Who Writes History?

The world fell silent, as though waiting for a verdict.

At the United Broadcast Network's headquarters in New York, spotlights cut through the gloom like blades, flooding the debate platform at the studio's center with light.

Across the enormous LED screen, a blood-red question seared itself into every viewer's sight: "Do We Still Need Heroes?"

The moderator, Vivian Lewis, a United Nations observer known for her incisive questions and neutrality, wore a grave expression.

She dispensed with a lengthy introduction and pressed play.

Morris had edited the debate between Gideon and Diana in the Mirror Abyss down to its sharpest, most devastating thirty seconds.

"...You can't persuade me because I'm telling the truth." Gideon's cold voice reached hundreds of millions through more than ten thousand channels worldwide.

The image froze. Vivian surveyed the panel: a renowned sociologist, a retired general, and even a former mob boss Gideon himself had "pardoned."

The audience below them was taut with emotion, like a violin string about to snap.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Vivian said, her voice clear and firm, "Gideon—the master of Gotham's Court of Shadows—has put a question to us. When heroes choose mercy again and again, when the Joker's laughter can always greet another dawn, when the monsters they spare turn around and slaughter more innocents... are we the price that must be paid?"

Before her words had faded, a middle-aged woman in the back row shot to her feet.

Tears streaked her face. She clutched a faded Batman poster tightly in both hands.

Her voice was hoarse with grief. "The price? My daughter was the price!"

An uproar swept the studio, and every camera swung toward her.

"He saved Gotham ten times—a hundred times! But the day after he sent that madman back to Arkham yet again, a copycat of that madman... tore my daughter apart! Who saved her? Who will give her justice?"

Trembling, she tore the poster that had once meant hope and protection in two before the eyes of the world.

Rip.

It sounded less like paper tearing than a sacred symbol collapsing in countless hearts.

The live comment feed flooded instantly. The servers went down for a time.

Across social media, the phrase "Edict of the Stricken Heart" spread like a virus and topped global trends within an hour.

It was no longer merely one of Gideon's laws. It had become a movement, the long-suppressed collective rebellion against the "no-kill rule."

At the same time, in the abandoned Central subway station on Gotham's East Side.

The station had long served as a gathering place for the homeless and young people on the margins.

Tonight, however, it was as solemn as an underground cathedral.

Across its cold walls, the complete text of The New Law had been written neatly in spray paint of every color.

Gray Tongue stood at the center of the crowd. He looked as disheveled as ever, but his eyes shone with startling intensity.

He had no amplification, yet his rough voice carried clearly across the entire platform.

"They tell you there's a god in heaven who loves humanity. They tell you there are heroes on earth who protect justice." Gray Tongue gave a derisive laugh and pointed at the painted wall. "What they never tell you is that heaven once had an angel whose commitment to justice was so strong that the god he worshiped broke his wings and cast him out."

He paused, looking over the young, bewildered faces.

"Now they call him a demon, a tyrant. Why? Because he dares to do what even gods won't do. He dares to kill those the heroes refuse to kill! He hasn't come begging for your faith. He's come to tell you that your anger is justified, your pain is real, and you have the right to demand a clean world without all the noise!"

Someone in the crowd quietly raised a phone and recorded the whole speech.

The video went online under a stark title: The Misunderstood Savior.

In the Court of Shadows' airborne fortress, Morris studied the data and reported calmly, "Sir, Gray Tongue's sermon is projected to reach two hundred million unique IP addresses within seventy-two hours. We also intercepted an internal transmission from Metropolis's Watchtower. Superman's office is circulating a document entitled Emergency Internal Assessment of Gideon's Threat Level and Social Impact."

On Gotham's sea cliff, Gideon turned a black feather between his fingers.

An unsigned letter lay on the stone table before him. It was written on Themyscira's distinctive moonlight papyrus, with a single line embossed in alchemical gold: "You won the debate, but you did not win the truth."

Diana's handwriting. It carried a trace of resentment, a trace of doubt, and the last of her pride.

A faint, cold smile touched Gideon's mouth.

He reduced the letter to drifting ash and took up the last obsidian tablet specially prepared for The New Law.

Silent black flame rose from his fingertip and branded new divine writing into the stone with the precision of a carving knife:

The New Law: Preview of the Final Chapter.

"History is written by the victors. And I am moving toward the end where I will put a full stop to this war."

He did not make the tablet public as he usually did. He walked to the cliff's edge and let it fall into the bottomless sea, where a black whirlpool churned.

It was written for the gods who thought they could write history, not for mortals.

Days later, a deep-sea research submarine working near the Mariana Trench detected an anomalous heat source on its sonar.

Its mechanical arm brought up that same obsidian tablet.

To the scientists' horror, the tablet grew warmer rather than cooling after it left the water, "as if it were alive, slowly generating heat, as if it were growing."

The world's leading archaeologists and geologists met overnight. Their conclusion left the scientific community speechless: "The material of this tablet... belongs to no known civilization on Earth. Its structure resembles a kind of... solidified crystal of information."

Themyscira.

Diana climbed alone to Wish Cliff, the highest point on the island.

The evening wind lifted her hair. The distant horizon glowed blood-red with sunset.

She held the Lasso of Truth tight in her hand. It had once been the source of her strength and conviction.

Now the cord, still flowing with sacred light, felt heavier than ever.

She tried to invoke an oracle and speak to the gods, but could not bring herself to utter the prayer.

Gideon's words repeated in her mind like a curse.

"When you raise a blade and choose to end a guilty life, you cease to be a comforter of victims' families. You become the judge yourself."

All her life, she had followed the gods' will and played the protector.

Only now did she painfully realize how long she had been running away.

She had avoided defining guilt, accepting responsibility for judgment, and becoming the executioner who would dirty her own hands.

Slowly, she loosened her grip.

The golden Lasso of Truth fell silently onto the sand, its light dim, like a snake that had lost its soul.

"Perhaps..." Diana watched the sun sink into a sea of red. Her whisper seemed addressed both to herself and to the whole Olympian pantheon. "Perhaps gods should never have been the ones to define true justice."

That night, strange phenomena erupted simultaneously across the world.

Blood-red streaks seeped from the saints' eyes in the Sistine Chapel's Last Judgment fresco. Every wanted notice on the bulletin board at Gotham Police headquarters was suddenly covered with the black words "Edict of the Stricken Heart." In the pupils of a statue symbolizing world peace in the lobby of the United Nations in New York, countless black feathers could be seen drifting down.

"Sir," Morris said over the communicator, unable to conceal his astonishment, "our 'information virus' has breached every physical firewall and magical barrier. It's entering... the core belief system of humanity's collective subconscious."

On the sea cliff, Gideon gazed at the star-filled sky. Gotham's crime and clamor surged below without shaking him.

He answered softly, as if addressing ancient beings among those distant stars:

"You can burn every history book. You can close every road to the truth. You can repeat a lie a thousand times..."

"But someone will always wake up."

He slowly raised his right hand. Silent black flame that swallowed every ray of light revolved and gathered in his palm like a cold star about to be born.

The great war called Prelude to Apokolips had begun.

The storm's clamor would eventually fade. But what truly changed the world was often not deafening thunder; it was the first spark quietly kindled in the depths of a city after a long night.