BATMAN: ROUTINE

Gotham runs on routine.

Crimes happen. Reports are filed. Bodies are removed before the city wakes up. By the time the sun rises, everything looks normal again.

Detective Renee Montoya knows the pattern. One murder becomes another. A missing person turns into paperwork. Gotham has always survived by treating violence as background noise.

But some crimes don’t want to be forgotten.

A man is found dead with a mark carved into his skin—precise, deliberate. Days later, a woman goes missing, yet someone with her face keeps showing up to work. Victims of unrelated cases begin to overlap in ways the evidence can’t explain, and the word coincidence starts to feel like an excuse.

As the body count grows, the city whispers about a figure in the shadows—something the police turn to only after patterns emerge and hope runs out. But even legends arrive too late when evil isn’t spectacular… just practiced.

Because in Gotham, the most terrifying crimes aren’t committed for attention.
They’re committed because it’s time.

And by the time Batman notices, the routine is already established.