I--- Batman Caballero De La Noche -

"Your ancestors," he says, "believed the bat was the Señor de la Noche , the guide of lost souls. You have lost yours."

And high above, the shadow spreads its capa one last time and disappears into the rising sun, not as a bat, but as a knight who has finished his vigil.

The rain doesn’t fall; it sweats from cracked, sun-bleached adobe walls. The gargoyles are not stone, but weathered terracotta saints, weeping rust. This is Gotham del Sur , a barrio sprawling beneath the shadow of a monolithic, abandoned Mission bell tower. And in this Gotham, the knight wears a zarape over his armor. i--- Batman Caballero De La Noche

His name is . Not the fictional Zorro of old California, but his great-great-grandson, who watched his father—a reform-minded alcalde —gunned down in the zócalo by the corrupt Federales of the Junta de los Buitres (The Vulture Council). The last thing Diego saw before the blindfold was the shadow of a mission bat flitting across the moon. He took that shadow as his oath.

"Mercy," Diego repeats, his voice quiet now. "My father asked for mercy. You gave him a bullet." "Your ancestors," he says, "believed the bat was

He doesn’t kill El Sacerdote. That’s not the rule. Instead, he produces a small branding iron, heated by the same flame that separated the luchadors. The emblem: a bat.

" Buenas noches, buitres, " he growls, a voice like grinding gravel and rosary beads. The gargoyles are not stone, but weathered terracotta

"Mercy," the priest whispers.

He presses it to the back of the priest’s right hand. The flesh hisses.

"Now every time you pray to your vulture," Batman says, "you will see who truly watches over this noche ."

A cloud of vaporized mescal and adrenaline ignites from his gauntlet’s flint striker. A wall of blue flame erupts, separating Los Espectros. In the chaos, the látigo sings. It wraps the jaguar-claw, twists, cracks the cybernetic wrist. The acid-spitter gets his own throat plugged with a Batarang shaped like a calavera —a sugar skull.