Cut Back to Constantine Connecting Dots He Shouldn't
John Constantine hated patterns.
Not because he couldn't see them—hell, seeing patterns was the curse—but because once you did, the universe had a nasty habit of noticing right back.
He sat in his cluttered flat, boots on the table, cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers. The wards were up. Triple-layered. Old magic, new sigils, and a few things he'd borrowed from places that technically didn't exist anymore. Even then, his skin crawled.
Something had changed.
Not loudly. Not explosively.
Quiet changes were always the worst.
The magical shockwave from weeks ago still lingered in his bones, like tinnitus for the soul. Everyone with even a drop of magic had felt it—sharp, vast, restrained by something deliberate. Constantine had chased it, of course. Followed ley lines, consulted spirits, bribed demons, annoyed angels.
Nothing.
No location. No name.
Until Fate's meeting.
The Last Stand.
Just the name alone made his cigarette ash itself.
Constantine leaned back, eyes narrowing. "Yeah… that's not a spell name," he muttered. "That's a bloody intention."
He flipped through his notes—scraps of paper, napkins, grimoires with duct tape spines.
A magic surge powerful enough to make gods pay attention
A protection field even Fate couldn't pierce
No moral alignment—neither Order nor Chaos
Triggered recently
Centered in the U.S.
And tied, somehow, to technology
Magic didn't like technology. Never had. When the two mixed this cleanly, it meant someone had forced them to cooperate.
Someone clever.
Someone dangerous.
His eyes drifted to another page. A different set of notes.
Devil Fruits.
The phrase still annoyed him.
Powers that didn't originate from Earth's magical frameworks. No demonic contracts. No divine sponsorship. No fae lineage. No astral signatures.
Yet they warped reality.
One had turned a half-Kryptonian into a walking tectonic event. Another had granted fire without invoking any elemental lord. And now—Cheshire.
Constantine exhaled smoke slowly.
"Three incidents," he said softly. "Three impossible power sources. Same year. Same damn planet."
His fingers tapped the table as his mind raced.
Who benefited?
Who planned?
Who was paranoid enough to hide something from gods, demons, and cosmic busybodies alike?
His thoughts, against his better judgment, drifted to one particular name.
Damian Wayne.
The kid was supposed to be a knife. Sharp. Dangerous. But still a knife.
This?
This was someone building contingencies for the end of everything.
Constantine stood abruptly, knocking over a chair. The wards flared as if warning him to stop thinking any further.
"Oh no you don't," he muttered. "You don't get to scare me from thinking."
He reached for a spell—nothing invasive, nothing that would alert the heavy hitters. Just a conceptual probe. A probability weave. Something to see who the universe kept circling back to whenever these anomalies occurred.
The magic hesitated.
Then recoiled.
Not violently. Not angrily.
Politely.
Like a locked door with a sign that read: Not Yet.
Constantine froze.
That… was new.
Magic didn't refuse him. It fought, it lied, it punished—but it didn't delay.
A chill ran down his spine.
"Right," he whispered. "So you're not just hidden. You're… scheduled."
He laughed then—soft, uneasy.
"Bloody hell, kid. What are you planning for?"
Somewhere far beyond his reach, gods watched. Villains schemed. Heroes trained.
And at the center of it all, unseen but undeniable, something waited.
The Last Stand wasn't a weapon.
It was a promise.
And John Constantine had just realized he was standing in the middle of a story that didn't intend to end well for anyone.