More advance chapters on P@treon.com/Saintbarbido.
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-One year later-
Damian had stopped being a boy among assassins.
At eighteen, he was now a storm cloaked in flesh. The Pale Demon- a nick name whispered in underworlds that had no gods, only devils and other demons.
Where once he had challengers seeking his position as the top dog among the League of Shadows' elites, now his fellow recruits watched him from behind lowered lashes, wary of his gaze.
He no longer fought his peers. Not because he didn't want to—but because there was no point. Sparring with them felt like shadowboxing. They barely lasted a minute before yielding or falling.
Even among the League's older disciples and veteran Assassins, only a handful could push him—Talia, of course, and the old masters like Sensei, who moved with such subtle control that their blows felt like the mountain itself shifting.
Still, none could best him when he got serious.
Boredom gnawed at him. Oh, how he missed sparring with Cassandra. But Shiva had her training all across the globe.
He came to Talia often now not to learn, but to request missions—harder ones.
Missions that didn't come with the word "training" attached. He wanted challenge. Wanted blood that fought back. So Talia obliged, though not without caution.
In her eyes, Damian was the League's future, but the League did not like flames that burned too fast. They liked their weapons sharp, not unpredictable.
But unpredictable was what Damian had become. And effective.
Within months, his missions escalated in scope. International arms dealers in Moldova, vanishing. A heroin cartel in the Indian Ocean competing with the League's business partners, swept into silence.
A righteous uncorrupt General in Eastern Europe, dead in their own guarded estates, their alarms untouched, their guards unaware until it was over.
He left behind no evidence. No trace.
Only the impression of something unstoppable.
Damian became a myth whispered between the League's clients. Some called him the Devil's Apprentice. Others, the Bloodless Blade. The Pale Demon was the one that stuck due to his wild white hair and ruthlessness.
Clients started asking for him personally.
Despite his battlelust tendecies, Damian was a professional through and through- able to carry out intricate assassinations according to the client's wishes.
If something went wrong, he adapted. Improvised. Sometimes he didn't need a weapon at all. His hands could break bones and pulp flesh like a hammer or decapitate a target with the sharpness of a blade.
Among the League's lower ranks, whispers turned to resentment as his status grew. Many called him arrogant. Unworthy. Undisciplined. Talia's illegitimate bastard(this particular rumor died out very quickly when the ones who spread it disaappeared without a trace). But they spoke only when he wasn't there.
They knew better.
The senior operatives had begun to adjust around him. He wasn't their superior by title—but they cleared the space for him like he was. Not out of loyalty, but acknowledgement of his skills and ability.
To Damian, his days were monotonous. Besides Ashura training there was nothing fun left to do.
So he waited. For something more challenging. Something impossible.
And when nothing came… he decided to make it come to him.
One day, he walked into the war room and requested a mission from Talia, and this time, she paused.
"There's a military black-ops base in Bialya in need of extermination. It's off-record. Dangerous just the way you like it. But you won't be going alone."
Damian's grin froze midway. He raised an annoyed eyebrow. "Who's the unnecessary babysitter this time?"
Throughout his missions, she'd been saddling him with Shadows-just in case something unexpected happened. Damian hated how they slowed him down.
Talia looked at him like she was measuring something. "Slade Wilson."
Damian didn't blink. But for the first time in months, his interest sharpened. Finally, someone worth sharing oxygen with.
He gave her a short nod and turned to leave.
"You're not invincible, Damian," Talia said softly as he reached the door. "Even shadows can burn."
He didn't look back. "Must be a weak flame then. I'm yet to feel the heat."
-0-
The Bialyan jungle was a suffocating beast. Its breath clung to the skin, hot and wet, buzzing with life and death.
Somewhere in the dense green, a covert U.S. black-ops camp lay hidden—deep, fortified, and crawling with ghosts who had long since abandoned the chain of command.
Damian crouched beside a twisted banyan root, still and low, camouflaged by mud and shadows. Beside him, Slade Wilson—Deathstroke—surveyed the camp through a scope, unmoving, silent.
The man radiated threat like heat off asphalt. He was a blade honed too many times, nearly invisible from wear but dangerous still.
No greetings. No pleasantries. They had met at the airfield. A nod was all that passed between them before the mission began.
Damian preferred it this way.
The camp below was heavily fortified. Triple perimeter, automated turrets, high-frequency disruptors. Beyond it, the compound proper: barracks, satellite uplinks, and an operations center running something so black it didn't even have a name.
Their target was the Commander—Colonel Vaught—ex-NSA, turned rogue, now selling American intel to the highest bidder.
"Three minutes," Slade said, adjusting the dial on his wrist detonator. "On my signal."
Damian didn't respond.
When the countdown hit zero, the forest came alive with fire.
Slade moved like thunder, loud and devastating. Damian—like lightning. Clean, surgical. The outer perimeter collapsed under the sudden assault.
Guards didn't even have time to shout. Damian was inside before the second wave of gunfire began.
Two soldiers rounded the corner. They didn't see him. They only felt the edge of his blade, silent and exact, before they fell.
He planted a small EMP device on the uplink station. It blinked twice—then fried every communications node in a pulse of quiet static. No outside calls. No backup.
Slade met him by the Commander's building, dragging a limp body behind him. "Took the security chief. Asked him to show me where the Colonel sleeps."
Damian kicked open the door.
Colonel Vaught wasn't asleep.
He was halfway out of his chair, pistol raised, when Damian flicked a pen-sized dart from his gauntlet into the man's throat. He convulsed. Slumped. Slade walked past Damian and ended it with a boot to the temple.
Five minutes.
That's all it took.
They set thermite charges on every critical system. Slade lit a cigar from the flames.
"Still got twenty minutes until the evac window," he said, watching smoke curl into the treetops. "Want to talk now, kid?"
Damian didn't answer immediately. He walked past the flames, past the rows of corpses, and sat on a metal supply crate. Finally, he looked at Slade.
"I was just bored," he said flatly. "Nothing here fought back."
Slade arched a brow. "That's your takeaway?"
Damian leaned back, expression unreadable. "This wasn't an op. It was a test. Babysitting. To see if I'm ready for the real missions."
Slade exhaled, chuckling once. "You're sharp. I'll give you that. But you think your boredom is a strength?"
"It's a sign I'm wasting time," Damian said. "You get it. You're bored too."
Slade looked at him. Long. Quiet. "No. I've just stopped needing excitement to feel alive."
"That's just another way of saying you're tired."
Slade's eye narrowed. "That mindset? It'll kill you. An assassin doesn't hunt for thrills. He eliminates targets. Nothing more. The moment you start enjoying the fight, the moment you 'need' it… that's when you fail the mission."
Damian tilted his head. "Maybe that's why you're a mercenary now. The League trained you, but you couldn't hold their discipline."
Slade's jaw tightened.
"Maybe I should try it," Damian went on. "Mercenary. Has a nice ring to it. Damian Wayne: freelance destroyer."
Slade didn't laugh. "Sometimes we're locked into the path fate carves for us."
Damian's eyes gleamed. Cold. Sharp.
"Coward's logic," he said, grinning. "An alpha doesn't walk fate's path. He guts it and paves his own."
The silence stretched.
Finally, Slade muttered, "I liked you better when you weren't talking."
Damian threw his head back and laughed.
The sound echoed across the blackened remains of the jungle camp as the extraction aircraft descended through the smoke.
By the time they stepped into the cabin, the wreckage behind them was already being swallowed by the forest.
Infinity Island was waiting.
Maybe his performance would show Talia that he was ready to be used how he wanted.
It took a few hours to arrive.
The extraction aircraft roared overhead, it's propellers cutting through the mist surrounding the Island.
Passing over the island mountains it slowed down above the League fortress, but Damian wasn't in it.
He was falling.
A hundred feet. Then eighty. Then sixty. The hard ground grew closer but he didn't panic. He embraced the drop, controlling his descent, his blue hoodie whipping around him.
At the last moment, his boots slammed into the ancient stone courtyard of the League's stronghold. A superhero landing— if he cared about such things.
Dust exploded outward in a red vapor, the force of his impact sending tremors across the ground.
The League's Shadow recruits, mid-training, stopped dead. Some scrambled backward, others stiffened, gripping their weapons tighter. The air felt different—charged, heavy.
The Alpha had arrived.
The new generation of Shadows had been trained to kill, but they all knew—none of them could take him.
At the center of the courtyard, Sensei stood, his arms crossed. The old master, weathered like the island itself, remained unshaken. His white beard barely stirred as the dust settled. He closed his eyes, exhaling slowly through his nose.
Then he shook his head—once, twice, three times.
A fine layer of dust sprayed from his robes.
Damian smirked.
"I didn't see you standing there, Sensei," he said, rolling his shoulders. "Unfortunate."
The silence was suffocating. The recruits dared not move.
Sensei's fingers twitched. His fury was volcanic, ready to erupt, his body stiff with barely-contained rage.
And then—
"Damian."
Talia's voice.
From the second-floor balcony of the main building, she leaned against the stone railing, looking down at him with an expression that was somewhere between fond and exasperated.
She was dressed in flowing green robes, elegant yet dangerous, the scent of lotus and steel lingering in the cold air.
Damian gave Sensei a pat on the head as he walked past him.
Sensei's face turned purple.
Before he could explode, Damian leapt—one bound, two bounds, and up. He landed lightly on the balcony, boots whispering against stone.
Talia sighed. "Must you antagonize the Masters?"
"They make it too easy."
She studied him, searching. "How was the mission?"
"Boring."
"Even with Deathstroke?"
"Especially with Deathstroke." Damian folded his arms. "The mission was beneath me, Sifū. Just like the last ten were."
Talia's fingers drummed against the railing. "You're becoming… unpopular among the shadows with your attitude."
Damian scoffed. "What do I care what weaklings think?"
Talia exhaled slowly. "Listen to me. Your power makes you arrogant, but arrogance leads to carelessness. If you don't show some restraint, you'll make enemies you don't need."
Damian raised a brow. "Are you telling me to be humble?"
"I'm telling you to be smart." Her voice softened. "Promise me, Damian. Be more… respectful. At least in appearances."
A pause. Then—
"Fine," he muttered. "I'll just ignore people I don't respect."
Talia smiled. "A compromise. Good enough."
Satisfied, Damian turned to leave.
Then—footsteps.
A shadow at the far end of the balcony. Slade Wilson.
He leaned against the pillar, arms crossed, his one eye fixed on Damian.
Talia glanced at him. "Say what you think of Damian in one word."
Slade didn't hesitate.
"Ready."
Damian stopped.
For the first time that night, he didn't have a smug response.
He looked down at his hands. No tremors. No doubt. He already knew it.
But with Deathstroke's endorsement...Talia would have no choice than to accept it.
Ready.
The word settled into his bones.
Talia and Slade watched as a grinning Damian leapt off the balcony, disappearing over the roofs of the stronghold.
Below, Sensei was still standing in the courtyard. Still fuming.
Talia sighed. "He is going to kill that boy one day."
Slade snorted. "I'd very much like to see him try."
The wind howled again, sharp as a blade. Infinity Island was watching. And Damian had never felt more at home.