"To conquer death is not to live forever, but to refuse to understand life."
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The Gathering of the Old Blood
The air on Lazarus Island grew heavy, thick with the scent of iron and salt. The tournament grounds were empty now — the fighters gone, the fires cold.
Only King remained, standing before the central Lazarus Pit, its green light reflecting against his calm, expressionless eyes.
Behind him, the crunch of boots on gravel broke the silence.
Ra's al Ghul stepped into view — draped in his emerald robes, his face sharp and proud, yet shadowed by worry. Talia followed a step behind, her hand on her sword, her tone clipped with restrained anger.
"You should not be here, god or not. This place was sanctified long before your kind ever walked the Earth." Said Ra's
"Sanctified?" King glanced down at the bubbling pool. "It reeks of fear."
Ra's frowned, but it was Talia who spoke next.
"You don't understand, King. The Lazarus Pits sustain the balance of nature. They are not mere tools of immortality — they preserve the alchemy of life itself." Reasoned Talia.
King turned slowly, his gaze cutting through her words like the edge of a blade.
"And yet they corrupt every soul that drinks from them. Life prolonged becomes rot. Resurrection breeds despair. You call this balance?" Asks King.
Ra's took a step forward, his voice rising.
"You speak as if you are beyond death, but even gods fall! You would destroy what keeps this fragile world from decay!" Exclamed Ra's.
King's tone did not rise, but his presence swelled, the King Engine beginning to hum beneath the earth, a resonance like an ancient drumbeat.
Even Ra's — who had faced centuries of demons and warlords — felt his heartbeat falter.
"You've mistaken delay for defiance. You have spent lifetimes running from what you were meant to embrace." Rumbled King, his tone absolute.
Talia's hand gripped her sword. "You would condemn my father—our bloodline—to mortality?"
King's gaze softened slightly.
"No. I would free you from the illusion that eternity means purpose."
The Breaking of Faith
The Lazarus Pit began to churn violently, the green glow intensifying. The ground cracked beneath King's feet as the pit itself seemed to protest his words.
Ra's spread his arms, shouting over the chaos.
"You dare to decide the fate of humanity's greatest gift? Do you think you can simply erase the power that has preserved empires and rebuilt legacies?" Asks Ra's in a raised voice.
King looked at him. Pitying, almost mournful.
"You did not preserve empires, Ra's. You merely postponed their funerals."
Ra's eyes widened — the weight of the truth, undeniable.
Then King lifted his hand, and the wind howled.
"The world must remember how to die… before it can learn to live."
The King Engine roared.
Every particle of air, every grain of sand, vibrated as if the earth itself were bowing in submission.
King clenched his fist and drew it back — a simple motion, yet it carried the weight of inevitability.
Talia cried out, "Stop! You'll destroy—"
But the words were swallowed by light.
When King's fist struck the ground, it wasn't sound that followed — it was silence, pure and total, as if existence held its breath.
Then came the shatter.
The Lazarus Pit erupted — not in flame, but in waves of unraveling green energy. The glow vanished into dust, collapsing inward, devouring itself until only scorched earth remained.
In that instant, every Lazarus Pit on Earth — from the Himalayas to the Sahara, from beneath Gotham's foundations to the far reaches of Nanda Parbat — ceased to exist. Mostly.
The green flame died forever.
Ra's fell to his knees, clutching the dirt, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Centuries… gone… all of it." Whispered Ra's to no one.
Talia knelt beside him, her voice trembling with rage and sorrow.
"Do you call this mercy?"
King looked at her, the fading green reflection still shimmering in his eyes.
"No. This is remembrance. The living forget what it means to cherish life when they can steal it again and again."
Ra's looked up, defiant even in ruin.
"You have doomed us to extinction."
King turned away, gazing at the horizon where the stars met the ocean.
"You were always doomed. Now you are alive."
He began to walk toward the sea, the sand turning to glass beneath each step.
Talia called after him, voice sharp.
"What gives you the right to decide what humanity must remember?" Asks Talia.
King paused only once, his tone quiet but absolute.
"Because no one else remembers what it means to be human."
And then he was gone — his form dissolving into light as the night swallowed the last of the green glow.
The Echo of Silence
In the aftermath, Ra's stood on the edge of the ruined pit, its water gone, its heart stilled.
The first breeze of true night swept through the island — clean, untainted, alive.
Talia looked at the stars and whispered, almost to herself:
"So this is what mortality feels like."
Ra's answered softly, a faint, bitter smile on his lips.
"Then let us live long enough to remember it."
And somewhere beyond the waves, King's voice — or perhaps the echo of it — lingered on the wind:
"The world begins again, not by those who refuse to die, but by those who dare to live."
Read 53 chapters ahead on P.A.T.R.E.O.N
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