Chapter Summaries

Schiller found a flaw in Hugo’s memory trap, but Dick noticed him before he could escape, and the loop collapsed into the Black Death Emperor’s domain. As the Emperor demanded Schiller submit to death, Schiller summoned the power of his ring and gray rings scattered through the darkness to seek their owners.

• Superman slowed the Power of Death returning to Schiller’s mental realm while Victor and Brainiac worried about his danger.
• Schiller realized Hugo had trapped him in a loop built around Novie’s repeated deaths and identified Dick’s unexplored room as a possible gap in the memory.
• Schiller tried to break through Dick’s door, but the next loop began and the people in the memory appeared as Living Corpses.
• Dick turned and met Schiller’s eyes, revealing that he had discovered Schiller, and the memory fragment collapsed into darkness.
• The Black Death Emperor appeared and demanded Schiller submit to death, but Schiller answered that his death was the beginning of another story.
• Schiller’s ring released gray mist, and several ancient-patterned gray rings flew into the darkness to seek their owners.

Jack demonstrated that the Joker Virus could counter the Power of Death, and Brainiac sent Jonathan Crane to study Jack’s blood. Victor then received a Grey Lantern ring, which appeared to make details from his writing come true.

• Jack showed Victor, Brainiac, and Jonathan that he could control a Living Corpse after infecting it with his blood.
• Jack explained that the Joker Virus could resist the Power of Death, and Brainiac arranged for Jonathan Crane to study a blood sample.
• Victor sealed Jonathan’s laboratory in Dense Ice and guarded it while waiting for Schiller.
• A gray ring appeared before Victor and identified him as a member of the Grey Lantern Corps with Dream Power to create stories.
• Victor realized his writing had changed reality when his freeze gun gained ammunition corresponding to a scene he had written about Schiller.

Constantine showed Victor the secret archive of the Rodriguez Pen Pal Club at Gotham University Library and explained how Schiller Rodriguez explored the depths of the stars and returned with forbidden knowledge. He revealed that the Grey Lantern ring let its bearer turn writing into reality through sound logic, vivid imagination, and emotional resonance, leaving Victor to consider its power.

• Victor followed Constantine through hidden rooms in Gotham University Library to the Rodriguez Pen Pal Club study.
• Constantine explained that Schiller Rodriguez had rebuilt the club, explored the depths of the stars, and returned with power and forbidden knowledge.
• Constantine showed Victor a notebook of club members’ names and addresses, saying one of them had likely received a ring and needed to be contacted.
• Victor read an old manuscript connecting Schiller to the Outer God Nameless Mist and to the power of making thoughts real.
• Constantine explained that the Grey Lantern ring transformed writing into reality when its logic, imagination, and emotional resonance drew readers into the Dream.

Victor and Constantine planned to use the Gray Lantern and stories written by ring bearers to change the Eternal Night and resist the mastermind who extinguished the sun. Victor stayed in a protected study to write The Darkest Night, ending the chapter as he began designing its climactic confrontation between Rodriguez and Hugo Strange.

• Constantine explained that coordinated stories told from many perspectives could make lies seem real, and Victor concluded they needed to recruit people who might obtain rings.
• Constantine described how observers differed from magicians and said his connection to mystical entities was a curse; Victor decided they would contact potential ring bearers through the Pen Pal Club.
• Victor and Constantine agreed that each writer could create a separate story about resistance to the Eternal Night, and Constantine said Zatanna would help protect the room and deliver their letters.
• Zatanna arrived, brightened the study with magical candles, and collected the letters; Victor signed his as Dr. Watson.
• Victor outlined The Darkest Night, planning for Rodriguez to investigate crimes before confronting Hugo Strange, and began considering how to make their final battle dramatic and logical.

Victor struggled to write a confrontation between Hugo and Schiller, especially how Novie might understand Bruce and forgive him. Schiller returned and revealed that Novie had never hated Bruce; she had understood that he tried to save her and only wanted to thank him.

• Rodriguez identified the cliffside restaurant as the likely location of Moriarty's meeting with an old friend, and he and Fris drove there.
• Victor asked Brainiac for help constructing riddles and wrote a confrontation in which Hugo and Schiller debated whether manipulation came from hatred or love.
• Victor consulted Bruce about how Schiller could help Novie understand Bruce, and Bruce suggested showing her Schiller's poor psychoanalytic skills.
• Victor returned to Gotham University after receiving Schiller's message and told him he was stuck on the novel's ending.
• Schiller explained that Hugo had only made Novie hate him, and that Novie had understood Bruce was trying to save her and wanted to thank him.

Schiller and Victor discussed Novie’s final thoughts and revised their story so she saved herself by helping defeat Hugo Strange, then considered how to make Hugo’s fall fatal. Seven days before the sun went out, Schiller taught a class and promised longer activity-room hours if students wrote essays about the Bludhaven mass hysteria incident.

• Novie realized Bruce had tried to save her and died before she could thank him.
• Victor decided Novie would defeat Hugo by charging him off a cliff, while Rodriguez caught her; he and Schiller discussed making Hugo die in the fall.
• Schiller lectured about cognitive perception, and Jena asked him to keep the activity room open all day so she could dance with Barry.
• Schiller refused to extend the room hours all day but offered three extra hours if he selected five good essays about the Bludhaven incident.

Barry and Dick investigated a mass hysteria case in Bludhaven that seemed connected to a death in which a woman’s brain had turned to liquid. Amanda sought Constantine’s advice and learned that Gotham University Library’s restricted second floor might hold clues, but its former Administrator, Jason Todd, was no longer in the position.

• Barry told Jena that Bludhaven residents were terrified of looking out their windows, and Dick returned from Krypton to discuss the case.
• Barry and Jena went to the docks, where they found Mrs. Jerryta dead with her eyes removed and her brain transformed into a metallic-looking liquid.
• Jena said Mrs. Jerryta had looked out the window, linking the death to the Bludhaven residents’ warning.
• Amanda learned of the death in Forest Park and met Constantine, who directed her to occult notes in Gotham University Library.
• Constantine warned Amanda that the library’s second floor was magically protected and that only the Administrator might know how to enter.
• Amanda asked Brainiac to identify the library’s Administrator and learned that the position was vacant, though Jason Todd had held it previously.

Amanda Waller sought access to the second floor of Gotham University Library to investigate occult murders, while Jason Todd and Dr. Sohip linked outbreaks of madness across several countries to an unknown entity. Schiller examined a contaminated victim and decided to summon Jack to inspect a dangerous letter.

• Amanda Waller asked Shivan how to enter the library’s second floor, and he gave her official employment papers while warning that mages could not safely investigate the case.
• Amanda tried to reach the second floor during the day but found herself returned to the first floor, then waited until nightfall and approached the stairs again.
• Jason Todd met Dr. Sohip in Oxford, learned that a Windsor Castle servant’s suicide might be connected to an evil god, and showed him a report about mass hysteria in Bludhaven.
• At Oblivion Bar, Jim and Gorilla Detective concluded that the madness did not appear to be an entity collecting souls and suspected that people had provoked a mysterious power.
• Barry and Brainiac found an 1873 letter among a victim’s belongings, and Schiller examined her corpse and identified the warning not to look out the window as a possible source of danger.
• Schiller asked Jack to come inspect the letter, believing Jack could withstand the madness it might cause.

Jack and Jason traced the contaminated letters to a threat connected to the Atlantic Ocean, while Amanda found an occult globe and notes that pointed toward an eclipse and an ancient event. The investigation left Amanda comparing the notes’ date with a modern celestial occurrence.

• Jack opened the victim’s letter and concluded that its writer had been contaminated before writing it, while its instructions pointed toward the Atlantic Ocean.
• Barry confirmed that victims in America had looked east and a victim in Austria had looked west, leading Schiller to suspect the Atlantic Ocean.
• Jason and Jim found that letters from victims across the world pointed toward Gotham, but Jason chose to investigate the royal family’s problem at the College of All Souls.
• Amanda used a mysterious globe to illuminate a historical scroll, suffered a sharp headache, and brought the notes to Constantine for help deciphering them.
• Brainiac extracted references to 1873, a total solar eclipse, The Day of Etching, the ocean, and eternal night, and Amanda connected the eclipse clue to an event in 1997.

Jason found a concealed message warning of an event tied to a total solar eclipse, while Constantine and Zatanna traced a threat linked to The Hidden Ones. Constantine recovered pages that attacked him through the library windows, and he suspected the Hidden Ones had infiltrated the library.

• Jason used his intuition and protective glasses to find a hidden bookmark in the College of All Souls library, then decoded its message as a warning about a total solar eclipse and the Brown People.
• Jason, Dr. Sohip, Jim, and Brainiac divided up the investigation, with Jason assigned to research eclipses and Brainiac to identify who had left the bookmark.
• Constantine received letters identifying The Hidden Ones as a possible threat and learned that a book could provide a specific target.
• Constantine and Zatanna searched the Gotham University Library for an appendix to a famous tome, and pages unexpectedly came to Constantine.
• Zatanna sealed the library windows after Constantine began reacting to them, and Constantine concluded that the Hidden Ones had infiltrated the library.

Constantine investigated a cursed mask and discovered that the Hidden Ones had repeatedly brought an Outer God to Earth, causing witnesses to claw out their eyes. Brainiac traced the sightings to a cliff on Gotham’s coast, where Constantine and the others went to investigate.

• Constantine used a ritual to decipher the manuscript, learned the words “death, darkness, unseeable,” and received a Native American-style mask.
• A grocery store boss explained that the mask depicted a death god beneath the ocean and that looking upon it could burn out a person’s eyes.
• Amanda brought Constantine decoded words about a total solar eclipse, and Constantine realized the 1873 event had been the Outer God’s arrival.
• Schiller tested a person from the Bludhaven apartment and confirmed that the residents had looked out their window; he ordered Barry to freeze them and Brainiac to prepare treatment.
• Brainiac found over one hundred and thirty historical reports of people seeing the sky go dark, and his map placed the sightings’ focal point at a cliff on Gotham’s coast.

Constantine, Victor, and Jason compared their manuscripts, each describing the investigation and their encounters with occult forces from different perspectives. Their accounts revealed that The Hidden Ones had stolen The Book of Eod from Gotham University Library, and Jason had set out to recover it.

• Constantine criticized Victor’s manuscript for its lengthy buildup and psychological narration, while Victor defended his writing about Rodriguez and the Mysterious People.
• Jason pointed out that Victor’s account introduced the cloaked figures without explaining who they were, and Victor claimed later passages connected the shooting to occult research.
• Jason read his diary entry about a former wizard visiting the library and discussing a Greek copy of a cursed book hidden in the British Museum.
• Jason recalled that a huge bluish-black hand had stolen The Book of Eod from the library after nightfall.
• Jason concluded that The Hidden Ones had taken the book and resolved to retrieve it with his shotgun.

Schiller and the investigation team failed to stop a ritual whose bells triggered the Day of Etching and summoned Kth'ulhu. Constantine then explained his plan to alter reality so a Great Old One’s mystical darkness would shield the sun from the mastermind who intended to extinguish it, leaving the story with the group preparing to set the plan in motion.

• Schiller and the others reached the cliff, where robed cultists began chanting from the Book of Ibo, and the team fought them but failed to stop their ritual.
• The bells of Gotham Cathedral rang, causing Constantine to collapse and turn toward the ocean as a vast whirlpool and shadow appeared and the Day of Etching began.
• The account revealed that a masked witness saw Kth'ulhu rise beneath the sea while a priest chanted Its name.
• In the study, Victor, Jason, and Constantine discussed rewriting the disaster as a mystical eclipse caused by Kth'ulhu rather than the mastermind physically extinguishing the sun.
• Constantine explained that Kth'ulhu’s rules could shield the sun from the mastermind’s Power of Death, then declared it was time to challenge the powers in the stars.

John Constantine discussed his popular horror novel and the real people behind recent books during a televised interview, while Schiller learned that students planned to stage a play based on a story about him. Schiller reconsidered refusing to help after imagining how Victor might portray him.

• John Constantine told a television host that darkness inspired his new book, The Mystery of Ra, and praised Jason Todd's The Gotham University Library Administrator's Diary.
• Constantine discussed Dr. Fris's The Adventures of Rodriguez, warned viewers not to investigate the real professor behind its Psychoanalytic Method, and said Brainiac had removed information about him from the internet.
• Jena asked Schiller to guide the Christmas play rehearsal for 'Duel on the Cliff,' but Schiller refused and told her to ask Professor Freeze instead.
• Jena's suggestion made Schiller imagine Victor's exaggerated portrayal of him and possible adaptations, so he decided he could no longer let the stories continue unchecked.

Schiller redirected attention from himself by rewriting the coming eternal night as a mystical solar eclipse caused by Kth'ulhu, while the Black Death Emperor struggled to interfere with the stars. In Gotham, Billy and the other children settled a schoolyard fight peacefully, and Schiller asked why the boy who started it had a toothache.

• Schiller reasoned that his novels had drawn unwanted attention from psychopaths worldwide and used Gray Lantern's history rewrite to make Kth'ulhu's arrival cause a mystical total solar eclipse instead of the sun's extinction.
• Schiller visited Brand at Arkham Asylum and learned that the Black Death Emperor was trying to use the Power of Death to interfere with the stars, but could not reach them through brute force.
• Victor told Schiller that Billy had fought a classmate after the boy knocked Jenny down and Aisha pushed him, with the children and their parents later apologizing to one another.
• Schiller and Victor arrived after the dispute in the East District had been settled, and Schiller asked why the other boy had been suffering from a toothache.

Schiller investigated Ryder’s unexplained toothache and traced it to the influence of Kth'ulhu amid the darkness caused by the total solar eclipse. He discovered Hugo Strange trapped in Kth'ulhu’s whirlpool, where the Black Death Emperor was using him to probe the Great Old One.

• Nora and Schiller noticed that Billy’s outburst and Ryder’s toothache did not match the children’s medical records, so Victor asked Brainiac to search for similar cases.
• Schiller and Victor visited Ryder’s family, where Schiller hypnotized Ryder and relieved his pain, then urged Brainiac to tell residents to draw their curtains during the eclipse.
• Brainiac reported that people were disappearing in the East District, and Schiller decided to investigate the cliff alone while Victor stayed behind.
• Schiller looked into the black whirlpool and saw Hugo Strange caught between the Black Death Emperor and Kth'ulhu, with the Black Death Emperor using Hugo to uncover the Great Old One’s secrets.

Schiller found Hugo transformed and the Black Death Emperor’s drained Living Corpses beneath the cliff, then learned from Jonathan that a stabilized Joker Virus solution could restore inactive cells. He injected the corpses, while Hugo’s image inspired a new generation of investigators to organize around the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods.

• Schiller saw Hugo’s body warped by Kth'ulhu and photographed the transformed figure.
• Schiller found the Living Corpses the Black Death Emperor had drained and learned they remained revived but inactive.
• Schiller visited Jonathan, who explained the Joker Virus’s life-and-death properties and gave him syringes of a stable solution.
• Schiller returned and injected the Living Corpses with the solution.
• Hugo’s image spread among psychopaths, who formed a new Rodriguez Pen Pal Club focused on the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods.

Jason returned to Gotham and reunited with Harley, who sought a strange book connected to the Blood Tide; after an armed attacker struck the library, Jason agreed to help her investigate. Meanwhile, Schiller tested the Joker Virus on corpses and discovered a living assassin among them, whom he identified as Jane Doe.

• Harley visited Jason at the Gotham University Library and asked him to find the strangest book there, explaining that she was investigating the Blood Tide.
• Jason recognized that Harley’s interest involved a dangerous case, and an attacker with a crossbow fell through the library window before he could shoot Jason.
• Jason found Harley a book by instinct, and she invited him to meet her friend, Ms. Unknown.
• Schiller watched the injected corpses begin to twitch, then dodged an attack from a short-haired woman who demanded to know what he had injected her with.
• Schiller used Gray Mist to remove as much Joker Virus as he could from the woman, and she identified herself as Jane Doe.

Schiller enlisted Jane Doe to help draw occultists and investigators toward the Blood Tide site in Gotham, while Constantine warned that the gathering would become a trap for those seeking forbidden knowledge. Secret forces began converging on the East District cliffs, where the danger awaited them.

• Jane Doe revealed that she had come to the cliffs seeking the Blood Tide, and Schiller recruited her to contact others.
• Constantine and Zatanna prepared letters to lure Constantine's old occult associates toward the case.
• Shivan wrote a letter and left with it in a sphere of light.
• Jane Doe met Harley Quinn and Jason, reviewed records linking the Blood Tide to an earlier murder, and agreed to gather more people.
• Constantine explained to Zatanna that the Blood Tide was a trap aimed at greedy occultists, while an old man accepted a chance to help his endangered agent.
• Secret forces began gathering at the cliffs along Gotham's East District coastline.

Blood Tide grew into a living crimson tsunami as the Black Death Emperor tried to resurrect Hugo and escape the sealed coast. Gordon, Harley, Jason, Schiller, and Brainiac scrambled to contain the disaster, but Schiller spotted another enormous creature approaching.

• Impulsive occultists died near the cliff and became part of Blood Tide, which grew as more teams arrived and their madness animated the Joker-virus-infected corpses.
• Harley's prepared team reached the cliff while Brainiac sealed the area and intercepted the Living Corpses the Black Death Emperor tried to summon for Death power.
• The Black Death Emperor empowered the coastal Living Corpses and sent them to break the blockade, but they ignored his orders and began looking for Batman.
• The Black Death Emperor used his remaining Death power to resurrect the monstrous Hugo, unaware that Hugo had become something more than himself.
• Gordon saw Blood Tide descend toward the city and called Schiller, while Harley and Jason planned to enlist the monster beneath Schiller's lake to defend Gotham.
• Schiller and Brainiac arranged to draw Blood Tide north toward Superman and sent Novie to Professor Freeze, but Schiller spotted another enormous creature.