The rooftop was not where Bruce expected to die—mostly because it was half-covered in glowing runes, three floating jackals, and what looked suspiciously like a portal to somewhere not covered by Gotham zoning laws.

He’d tracked the artifact to an abandoned observatory, thinking the smuggling ring was mundane. He was wrong. Rookie mistake. He hated magic.

Then the spell triggered, binding him in a stasis field of violet flame and ominous chanting. Latin. Possibly Sumerian. All of it unpleasant.

And then she dropped out of the sky.

Not like a bird. Not like a caped crusader. Like a comet wrapped in silk and sarcasm. Her staff hit the ground first—sending a ripple of wind that knocked the jackals flat—and her cloak billowed like it had its own special effects team.

Bruce blinked. She glared at the trap. Then at him. Then back at the trap, muttering something about “mortals and their chronic artifact theft.”

He tried to speak. The spell fizzled his voice into static.

She rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers.

The runes shattered.

Bruce hit the ground with all the grace of a man who just spent twelve seconds suspended in magical paralysis and approximately zero seconds expecting a mystical goddess to crash his rooftop sting operation.

“You’re welcome,” she said dryly, inspecting the now-crumbling portal with a wince. “Also: you owe me a dimensional tether.”

He pushed himself up, scowling. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“Exactly,” she sighed. “Which is why I’m stuck here. Congratulations. You’ve just exiled your own rescue.”

She dusted off her tunic, frowned at her glowing wrist cuff—which now displayed a spinning hourglass—and sighed again. “I’m going to need a job. And coffee. Possibly therapy.”

Bruce stood, silent, calculating. Magic. Trapped heroine. Unintentional exile. He rubbed his jaw.

She looked him up and down. “Do all mortal champions look like brooding statues with control issues, or is that just a Gotham thing?”

He stared at her, then muttered, “You destroyed three jackals, a portal, and a centuries-old spell matrix in under ninety seconds.”

She winked. “You’re welcome again.”

Bruce had fought warlords, assassins, and things that didn’t bleed. But this?

This was going to be a problem.

A very attractive, sarcastic, utterly magical problem.