THE KILLING JOKE

Prologue

Shadows thrive in the darkest of places, where light dares not linger. In the deep valleys where the sun dips too low to reach, behind crumbling walls that tell forgotten stories, and in basements where terrible, unspeakable secrets fester. Shadows are no strangers to Gotham City—no, they belong here. In this city of perpetual twilight, where the skies are often choked with smoke and misery, shadows are more than an absence of light. They are the embodiment of fear, of greed, and of blood-soaked streets.

Gotham. A name that brings to mind endless rain, neon lights flickering over cold concrete, and the ever-present stench of despair. This is a city that doesn't sleep—it seethes. A city plagued by crime, corruption, and the kind of violence that stains the soul. Mob bosses rule the streets with iron fists, their influence as suffocating as the smog that clings to the skyline. Gangs prowl the alleyways, their knives gleaming like hungry eyes in the dark. Here, the rich live in gilded cages, towering above the squalor, but even they are not safe. One wrong turn, and the city's greed will strip them bare.

And still, life goes on. Stray cats roam the nights, slinking through gutters and under bridges, scrounging for scraps like the forgotten people who sleep in cardboard boxes. The rats, the lowlifes, the nobodies—they all crawl through the filth, trying to survive another day in Gotham's endless storm. Above them all looms Wayne Enterprises, the towering monolith of power that keeps the city's fragile heart beating. Built on the blood and vision of Thomas Wayne, a man who once dreamed of saving Gotham, that dream was shattered the night he and his wife were gunned down in cold blood, leaving behind their only son: Bruce Wayne.

For twenty-five long years, Bruce Wayne has carried the Wayne name like a heavy burden, propping up the city's decaying infrastructure with the weight of his fortune. To the world, he's a billionaire playboy, smiling for the cameras, attending galas, and throwing around money like confetti. But there's something off about him—something that lurks beneath his perfect smile and immaculate suits. The whispers say he's hiding something. A secret that no one dares to confront. What is Bruce Wayne, if not a man bound by his past? But that's a question for another time.

Then, there's me. Jack Napier. I didn't start out with dreams of grandeur or visions of power. I was just another face in the crowd—a small-time crook in a city drowning in them. But Gotham has a way of twisting you, reshaping your soul like clay until you don't even recognize yourself. Now, I lead a gang of gutter rats, the kind of lowlife scum who'd rob their own mothers for a shot at the big time. We're no better than the rest of the filth in this cesspool, all grasping for power, pride, and wealth. We're all just rats in a cage, gnawing at each other to reach the top, only to find there's nothing up there worth having.

But for all that, I was... ordinary once. Just a guy trying to get by, trying to make sense of a senseless world. I thought I had it figured out, thought I could beat the odds in a city designed to swallow men like me whole.

Little did I know, I was wrong. Everything was about to change. A new path was waiting for me—a path I never could have imagined, one filled with madness, chaos, and a twisted sense of purpose I never knew I needed.

Gotham has a way of reshaping you. Of pulling you into its shadows. And soon, I would become the shadow that haunts the city itself.