Chapter 141 Now It Is Your Turn to Kneel

Metropolis. Deep inside a long-abandoned electrical substation, a faint click broke the dust-laden silence.

A blue glimmer flashed and vanished in the dark, as though someone had just shut off a signal that had been running far too long.

Only a trace of ozone remained in the air.

Captain Sponge, otherwise known as Digger Harkness, roughly shoved the still-warm League tracking tag he had dug out from beneath the skin at the back of his neck into the bottom of a cheap whiskey bottle.

He screwed the cap tight and, without looking, flung the bottle over his shoulder into the foul-smelling drainage ditch beside him.

A gurgle of bubbles was its last farewell before it sank into the sludge.

He pulled out an old encrypted phone and deftly logged in to an anonymous forum frequented by all kinds of people.

He did not type a word. He simply uploaded a video he had risked his life to extract from a battlefield recorder.

The picture was dark and shaky, but what it showed was suffocatingly clear.

Amid the ruins of Liberty Island stood the man who called himself Gideon. A vicious black feather-blade was lodged in his right shoulder. Broken ribs could clearly be seen piercing his skin, and blood soaked his tattered robes.

Yet he did not retreat or fall. He did not even groan. Facing the blazing divine might of the Justice League's seven giants, he took that small step forward, a step that shook the world.

The video had no music. Only the howling wind and the man's heavy, drumlike breathing could be heard.

With an unlit cigarette between his lips, Digger tapped a single caption onto the screen:

"At least this bastard has the guts to bleed on his feet. What about you? Hiding behind the law and playing saints?"

He pressed Send, switched off the phone, and threw himself back into the shadows.

He neither knew nor cared that, less than two hours later, some "genius" in an anti-establishment circle would edit the rough footage into a viral short called A Compilation of Heroes Hesitating, which spread wildly through every corner of the dark web.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the North Sea, in the sunken monastery.

Morris's voice reached deep into Gideon's consciousness through the bone-conduction earpiece, clear and tinged with disbelief. "Sir, we have detected an anomalous signal. In the past three hours, the Justice League's psychological assessment system for recruits has triggered its highest-level 'moral conflict' alert three times in succession. Two highly promising candidates have formally submitted requests to leave."

Gideon sat upright before the cold stele without raising his eyes.

"Their reasons." He uttered two characters.

"Exactly the same." A trace of awe entered Morris's voice. "In the latest round of simulated combat exercises, both chose the 'termination' option when confronted with a simulated Joker. Their stated reason was: 'I cannot guarantee that, when facing the real Joker in the future, I will still be able to restrain my desire to kill him. That is incompatible with the League's ideals.'"

The faintest curve touched Gideon's lips.

"Also," Morris continued, "an Atlantean translation of A Judge's Journal has appeared among the classified attachments of Atlantis's diplomatic mission on land. It carries just one note: 'Has surface civilization entered a phase of self-purification?'"

At last, Gideon slowly lifted his head. His golden eyes reflected the restless fire of thought before him, a flame formed from psychic power.

He spoke quietly, his voice seeming to reach across the ages:

"When even your enemies begin quoting you, you are no longer a traitor."

"You are a prophet."

The Arctic. The Fortress of Solitude.

Even the bitter wind could not cool Superman's agitation.

Alone, he hovered before the enormous data crystal, examining the original data package for a protocol he had personally sealed away: the Ark Protocol.

Lines of cold logs scrolled across the screen.

His gaze finally stopped on the last line of a mission summary Tim Drake had left during his time as Red Robin.

"...If our mission is merely to watch them die one after another, then arrest the killer who will never truly be brought to judgment... I would rather abandon that mission."

Superman closed his eyes. Krypton's destruction, the choice he had made in Zod's death, the helplessness of saving people at the last second countless times without ever stopping the roots of tragedy—all of it surged like a flood, sweeping away the barrier he had built from hope.

His eyes snapped open. Their gentle blue was gone, replaced by burning, scarlet fury.

"We keep saying we must not kill..."

His voice echoed through the empty fortress, shaking with unprecedented violence.

"But how many chances to stop the next killing have we killed?!"

Boom!

He threw a punch. The supposedly indestructible crystal console exploded before him. Countless fragments of data scattered like fireflies, then vanished in midair.

Far away, a vast, bottomless fissure split a glacier that had stood frozen for ten thousand years, opening with his roar.

The temple on Themyscira.

Wonder Woman, Diana, removed every piece of her armor and knelt before the statue of her mother, Hippolyta.

The golden Lasso of Truth was wound tightly around her wrist, glowing with a gentle, honest light.

She closed her eyes and questioned her own soul. "Do my anger and hostility toward Gideon truly come from defending the justice of Olympus... or from fear of his philosophy of judgment?"

The lasso's golden light flared, then flickered violently, as though caught in a logical paradox.

At last, it gradually dimmed, becoming faint and indistinct.

It could not decide.

Diana opened her eyes. Her gaze was clear.

She slowly rose, unwound the lasso, and looked toward the endless horizon beyond the temple.

"Mother, perhaps real truth is not endless forgiveness." She spoke softly, as though addressing the statue and making a vow to herself. "Perhaps it is having the courage to bear the... weight behind every choice."

That night, the Amazon princess did not return to her quarters.

She quietly boarded a smuggling boat disguised as an ordinary fishing vessel and entered the cabin alone under the sailors' awed gazes.

No one saw the pendant she held close against her chest: a set of scales taken from the temple's oldest altar, a symbol of absolute balance and judgment.

The boat was heading for Gotham.

In the deepest reaches of the North Sea, the sunken monastery that had witnessed Gideon's fall and rebirth gave one last, low tremor.

The steles forming its main structure shattered piece by piece. Slowly, the entire building sank into a deeper, darker trench and disappeared forever.

Gideon hovered where the monastery's exit had been, watching the end of it all in silence.

He opened his hand. Resting in his palm was a token formed by the complete fusion of the Garden of the End's remaining thorns and the crystallized wax tears of Mary the angel: a black feather fossil that seemed to have weathered hundreds of millions of years.

"Sir." Morris's voice sounded one last time, rapidly reporting the final ripples rising around the world.

"Kara Danvers, Supergirl, has just publicly announced through the Daily Planet that she is giving up her identity as a hero. She has established an independent online investigative news outlet called... Black Feather Chronicles."

"John Stewart, one of Earth's guardians in the Green Lantern Corps, has refused to carry out the latest order to hunt you down, stating that he needs to reassess the mission's ethics."

"Even... Lex Luthor. From Stryker's Island Penitentiary, he has written a ten-thousand-character commentary by hand, calling you 'the only honest tyrant of our age.'"

Gideon closed his fist around the black feather fossil, turned, and drew on his broad black cloak, concealing every trace of light and divinity.

He stepped onto the blue bridge of energy fashioned from pure will, leading toward the surface.

He murmured, his voice quiet, yet seeming to deliver a final verdict to the entire world.

"They thought the judgment was over."

"But now..."

His figure vanished into the dark water above. Only a bone-chilling declaration remained, spreading through the deathly silence of the deep.

"...it is my turn to make them kneel."

The camera pulled rapidly back, past Gideon's vanishing figure and through ten thousand meters of deep water.

Across the vast seabed of the North Sea, countless enormous shadows shaped like black feathers were silently surging with the deep currents toward the coastlines of every continent.

Above the North Sea, a storm was gathering.