You stand before the portal, the cold Gotham rain mixing with the otherworldly mist that spills from its edges. The Amulet of Hecate grows cold against your chest. Diana’s form is silhouetted against the impossible geometry of the dimension beyond—a shattered landscape of floating obsidian shards and rivers of slow, crimson light. It smells of ozone and old blood.

“The Bridge of Sighs is far,” she says, her voice steady despite the howling gale from the portal. “Akrolis does not guard a place. He guards a concept: the passage from regret to resolve. The terrain will test that resolve.”

You adjust the weight of the Dragonslayer on your shoulder, the familiar strain a comfort. You think of Casca, not as she is now—a hollow-eyed child in a woman’s body, flinching from shadows—but as she was on the Hill of Swords, her laughter fierce and bright. That memory is your tether. Your bitterness, your rage, it’s all fuel now, but its purpose has shifted. It is no longer just an engine for vengeance. It is a wall to build around her.

You step through.

The ground is not ground. It is the petrified shell of ancient dreams, sharp and unstable. Distant, twisted spires pierce a bruised sky where two sickly moons chase each other. Every step echoes with whispers, not in your ears, but in your mind. They are your own thoughts, amplified: Fool. All you touch is cursed. She is better lost.

Diana moves ahead with an Amazon’s grace, her lasso glowing faintly at her hip. “Do not listen,” she calls back, her voice cutting through the psychic static. “This realm mirrors the turmoil within. Your love for her is your compass. Hold to it.”

You grip the leather-wrapped hilt of your sword until the creak of the Berserker armor joins the chorus. The whispers are not wrong. You are cursed. But Casca is not. She is the one pure thing the world failed to grind into dust. You failed to protect her once. You will not fail again, even if this path leads through a hundred hells.

Weeks, she said. Two days for Casca. You can endure an eternity for two days of her peace.

You look at the impossible bridge in the impossible distance, a thread of silver spanning a chasm of howling void. Akrolis waits. You walk on, the giant sword a promise against the whispering dark. The war for retribution is over. The pilgrimage for her salvation has begun.