Sector 666. The site where the Manhunters had carried out their massacre. The birthplace of the Black Lantern Corps. She returned to this dead zone.
The descent of the Godhood of Death would unleash catastrophic destructive force. She had no idea how long it would take, and even if the process was brief and she reined it in immediately, the collateral would still annihilate several planets. Only this dead expanse of space would do.
She let her body unfurl completely, let her thoughts empty, and reached for every definition of death—searching for the one that resonated most deeply with who she was. Then she committed to it, absolute and unwavering.
A colossal tide of death-force began to converge. Scattered motes at first, then trickling streams, and finally an immeasurable river that defied all boundaries.
The river coiled through the void—surging, roaring, a pitch-black dragon that refused to be tamed. Thea would have to tame it with nothing but her own understanding and her own will.
While Thea made her final push, every other major power within the Sphere of the Gods received the warning simultaneously.
Some through professional divination. Some through omens. Some through celestial phenomena. But the message was the same across the board.
A God of Death was about to enter the world. Whether what followed would be a storm of blood and carnage or calm waters—no one could say.
New Genesis. Outside Highfather's chambers.
Highfather—the towering, powerfully built old man—stood gripping his staff, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
A wash of crimson light stained the far edge of the sky, shot through with churning black vapor. You didn't need to be a god of souls, shadow, or death to see it. Highfather could see it plainly: the dead, beyond all counting, flooding every corner of the multiverse—cheering, celebrating, preparing to welcome their fated sovereign.
As one of the multiverse's supreme combatants and the embodiment of justice, he could feel the entire multiverse trembling with anticipation at its own impending completion.
"You called for me, Your Majesty?" Metron—who spent his days parked in the Mobius Chair, whose actual combat ability was thoroughly mediocre yet who carried himself with more pomp than anyone—drifted to his side and spoke in a low voice.
Highfather gestured toward the distant sky. "What does this portend? Will the God of Knowledge grant me an answer?"
"War. Slaughter. A powerful being is about to ascend to a throne. A God of Death is being born." Metron paused. "As for the specifics—my apologies. I command all knowledge, yet no God of Death has ever been born in the multiverse. Without precedent, without record, the event lies outside my domain. Divination through magic isn't my specialty, either. Perhaps you should ask Goddess Thea."
Metron suspected his recent trips to Apokolips might have been a touch too frequent. Perhaps Highfather was displeased. So he kept his answer respectful. What he hadn't expected was the peculiar expression that settled over Highfather's face—leaving Metron baffled. What did I say wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?
Highfather had a theory forming. He kept it to himself. As the man in charge, there was no need to explain his thinking to subordinates. Maintaining an air of mystery was the way.
He had his suspicions. And his old friend Darkseid, across the divide, had formed his own conclusions.
Unlike Highfather—who could only judge by sight, and whose estimates grew increasingly unreliable as the gap between them narrowed—Darkseid had fought Thea personally. He knew her power level with precision. And the knowledge filled him with disbelief. The Godhood of Death, obtained just like that? Then what had all his years of scheming amounted to? Nothing?
Fury seared through him. He stormed down the corridor and kicked twenty hapless Parademons to death before finally stomping back to his quarters to brood over his future plans.
"What's gotten into His Majesty?" Steppenwolf whispered to DeSaad. They'd come to deliver a report, taken one look at Darkseid's murder-walk, and immediately retreated.
DeSaad was equally clueless. New Genesis could observe the celestial anomalies, and Apokolips could too, in theory—but Apokolips's default state involved earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and random seismic events killing hundreds at a time. They genuinely hadn't noticed anything different about today.
The two conferred at length, came up with nothing, and seeing Darkseid's doors firmly sealed, decided to come back another time.
Hell. Lucifer was absent. The remaining arch-demons—Trigon and his ilk—were off amusing themselves with their own diversions. They had no interest in a God of Death.
Heaven. Michael had likewise been gone for ages. The archangels could manage only a limited degree of vigilance. Thea hadn't prevented old Robert from ascending to Heaven, so relations between the two sides remained cordial for now.
The Dreaming. Nightmare. All of it the domain of the Endless's third sibling—Dream. With the second sibling, Death, still unseated and the third no better off, the realm remained its usual self: a surreal, kaleidoscopic wonderland of the absurd.
The Old Gods slumbering in the celestial planes knew nothing and cared about nothing happening in the outside world.
And in the underworlds—Hades, Osiris, Izanami, and assorted alien death deities each felt a subtle, strange premonition. A new boss, arriving to sit above them all? They briefly considered a joint defense, but they'd been at each other's throats for countless millennia. Trust? That word didn't exist between them.
Across the multiverse, a handful of powerful beings felt the same suffocating pressure. Diana stood alone in her office, her gaze piercing the distance, silently sending her blessing.
Madame Xanadu dragged Malcolm Merlyn over for a divination reading—but two cards in, Malcolm wandered off with a dopey grin on his face.
The Spectre and the Phantom Stranger couldn't have cared less. As for ordinary mortals, they remained wholly unaware that Thea was about to ascend another monumental step.
Haaah… haaah…
Thea had donned her White Lantern regalia and drawn the Holy Sword. Facing her, the black fog had coalesced into a grotesque, irregular mass—as large as the moon. Three heads jutted from it: one at the top, one at the waist, one at the tail. Two resembled human faces. The third was a blur, something bestial.
This was the Source. The origin of Death itself.
It had long since been corrupted. A staggering accumulation of stray thoughts and resentments had transformed it into something hovering between life and non-life.
Thea had originally planned to harness it as-is. Then she realized that was impossible. The impurities had to be purified first.
And in this multiverse, when it came to purifying death-energy, she was second to none.
White Lantern plus Holy Sword. Thea was fairly certain that if Nekron himself stood his ground instead of running, she could purify even him.
This Source was far weaker than Nekron. No developed state, no consciousness, barely any instinct, nothing but chaos.
The only problem was the energy cost. Fortunately, she had the White Lantern Power Battery in hand. Resolved to fight a war of attrition, she fully intended to find out just how much corruption the Source contained.
BOOM—! CRASH—! Explosions ripped through the void as the smoke-wreathed monstrosity was beaten back step by step—yet it refused to die, thrashing with mindless tenacity.
Thea had no choice but to hack away, one swing after another. Three full days of relentless cutting reduced the moon-sized horror to the size of a football. Only then did she call it done.
A normal Source would be fist-sized, colorless, faintly luminous, translucent. The one before her radiated pulses of black light, and somewhere inside it, a current of resentment seethed—the compressed fury of countless grudges, layered deep.