before it was out again, extinguished almost as soon as it was lit. The whole house seemed to lean forward like it was waiting.
“You grew up here?” Dick asked, knowing the answer but needing Zander to confirm it anyway.
“Mhm.”
“I take back every joke I’ve ever made about you not being well-adjusted. I feel like you’ve done the best with the cards you’ve been dealt,” he said, joking but with little humour.

The car settled into the overgrown driveway, the gravel crunching beneath the tires was a sharp and lonely sound within the heavy silence. Dick and Zander stepped out, the air immediately thickening around them – not just with the scent of damp stone and ivy but something older, deeper. Something that lingered in the breath between gusts of wind. Dick glanced up at the manor’s crooked silhouette, feeling the weight of its gaze. The house wasn’t just standing there, it was observing. A sudden movement flickered at the edge of Dick’s vision – a fleeting shimmer near the twisted garden paths. He blinked and turned, heart skipping. A pale, translucent figure darted across the lawn, too quick to be real. The faint echo of laughter followed, soft and distant, like a child’s play carried on the wind. Dick looked at Zander, “Did you see that?” he asked.
“No, what was it?” Zander replied, unnerved by Dick.
“A child… Running… It was pale like a ghost.”
Zander’s face tightened, eyes narrowed. “Memories,” he said quietly. “The house keeps them. Like shadows trapped between these walls.” His voice was low, almost reluctant as if naming them gave them more power. Dick swallowed, the ghostly echo settling uneasily in his chest. “How was it dressed?” Zander asked.
“Umm… Huh?”
“Modern, old?”
“Umm… modern, it wore a t-shirt.”
“Ah, probably me, or Zatanna, or maybe my Dad as a kid,” Zander replied, shrugging.
Dick swallowed again, “I see what you mean by it feels alive…”
“Yeah,” Zander said, stepping forward, gaze locked on the manor. “And not just alive… haunted. It remembers everything. Every pain, every joy, every secret.”
The wind rose again, swirling the dead leaves around their feet. Then, from the darkened threshold, a figure stepped out. She was a tall woman with a striking presence, calm but resolute. Zatanna. She offered a small, knowing smile. “Welcome home.” As she stepped forward from the shadows of the doorway, the soft glow of the fading light caught on the silver charms dangling from her layered necklaces. There were tiny crescent moons, stars, and arcane symbols. Her dark hair fell loose around her shoulders in gentle waves, streaks of midnight blue catching the light like liquid shadow. She was dressed casually in a soft, dark sweatshirt and faded jeans. On her fingers, several rings glimmered – some simple bands, others ornate with tiny gemstones. She wasn’t dressed like a sorceress or a performer. The tiredness around her eyes spoke of the long road she’d traveled, but there was a warmth in her smile when she looked at Zander. Zander didn’t see the witch or the magic user, just his sister standing there, real and present, like a memory come back to life.

Zatanna’s footsteps echoed softly as she descended the steps, the gravel crunching underfoot. She paused a few feet from the car, folding her arms, watching them slightly. Zander’s breath caught – not quite a homecoming, but not a stranger either.
She gave a small, tight smile. “I hope the journey was good.”
“Phantom hitchhikers…” Zander replied, his jaw twitching.
She grimaced with raised eyebrows like she understood. “Tell me about it,” she replied, wrapping an arm around her brother’s shoulder and giving him a small squeeze before letting go. Dick stepped forward, nodding politely. “Good to see you, Zatanna.” She offered a nod in return, eyes flicking briefly to him – professional and guarded. “Hey, Dick. How’s the Titans?”
“Stopped an alien invasion in Lagos last week, prevented an inter dimensional demon prince from burning the world to a crisp last month. You know, the usual,” he shrugged.
Zander looked from Dick to Zatanna. “It’s been a while,” he smiled softly.
“Too long,” she said softly. There was a beat where they just looked at each other, trying to bridge the space that time had carved between them. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Zatanna admitted finally.
“Neither was I. I’m equally surprised you came, in all honesty,” Zander responded, not with malice but plainly.
“With Dad and everything… I just… I needed to come back. I couldn’t miss the funeral – I could gladly miss the will reading though. God forbid he leaves this place to me – or you for that matter…” Zatanna shifted her weight, eyes flicked toward the manor, then back at Zander. “So… how have you been holding up? With… all this?”
Zander exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. “Honestly? I don’t even know. It kinda feels like nothing and then it dawns on me that he’s actually – y’know – gone and I never really know how to feel.”
She nodded slowly, biting her lip. “Yeah, same. It’s weird. Like he’s gone, but part of me is still pissed about how he just left. And now he’s dead?”
Zander’s jaw tightened, “I hate it. I hate that we don’t even know how to feel properly.”
“Yeah,” Zatanna agreed softly. “Me too.” Letting her reply sit for a second, she then gestured to the house, “Shall we?”

They left the car behind, the crunch of gravel muted beneath their feet as they stepped onto the overgrown path. Dick glanced back once, then pulled the keys from the ignition and locked the car with a soft click that echoed faintly in the still air. The gates groaned shut behind them, the sound swallowed quickly by the heavy silence. The heavy oak door, scarred by time and weather, creaked open under Zatanna’s steady hand, revealing the shadowed threshold beyond.
The foyer of Zatara Manor was a cathedral of polished wood and stillness, towering far higher than it had any right to. Every surface gleamed, from the waxed marble floor to the lacquered mahogany walls – as if the entire room had been scrubbed clean just moments before they arrived. Not a speck of dust. Not a single cobweb. It was too pristine for a house long abandoned. A double staircase curled up each side of the room like the ribs of a beast, meeting at a landing beneath an enormous oil painting of a man in a dark suit, his eyes obscured by shadow, and his hand outstretched, its purpose potentially being to welcome people but it couldn’t feel further from it. The foyer stretched the height of four floors, vast and echoless. The second floor formed a balcony that ringed the room, overlooking the entrance below, its edges lined with carved balustrades. Above that, a third balcony loomed even higher – distant and unreachable. There was no visible way up. No stair or door. No way up unless you already knew the trick. A hidden passage? An incantation? The house didn’t give it up freely. And above even that, a vast skylight crowned the chamber – fractured glass set into a web of iron. The moon hung perfectly within it, cold and full, spilling pale light down into the room. The way the foyer rose felt like a throat, swallowing light and sound in equal measure. Dick had never been in a place that was, in equal parts, elegant but also reeked of eeriness.

Zander glanced around. Portraits lined the walls, just like he remembered, their frames black and ornate, the eyes of their subjects just slightly misaligned, always watching. Some were faded, others untouched by time. One of the faces looked familiar – too familiar – but when Zander looked back, it was gone. The chandelier above was not glass, but crystal. Sharp-edged and silent. It didn’t sway nor glint. It just hung, full of unlit bulbs that flickered when no one moved. The sound of their steps didn’t echo. Each hallway leading from the foyer stretched on longer than it should’ve. The geometry was wrong – only subtly so. A turn that should lead into the east wing now opened into a sitting room no one had entered in decades. One hallway seemed to bend in on itself. And the air – the air was heavy. It wasn’t dust. It wasn’t rot. It was the weight of memory. Every inch of the space whispered of things left unsaid: tragedies replayed and magic woven so deep into walls that it bled into the light. Zander stood at the base of the stairs, eyes scanning the upper landing. “It’s just how I remember it,” he said. But even as he spoke, a door closed upstairs. None of them had gone up yet.
“It hasn’t changed whatsoever,” remarked Zatanna.
Above them, the moonlight continued to pour through the fourth-story skylight in sharp shafts. Zander glanced up before his voice broke the stillness. “I’d hold that thought, actually,” he said, pointing up, “The skylight wasn’t like that before.”
Zatanna glanced up. “No it wasn’t.”
Dick looked at it, nothing seemed off above the skylight. He wondered how much it had changed, whether it was the pattern of the iron frame work or the tint of glass but he didn’t ask.
“It’s just like we were kids… but in little, subtle ways, it’s different.”
“Dad did say the house was ever evolving,” Zatanna said. Zander glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, then looked away before she could meet his gaze. There was a pause, the kind that stretched longer than either expected. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Being back here after all this time,” Zatanna remarked, her fingers twisting a loose thread on her sleeve.
“Yeah,” Zander said quietly.

Zander stepped forward, but slower now. The manor felt like a mausoleum. He glanced over his shoulder at Zatanna, who had turned toward one of the portraits, her fingers brushing the frame with a touch that bordered on nostalgic. “She always kept this one in her study,” she said absently. Zander didn’t respond. He didn’t recognise the woman in the painting, and even if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d care. Instead, he stared up at the fractured skylight. The moonlight slanted in sharp beams, dividing the foyer into patches of light and deep shadow, like pieces on a board. Zander moved through the foyer, quiet but purposeful. His steps were measured, like he was walking into the past with purpose, letting it wrap around him. Dick followed behind close enough to catch him if the floor gave out, not out of fear, just instinct. Zatanna lingered at the edge of the foyer, her eyes caught by one of the portraits on the wall. It was their mother when she younger, before everything cracked. She didn’t touch it, didn’t say anything. Just watched it like it might look back.

Zander stopped and just hovered in the foyer, hands in his pockets, before he cleared his throat. “How long have you been here?” he asked, voice low.
Zatanna didn’t look at him right away. “Couple hours. Got in just after sunset,” she replied.
“So you’ve had time to soak in the ambience,” Zander joked, nodding slowly.
A faint smirk tugged at her mouth, “If by ambience you mean dead silence then yeah. Real warm welcome.”
Zander glanced around the shadowed hall. “Still feels like he’s about to walk down those stairs and start lecturing.”
Zatanna didn’t reply at first, just reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s quieter than I remember.”
He nodded again. “Or maybe we’re just louder.”
That got a dry breath of laugh out of her but it didn’t last. She looked at him like she wanted to say more, then let the moment pass. Dick finally spoke. “How long are they keeping us here, exactly?”
“Just till the will reading tomorrow,” Zatanna replied. “Then we’re free to bolt.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Zander muttered.
Zatanna’s gaze lingered on him, but she didn’t push. She just turned towards the stairs. “Rooms are upstairs. You know the way.”
Zander gave a small nod as she moved ahead, footsteps soft on the carpet. He watched her go, then glanced at Dick. “She’s barely been here a few hours and already feels like a ghost.”
Dick lowered his voice. “You okay?”
Zander sighed, “Couldn’t even tell you, to be honest.”
Dick nodded, understanding. “Is there gonna be a funeral?”
Zander paused. “That’s thing,” he replied, “I don’t know. No body, no details. Just a letter, the will, and this house waiting for us like he knew we’d come back.” He looked up at the staircase, like the walls might offer some kind of answer. “I don’t even know if he’s actually dead,” Zander said quietly. “Feels like something he’d stage. Disappear, make it theatrical. And now we’re all just supposed to mourn on cue?”
Dick’s voice was gentler now. “You don’t believe it?”
Zander shrugged, jaw tight. “It’s not that I don’t believe it. It just doesn’t add up. It never adds up with him.” They stood there for a moment – silent. Zander exhaled through his nose, he didn’t say anything for a moment, just shifted his weight. “Let’s get the bags out the car and head to our room.”

Chapter Text

The door had seen several years of weathering, the oak’s stain pealing away and splinters of wood breaking away like thorns on a rose. Zander pressed his palm to a smooth patch that was marginally lighter in colour, having clearly been sanded slightly to counteract the excessive splintering. He and Dick strode into the room with their suitcases in tow. It was exactly as Dick expected but also completely different from anything he could’ve imagined. It was uniquely Zander but also seemed so unbearably eery. Dick couldn’t shake that it felt remarkably off. The ceiling was extraordinarily high, and the windows rose up from the floor to the vaulted ceiling like cathedral spires. The stained glass within the frames was a labyrinth of purples: lavender, amethyst, plum, and deep wine, each hue bleeding into the next like a slow turning of dusk. Intricate rosettes bloomed at the apex of every arch, petals of glass arranged in symmetrical wonder, catching the faint gleam of candlelight and scattering it across the room in soft constellations. When the wind passed outside, the panes gave a low, trembling sigh, and the light shifted, rippling over the bedspread like liquid violet silk.

It was impossible to tell whether the windows looked out onto the world or into some secret, mirrored realm; their glass shimmered with too much life, too much depth. The world was indistinct and blurred into a wash of violet mist and shadow. It was as though the windows weren’t meant for seeing outward at all, but for holding the night inside, preserving it like something precious. Above, the ceiling opened into a dome of leaded glass that shouldn’t have existed. Dick was sure there was another floor above this one – he had seen it from the staircase and in the foyer – but here the roof dissolved into a spill of amethyst sky. The skylights arched high, framed in black ironwork like the ribs of some vast cathedral organ. Through them, the stars looked close enough to touch, trembling through violet haze. He couldn’t tell if he was looking up into the night or into the house’s memory of it – something trapped and glowing, quietly defying the logic of the floors above.

The furniture seemed to have grown out of the wooden floor itself – vast, ornate, and impossibly old. The bed that dominated the centre of the room that was akin to a miniature cathedral with its headboard spired and its canopy carved. Heavy velvet curtains framed it, tied back with braided cords. The covers were deep plum, rumpled with the faint memory of use, and the pillows still bore the faintest indentation. Above it hung a chandelier of wrought iron and glass, its arms curling like black vines, dripping with candles that burned low and steady. The light they cast was not bright but tender, gilding the room in a dim rose-gold haze, flickering against the stone and wood walls as if reluctant to disturb the stillness. A writing desk stood near one of the tall windows, cluttered with the kind of small, human details that made the place feel lived-in: a fountain pen resting sideways on an unfinished letter, a half-empty glass of water, a stack of books leaning precariously against a bronze clock that had long stopped ticking. There was a scarf too, forgotten and left behind, draped over the back of the chair, the faintest scent of cologne lingering in the air. For all its grandeur, the room did not feel cold. Dick couldn’t tell exactly what felt off: it felt inhabited, haunted not by ghosts but by presence, the kind that lingers when someone leaves in a hurry, intending to come back (whether Zander acknowledged that intention or not was a different conversation entirely). Chalking it up to the car journey unsettling him, Dick shrugged the feeling off like an invisible coat he sent to the floor.

The door clicked shut behind them, the sound echoing too long for the size of the room. Dick set his suitcase near the wall, his eyes tracing the curve of the vaulted ceiling again, the impossible sweep of glass and shadow. He was so sure there was a whole floor above them but standing here, beneath the open dome of stained violet skylight, that certainty didn’t seem to matter. He rolled his shoulders again, another attempt at loosening the travel stiffness and he set about taking inventory the way he always did: bed, windows, exits, points of weakness. Old habits. The windows, moreover, he could not stop looking at – too tall, too rich in colour, light pooling on the floor like water. The air was cooler here than the rest of the house, holding a faint scent of lavender and wood polish. Zander was already moving around, kicking off his shoes, the familiarity in his movements at odds with how long he’d been away. He went to the dresser, tugged open a drawer that creaked in protest, then shut it again. Dick watched the small motions, the ease of it, and though that, for all the ways Zander had changed since they’d first met, his relationship with the house hadn’t. He still moved like he expected it to shift beneath him. Dick crossed toward the centre of the room, stopping beneath the chandelier. It hung low enough that he could have brushed the iron vines if he’d reached up. Wax dripped unevenly down one of the candles, a thin line hardened mid-run. The flame didn’t flicker, even when he passed directly beneath it.
“So… this your old childhood bedroom, huh?” Dick asked.
Zander nodded, getting comfy on his bed as he sat against the headboard. The old mattress dipped slightly under his weight. “What do you think?”
“It’s very you,” Dick smiled.
“God, don’t say that…” Zander replied humorously.
“Why?” grinned Dick inquisitively.
“Cold, creepy, and eery… Is that really what you think of me?” Zander teased.
Dick smiled faintly, walking over to Zander. “Don’t even start with me…” Dick cooed, leaving a small kiss on his forehead.

Dick then paced a slow circle around the room, running his fingertips along the carved wood of the bedposts, then across the seams of the floorboards. The parquet pattern looked off-kilter – slightly rotated from the rest of the hallways he’d walked through. Zander raised an eyebrow as he watched Dick attempt study the house, a place Zander had deemed ‘unstudyable’ due it’s very nature, being forever changing. He crouched near the wall, eyes narrowing at the faint angle of shadow beneath the wainscoting. He stood again and crossed toward the window, counting his steps without thinking. Seven paces, The wall should have met the corner by then, but it didn’t – there was another few inches of space, just enough to throw off his sense of proportion.
“Zan,” he said, half-turning, “Yoy ever notice how this room doesn’t line up as it should?”
Zander, lying back now, looked over with a lazy kind of amusement. “Yeah. I stopped trying to map it a long time ago.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“You were going to try, weren’t you?”
Dick didn’t answer, which was answer enough. He pressed his palm against the windowpane; it was cool, but not the kind of cold that should’ve belonged to autumn night air. More like stone chilled from the inside out. His reflection blinked back at him, faintly doubled by the glass’s uneven surface. When he moved, the reflected movement lagged half a heartbeat behind.
He stepped back, brow furrowing. “Okay.”
Zander smirked into the ceiling. “You’re making friends already.”
“Something about this doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s kind of the theme here.”
He walked back toward the bed, glancing up at the skylight again. The stars above looked wrong. Like they were too sharp, too close, almost like frost scattered across glass. He couldn’t see the outline of the manor’s roof or any sign of the floor that should’ve been there. Just open sky and the faint reflection of candlelight from below, swimming across the dome’s inner curve. “Zan,” he said again, quieter this time. “If I went up there – wherever there is – what would I find?”
“You won’t find anything,” Zander said.
“You’ve checked?”
“Once.” A pause. “Didn’t like what I found.”
Dick let that settle, narrowing his eyes at the words that weren’t ominous so much as matter-of-fact, and somehow that felt worse. He looked back up at the skylight and could have sworn the iron framed work shifted minutely – like the drawing in of a breath. “Huh…” he muttered as it returned to form during the blink of his eye. He turned toward Zander. “This is so…”
“Yeah… I know you said earlier you take back every joke about me not being well-adjusted but growing up here…”
“It’s a miracle you and Zatanna turned out how you did,” Dick chimed in.

They unpacked in comfortable silence after that. Dick hung his jacket over the chair near the desk, catching sight of the scarf draped there, Zander’s, from before. It looked almost new. “I couldn’t help but notice dust doesn’t collect in this house…” Dick said.
“Add it to the list of things no one can explain about this fuck ass house.”
Zander kicked open his suitcase, pulling out clothes without much ceremony. He stacked a few things in the dresser, tossed a shirt over the foot of the bed. Dick folded it neatly a moment later when Zander wasn’t looking. “You’re really going to start organising a haunted house?” Zander asked, his back still turned to Dick, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.
“Old habits die hard.”
The chandelier gave a faint creak overhead. Dick glanced up automatically. “How often does that happen?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“How much the house wants to remind you it’s listening.”
He waited for Zander to smirk, to undercut the line with humour, but he didn’t. The words just sat there, plain and steady, like fact. Dick laughed quietly. “You really know how to make a place sound inviting.”
“It’s not so bad once you get used to it.” Zander threw himself backward on the bed again, hair catching the soft candlelight. “You’ll stop noticing.”
“Pretty sure I don’t want to stop noticing.”
“Then you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
Dick moved to the bed, sitting beside him. The mattress dipped again, this time enough for their shoulders to brush. Zander’s gaze stayed on the ceiling, relaxed, unbothered. Zander rolled over to face Dick, “Sorry if I’ve not been great company…”
Dick tutted affectionately. “You’re always great company,” he smiled, squeezing Zander’s cheek, who gave him a wry smile back.
“That’s nice. That’s a lie but it’s nice.”
“Not a lie.”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m not,” Dick said, raising his hands defensively, “You’re in a significantly better state than I was when my parents kicked the bucket.”
“You were like eleven.”
“And? Grief is hard to navigate no matter how old you are.” A beat. Then, with more sincerity than before, “You know I’m always here for you? Right?”
“I do,” Zander smiled.
“Okay…” Dick smiled, pulling Zander into him, his chest a steady rise and fall beneath Zander’s cheek. They didn’t speak for a while after that. The air felt still again. For a few minutes, they just lay there—the detective and the magician’s son, the house around them settling into silence that didn’t quite feel like peace but something close. Unable to shake the feeling of something being off about this space, Dick’s gaze continued to drift lazily over the ceiling, then the wall opposite them, not searching for anything but not able to fully relax either. That was when he noticed Something about the panelling that didn’t fully match—the pattern of the wood grain broke, faintly, almost intentionally. He frowned. “Zan… that corner. You see it?” Zander sat up. He noticed it too - the smallest seam in the moulding near the corner of the room, a hairline divide he was certain hadn’t been there before.

Zander swung his legs over the side of the bed, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Dick followed, padding quietly after him, both of them drawn to the faint line in the wall. The seam was barely visible unless you knew where to look. It was just a thin line running along the moulding, swallowed by shadow. Up close, it was clearer. The paint along the seem appeared to have cracked, curling slightly, and the wood grain ran in a different direction than the rest of the paneling. Dick ran his fingers along the edge. The surface dipped under the pressure, not solid like it should’ve been. “That’s not a crack,” he said.
Zander crouched to get a better look. The divide ran all the way down to the baseboard, the faintest line of light catching where the two panels met. As Dick’s fingers reached the skirting, he noticed how the air there felt significantly colder, like the room was breathing through it.
“No,” he said. “It’s a door.” They exchanged a look. The room had gone still again, as if the house itself was waiting to see what they’d do next.
“Has this always been here?” Dick asked.
“I… I don’t… I don’t know. If it has… I’ve never noticed it before but surely I would’ve…” Zander said, his tone betraying his concern. Dick’s question hung in the air. Zander swallowed, reaching for the seam again, and this time the panel moved under his hand – slow, reluctant, like a breath itself being let out. There was no obvious latch; the wood shifted on a hidden hinge with a soft, accusing sigh. A wedge of darkness opened, thin as a fingertip, then wider until they could see down a narrow tunnel lined with old, dry stone. They went through together, the tunnel smelling of cold metal and old linen, nothing like the rest of the house; it was as if the passage had been cut from some earlier version of the building and sealed off from time. The light from the room fell away behind them, swallowed. At the end of the corridor was a door without a handle, just an inset panel and a keyhole that had long ago been filled with plaster. Dick pressed his shoulder against it; the door gave with the same reluctant sound as the seam, and they stepped into a dark, dingy room. There was furniture beneath sheets; tall shapes and low ones, the outlines softened by dustless fabric that sagged like shrouds. The air carried that strange metallic scent again, faint and cold. Dick caught one corner of a sheet and tugged. The fabric slid away in a slow wave, releasing a muffled breath of stale air – but no dust. Beneath it was a couch – Victorian, maybe, the kind of thing that belonged to another century. Its upholstery had faded to a bruised blue, the pattern worn to thread where hands had rested. “What is this place?’ Dick asked quietly, looking around. The room felt wrong for storage as it was almost too intentional and too preserved, like it was hidden away from the rest of the house for a reason. Zander didn’t answer. His eyes had caught on something else—a pale, narrow glow ahead, just a sliver through the darkness. A doorway stood at the far end of the room, the frame slightly warped, as though the house had grown around it. He crossed the room, the floor soft with age under his foot, the air thinning as he neared the doorway. Beyond it was a small landing, open to the air. It wasn’t another room. It was the balcony. The same one that overlooked the grand foyer three floors below, the one no one had ever found an entrance to. From here, the chandelier’s glass caught the dim light like suspended frost, and the marble floor far beneath looked ghostly and wet. The balustrade was carved with foliate patterns softened by age; the marble below gleamed without the usual grit. This place had never been found before or so Zander assumed.

Dick stepped up beside him, awe flickering under his confusion. “I thought this was sealed off,” he said.
“So did I,” Zander murmured. He gripped the balcony’s rail, grounding himself against the strange, still air. “But it looks like the house had other plans.” Looking down, the wide view felt like being plunged down into the house’s great threat. Moving back into the room, Zander approached a dressing table, it’s mirror having become dull with age and barely reflecting Dick and Zander back at them, but it was still clear enough that the unmistakable shape of a third person was now stood at the line where the light ended and the darkness began. Zander saw her. Her dress road like a portrait pulled from an old ledger: high collar, long sleeves, layers of heavy fabric – an 1800s mourning gown, muted and severe. Her hair was arranged in a tight, old-fashioned knot. She was stood there, her shoulders back and poised, and, as far as Zander could tell, she did not seem aware of them. Her steps were slow and measured when she began to walk, as though guided by some other rhythm. Her face, when they could see it, was empty of the present. She had the appearance of someone deathly ill, the colour drained from her face so violently it left her face with the appearance of a white husk. Her eyes were glassy and her lips slack. She carried the look of someone in a trance. Zander’s chest tightened. He had the instant, terrible certainty you only get when something is wrong in a way the world’s rules can explain: this wasn’t a living woman; this was a thing the house had made or was showing them. He felt his hands go cold. His feet might as well have borrowed themselves into the floorboards beneath them and taken root. Dick’s instinct was to run to the woman, unfamiliar with the house’s illusions, but Zander’s voice stopped him before it left his throat. “Don’t,” Zander said, grabbing Dick’s hand, his voice low and shaking.
Dick froze mid-step, confusion flashing across his face. “Zan, she’s…”
“She’s not real.”
He didn’t raise his voice, but the way he said it made Dick hesitate. Zander’s gaze was fixed on the woman’s slow, deliberate movements, tracking her with the wary focus of someone watching a snake in the grass.
“What do you mean not real?” Dick demanded, straining against Zander’s hold. “She’s right there—”
“She’s not alive,” Zander hissed. “Don’t touch her.”

Before Dick could argue again, Zander moved on instinct. He pressed his free palm to the inside of Dick’s wrist, muttering a short, guttural incantation under his breath. The air around his fingers vibrated faintly, like the hum of a loose wire. Lines of light formed between their hands—a lattice of pale, translucent geometry that flickered unevenly as if struggling to decide on a shape. It tightened. In an instant, their wrists were connected by a construct that looked like metal but moved like smoke—two bands circling their skin, connected by a single trembling strand of light. It wasn’t clean work; the glow stuttered, threads unraveling and re-knitting themselves, erratic but functional. Dick yanked at the binding, alarm flickering into frustration. “Zan, what the hell are you doing?”
“Stopping you from getting killed,” Zander said. His tone was brittle every word pushed through clenched teeth. He kept his eyes locked on the woman. “Just watch…”
The construct shimmered weakly, tugging whenever Dick moved too far. It wasn’t cruel, just insistent, a reminder that whatever bound them together wasn’t under perfect control. Zander could feel the instability in it, the static bite at the base of his fingers, but it would hold long enough. It had to. The woman crossed the room without looking at them, her steps soundless. Zander glanced back at the mirror, her reflection lagged behind by half a beat, her body and its imagine falling out of sync. Zander’s breath hitched. They watched her reach the bannister. There was no hesitation in her step, no flicker of awareness for the height before her. She walked to the very edge as if following a prearranged cue, folding her hands in front of her as one might for prayer, and stepped off. There was no scream, only the thin, controlled sound the house made when things fell through it. For a beat, they both saw motion: the dress spooling in the air, the body describing a small, terrible arc. Then the sound came up from below, delayed, and dull – a fall against marble, the muted finality of wet cloth hitting stone. It was not cinematic; it was blunt and rang in the bones.
Zander let go, exorcising the tension from his body, sighing heavily as the construction flickered, then collapsed in on itself, the light withdrawing into a single spark that vanished between their wrists. The air stilled, thick with the echo of what they’d just seen. Dick didn’t wait. He bolted for the balcony, the floorboards protesting beneath his steps. Zander stayed where he was, the fading charge of the spell stinging under his skin. “Dick…” he started, but the name caught in his throat.

Dick reached the railing and looked down. The foyer spread beneath him, wide and silent. No body. No torn fabric. The marble gleamed, untouched. The chandelier above swayed faintly, the only sign that anything had happened at all.
He exhaled, the sound uneven. “There’s nothing,” he said.
Zander nodded once. “There wouldn’t be.”
Dick turned, some of his anger gone now, whatever sharpness had been in his voice earlier had drained into something quieter, almost careful. “You know I don’t like you using magic on me…”
“You know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was one-hundred-percent necessary…” Zander responded, not defensive or cold, just tiredness that seemed to stem from a sense of familiarity. The sight of the balcony had settled something in him, but not in a good way. It was just as he remembered it: the secrets, the illusions. Reality would feel like a drop of ink and fabrications like a bowl of water. It would become so diluted that it almost appeared as though it ceased to exist. “Nothing ever changes here…”
Dick stepped closer, awkwardly, unsure how to reach Zander when everything in the room still felt weighted with the house’s echo. He laid a hand lightly on Zander’s shoulder. “We’ll get through it,” he said, voice low. “Even if I don’t… even if I don’t understand half of it, we’ll get through it.”
Zander didn’t move, didn’t lean in, just let the words sink in. It was the closest thing to comfort he’d allow right now. Dick didn’t push further; he simply stayed near, steady, letting the house’s silence wash over them together.
Finally, Zander broke the stillness. “Let’s go.”

They left the balcony room, the narrow corridor swallowing the darkness behind them. Step by step, they climbed back toward the main rooms of the house. And then, as if the house had flipped a switch, they stepped into sudden daylight. Sunlight poured through the windows of Zander’s bedroom, brushing the walls with warmth and brightness so stark it made the previous room feel almost unreal. Dick turned to Zander, “We didn’t go up stairs, did we?”
“In the tunnel?”
“Yeah.”
“No, why… Oh,” Zander said, realisation dawning on him. There was an element of confusion replaced by a blasé attitude, a natural response to the arbitrary and unnatural layout of the house.
Dick nodded his head. “That balcony is meant to be on the third floor, your room is on the second floor, but they’re entirely levels. And due to the skylights… it implies your room is on the third floor not the second…”
Zander cut him off, “You’re trying to rationalise a house that physically cannot be rationalised…”
Dick furrowed his brows, confused, before a knock on the door interrupted his thinking. He opened the door and Zatanna stood in the doorway, her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. “Finally,” she said, voice sharp but relieved. “I’ve been looking for you both for hours.”
Dick and Zander exchanged a glance, still slightly unsteady, before Zander muttered, “We… found something.”
Zatanna’s gaze softened for a moment, but then she gestured toward the main hall. “Doesn’t matter now. The family’s arrived, and the will reading is in a few hours. You’ll have to put whatever that was on hold ‘cos I can’t deal with Aunt Rosalinda on my own.”
Zander groaned – not at Zatanna but in solidarity with her. He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Alright, let’s do this…”
Dick gave Zander a brief squeeze on the shoulder, silently letting him know he was still there. Then, together, they followed Zatanna toward the rest of the house, moving down the hallway toward the rest of the house, their family lurking just out of sight.