Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE

The battlefield was silent.
Not the kind of silence that comes from peace but the kind left behind when even echoes are too tired to return.

Shards of what was once the sky drifted like pale ash. A sun, dim and pale, struggled to shine through the cracks of a mended universe.

On a small stretch of scorched earth, Billy Batson knelt in the mud, both hands gripping a broken wooden beam as he helped raise what would become a roof. He wasn’t Shazam anymore. No lightning in his veins, no godly weight in his fists. Just an eighteen-year-old with blistered palms, a torn hoodie, and eyes that had seen eternity burn.

Children ran past him, barefoot and laughing, carrying stones for the walls. He smiled faintly. It felt… right.

A soft shadow fell over him.
Diana stood there, the godly glow long gone. Lines now traced her face, not marks of weakness, but of every battle she’d survived. She carried no sword. No lasso. Just a small basket of bread and chocolate sauce she had baked herself.

“You work too much Bill,” she said quietly, handing him a piece.

Billy took it with a grin that was more tired than joyful. “Says the immortal… oh, wait.”

Diana chuckled, shaking her head. “Brat. You're 20, act your age.”

They ate in silence for a moment, watching the Alaskan villagers rebuild their homes. Overhead, the sky was clearing. A slow, stubborn blue pushing away the shadows. But they both knew that no one could ever rebuild everything they’d lost.

“You think they’d be proud?” Billy asked suddenly.

Diana looked at him for a long moment. Then she placed a hand on his shoulder, not the gesture of a warrior, but of family. “They didn’t die so we’d stand here and wonder. They died so we’d keep going. So… we will.”

In the far distance, the wind carried the faintest rumble of thunder.
Billy glanced up, almost expecting a bolt of lightning. But none came.

And for the first time… that was okay.

Chapter Text

Space burns differently than fire.

It isn’t orange, it doesn’t flicker. It swallows. Whole, and without mercy.

One heartbeat, the Central Power Battery of Oa was the green sun of the universe — the next, it was a collapsing emerald nova, splitting reality into ribbons of light and shadow. The Guardians, once robed in untouchable wisdom, writhed in shapes that no Lantern — human or alien — could even name anymore. Their eyes were pits of an ancient hunger, their voices not words, but the sound of all hope being scraped away.

Hal Jordan didn’t flinch when he saw them fall. He’d stopped flinching hours ago.

The air or whatever counted as air here, was heavy with green motes, fragments of willpower burning themselves out in the void. Around him, Lantern rings drifted, lifeless, their former bearers erased in Oa’s death throes.

His ring pulsed weakly.

WARNING. POWER LEVEL CRITICAL.

Hal’s jaw tightened.

“Yeah,” he muttered, voice rough “I'm critical too bitch.”

Then the Central Power Battery screamed. That was the only word for it — a scream of dying energy, a death cry that reached through matter and mind alike. Hal didn’t think. He just moved, flying into the heart of the emerald detonation.

The light tore at him and then it chose him.

There was no construct, no shield. Just raw willpower surging into his veins, tearing muscle and memory apart. His armor shattered, replaced by something brighter, sharper, almost alive. And then, Oa was gone, atomized into a green storm that burned away into nothing.

When Hal opened his eyes, he wasn’t holding a ring anymore. The energy was him.

---

Elsewhere, in the far and forgotten reaches, an orange flare lit the void like a dying star.

Larfleeze — Agent Orange, sole maniac and murderer of his Corps stood amid the ruins of his great hoarded treasures. The Great Darkness had touched even his avarice, turning it from greedy hunger into endless void. But he would not be consumed.

The Orange Central Battery shuddered, cracking under the pressure of the universe’s end. Larfleeze did what came naturally. He took.

The central battery’s final detonation roared through him, filling every greedy atom of his being with molten, desperate power. His body swelled, armor crystallizing into jagged orange facets. For the first time in eons, his voice was not a snarl, but a laugh — wild and terrible.

---

Atrocitus was not so lucky. His fury burned brighter than the dying suns around him, but rage could not shield him from the collapse. The Red Central Battery fractured like bone under a hammer, bleeding rage-energy into space in violent pulses. Three sectors burned instantly, their skies turning crimson before winking out entirely.

Guy Gardner, red ring screaming on his finger, made a choice that would kill him if it failed.

He flew straight into the heart of the blast, shoving the energy into himself the way Hal had done with green. His screams were half agony, half defiance. When it was over, the red light was his heartbeat, and Atrocitus was nothing more than dust adrift in an empty sector.

---

Carol Ferris’s sapphire light dimmed. The Star Sapphire Corps had already been erased, their Central Battery shattered by tendrils of the Great Darkness. Love had no foothold here. But Carol did not yield. She pressed her hands into the dying core, feeling every story, every bond, every promise it had ever held. And then she pulled it into herself.

In the span of an hour, the Emotional Spectrum had been gutted.

Green. Orange. Red. Violet.

Blue and Indigo — long since fallen.

Yellow, destroyed with Sinestro’s last breath.

Only the wielders who had become their lights remained. No Corps. No central power. No balance.

---

Then there was Billy Batson.

He stood on the deck of an evacuation transport, holding a little girl’s hand as she tried not to cry. The ship shuddered under weapons fire from something too far away to see, but close enough to feel in his bones.

The word SHAZAM sat heavy in his throat.

He’d tried to say it twice already today. Both times, nothing came. No lightning. No transformation. Just Billy — breathless, bruised, eighteen, and terrified.

The gods had abandoned him. Or maybe they couldn’t hear him anymore.

Didn’t matter.

He knelt down to the girl’s level, forcing a smile. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She didn’t believe him.

Neither did he. Not even for a mere second.

---

Far above, a red & blue blur carved across the darkness. Superman tore through an enemy fleet, ships splintering in his wake like wet paper. But for every one he destroyed, three more blinked into existence. Their weapons didn’t just fire, they erased their targets straight out of existence. Each hit shaved pieces of him away, not in blood, but in being.

Still, he didn’t slow.

Not while there were lives left to save.

Through the comms, Batman’s voice crackled.

“Clark. Pull back.”

“No.” Superman’s tone left no room for argument. “Not yet.”

---

On Earth’s moon, the Justice League’s last operational base flickered under failing power grids. Batman sat in the Mobius Chair, eyes glowing with cold circuitry. He didn’t look up as Zatanna approached, Fate’s helmet under one arm.

“You saw it too,” she said.

“I see everything,” Batman replied. His voice was flat, but there was something brittle under it. “And I know how this ends.”

“Then tell me.”

He didn’t. He won't. 

---

Somewhere beyond space, in the Rock of Eternity, the Wizard stirred. His staff trembled in his hand, sensing the death of lights across the universe. A voice — ancient, calm, and infinite — brushed against his mind.

 “The hour approaches.”

The Wizard frowned. “Not yet.”

 “You swore, Mamaragan. When existence itself lay dying, you would call us.”

The Wizard’s grip tightened on his staff. “We’re not there. Not yet.”

"As you must Wizard but we fear the what if"

But the voice, the voice of Krishna, Ymir and the forgotten Titans supposedly culled by Zeus said nothing more. Only faded, leaving the Wizard alone with the weight of a promise eons old.

---

The void beyond Mars was littered with fragments of dead light. They drifted like glimmering corpses, slowly dimming as they floated further from where their batteries had once burned. It should have been beautiful. It wasn’t.

Barry Allen — the Flash now, not a Flash — ran across the hull of a fractured carrier ship, pulling the last surviving crew into a rescue pod before the vessel collapsed in on itself.

No Wally to hand off the baton.

No Bart to crack a joke.

No Jay to call him “kid.”

The Speed Force was quieter now. Too quiet. Its hum was gone, replaced by a thin, constant tension, like a string stretched too tight. It was just him, holding the weight of every timeline together with every step.

When the rescue pod fired its thrusters, Barry stood at the edge of the broken ship, looking out into the ruin. The red lightning around him sputtered, dimmer than usual.

He knew what that meant. He didn’t have forever.

---

Diana’s sword clanged uselessly against the blackened shield of the thing that had once been Ares. His grin was wide, teeth like shards of obsidian, eyes burning with the void between stars. Every strike she made, he countered with a force that rattled her bones.

“Hera sends her regards,” Ares sneered.

Diana spat blood onto the fractured marble beneath them. “Then tell her she’s next.”

She swung again, but her arm felt heavier than it should. Slower. The connection to her godhood was fraying — each moment in battle pulling more of it away. Ares noticed. His grin widened.

From above, a shadow swept across the ruined temple. A corrupted Hera landed beside Ares, her beauty warped into something sharp and cruel.

“Your time is over, child,” Hera said.

Diana didn’t answer. She simply readied her shield, even as cracks ran through its center. She would not fall here. Not yet.

---

On the moon base, Batman watched it all through the Mobius Chair’s infinite vision. Every battlefield. Every loss. Every second slipping away.

Zatanna stood beside him now, helmet in place, her voice layered with Fate’s resonance. “We can’t hold them forever.”

Batman’s gaze didn’t move. “We don’t have to hold them forever. Just long enough.”

“For what?”

“For the pieces to fall into place.”

“And if they don’t?”

Batman’s voice was steel. “They will.”

---

Billy sat with the little girl in the evacuation transport’s medbay. She was asleep now, clutching a stuffed toy like it was the only thing in the universe she trusted. Billy wished he had that kind of faith.

The ship jolted violently. Somewhere deep in the hull, alarms wailed. He could hear shouting in the corridor.

The captain’s voice came over the comms: “Brace for impact! We’ve been intercepted”

The rest was drowned out by the deafening crash of metal tearing open. The wall beside Billy buckled inward, a jagged black blade punching through.

He didn’t think. He shoved the girl under the medbay table, throwing himself over her just as the bulkhead ruptured. The vacuum screamed — then something slammed shut, an emergency seal locking into place.

Billy lifted his head. A figure stood in the doorway, cloak tattered, armor glowing faintly with violet embers. Carol Ferris.

“On your feet, Batson,” she said, voice sharp but not unkind. “We’re not done yet.”

---

High above the chaos, Superman pushed harder. Every time he thought the wave was breaking, another surged forward, fleets of vessels, twisted gods, constructs of corrupted light. His heat vision burned white-hot, cutting through a leviathan’s skull before it could breach the atmosphere.

For a moment, there was quiet. Then the sky split.

From the rift emerged a being as large as continents, skin like obsidian and stars. Its eyes locked on Earth.

Superman didn’t slow. Didn’t speak. He just flew — faster than sound, faster than thought — and slammed into the monster’s face with everything he had left.

The impact sent shockwaves through space, cracking the creature’s jaw and hurling it back through the rift. But Clark could feel it in his bones: he couldn’t keep doing this forever.

---

In the Rock of Eternity, the Wizard paced. The voice of Krishna still echoed in his mind.

When existence itself lay dying…

He knew they were close. Too close.

His gaze fell to the empty pedestal where once the staff’s twin had rested — the staff that could channel not just the Greek gods, but the pact he had forged long ago with older, deeper powers. Powers he had never intended to call upon.

Powers that could burn a mortal from the inside out.

And yet… if the boy was willing…

He closed his eyes. The next time they spoke, it would be the last.

---

Back on the moon base, Batman’s eyes narrowed. He saw the chain of events forming.

One thread in the tapestry glowed brighter than the rest — a boy in a tattered hoodie, standing in the shadow of the universe’s end.

Bruce leaned forward in the Mobius Chair, the glow in his eyes sharpening. “It’s almost time.”

---

Far from the base, in the broken temple where Diana still fought, the sound of thunder rolled through the corrupted skies.

Not storm-thunder. Not war-thunder.

Something older.

Something waiting.

Something whose infections had already corrupted worlds without as much as revealing who he is.

Chapter Text

Time had stopped meaning days or hours a long while ago.

Now, Barry Allen measured it in steps.

Every step was a choice — save one person here, another there, reroute his path through collapsing cities and void-breached stations. In the old days, he’d be laughing with Wally about who could rack up the most rescues in a minute. Now there was no one left to compare with. No Wally. No Bart. No Jay.

Just Barry.

Just the sound of his own breathing inside the empty hush of the Speed Force.

It didn’t hum anymore. It strained.

Each time he tapped into it, he could feel it pulling against him — not resisting, but reminding him that there was no backup. No one to pick up the slack if he fell.

---

He skidded to a stop on the fractured streets of Metropolis Sector — or what used to be Metropolis. The skyline was jagged now, half of it erased entirely. In the shadow of the Daily Planet’s shattered globe, a group of survivors huddled around a collapsed transit station.

A mother screamed, clawing at a chunk of ferrocrete pinning her child. Barry was already there before the echo reached him.

“Hold on,” he said gently. “I’ve got you.”

The chunk weighed several tons. He braced, vibrating his molecules at just the right frequency until they slipped through the stone without jarring the girl beneath. The second she was free, Barry scooped her up, moving her and her mother to a safer street corner — though safe was a word losing all meaning fast.

When he turned back, half the street was simply… gone. Like someone had taken a knife to reality and peeled it away.

---

He took a breath, forced his pulse to steady.

Panic wouldn’t help anyone.

A voice crackled in his ear — distorted but unmistakable.

“Barry. Status.”

“Bats,” Barry replied, scanning the horizon. “Metropolis evac is down to stragglers. I’ve got maybe thirty more to pull out before—”

The comm cut with a burst of static. Then, faintly: “Move faster.”

Barry clenched his jaw.

“Yeah. Thanks for the tip Einstein.”

He didn’t like thinking about the chair Batman was sitting in now. The Mobius Chair had never been built for a mortal mind, even one as stubborn as Bruce’s. But Barry didn’t have time to dwell. He was already moving again, threading through collapsing structures and dodging bursts of black fire that hissed like boiling tar.

---

In orbit, Superman’s battle with the obsidian leviathan was tearing chunks out of the planet’s protective field. Barry caught glimpses of him overhead — a streak of blue and red hammering into the creature’s head, then vanishing in a shockwave before it could retaliate.

Barry wished he could help. But his job wasn’t to punch monsters.

It was to make sure there were still people left to save after the monsters were gone.

---

He found an old maglev tunnel still intact enough to use as an evac route. He swept through it, clearing debris, then started running relays — one group of survivors after another, each one carried just far enough to get them to the next safe zone.

He didn’t notice the cracks at first.

They were hair-thin, glowing faintly at the edges, running across the tunnel walls like spiderwebs. The cracks didn’t just break stone — they broke continuity. On one side, a flicker of a Metropolis street as it used to be, decades ago. On the other, empty void.

Barry’s stomach knotted. These weren’t just breaches. They were time fractures.

---

He pressed two fingers to his comm.

“Bruce, we’ve got temporal instability in—”

This time, the comm didn’t just static. It screamed. A feedback whine that made him flinch. The sound wasn’t coming from the comm — it was coming from the Speed Force itself.

Barry knew that sound.

He’d heard it once before, the day Wally vanished for good.

The Speed Force was warning him: it was breaking.

---

Then came the voice.

Thin, oily, mocking, echoey as if multiple people talked at once in the same emotionless voice.

“Barry.”

He didn’t have to see him to know.

“Thawne,” Barry growled.

The Reverse-Flash stepped out from behind a column like he’d been there the whole time. His suit was warped, the yellow burned almost black, his eyes pits of molten crimson. The corruption hadn’t just touched him, it had embraced him.

“I was wondering how long you could keep it up,” Thawne said, tilting his head. “Playing hero while the universe comes apart at the seams.”

“Not here for you,” Barry shot back. “Not today.”

“Oh, you think you get to pick when I show up?” Thawne smiled without warmth. “Barry, you’re the last one left in the Force. When you fall, it all goes with you. And then… nothing can ever outrun the darkness again.”

Barry didn’t answer. He took a step.

---

They tore through the tunnel, two streaks — red and yellow — weaving through collapsing geometry, each strike between them rattling the air. Thawne was faster than he’d been in years, the corruption feeding him in ways the Speed Force never could.

Barry had to get him away from the evac route. He feinted left, burst upward through the tunnel ceiling, and led Thawne out into open streets. Buildings warped and folded in their wake, unable to withstand the temporal stress.

Every punch, every dodge, every near-miss, Barry felt more of the Speed Force fraying inside him. He didn’t have the luxury of a long fight.

---

On the moon, Batman’s eyes flicked sideways in the Mobius Chair’s vision. He saw the fight unfolding in real time — and in all the ways it could end. Only one of those ways didn’t end with Barry dead.

“Zatanna,” he said quietly.

Her voice came through, layered with Fate’s power. “On my way.”

---

Barry managed to slam Thawne into the remains of a monorail pylon, buying himself a second of breathing room.

“This isn’t over,” Thawne hissed, pulling himself free.

“No,” Barry said, chest heaving. “It’s not.”

A golden circle of runes flared between them. Zatanna’s teleport sigil. Barry dove through, vanishing in a burst of light.

Thawne’s laugh echoed after him. “Run while you can, Barry. The end always catches up.”

---

Barry stumbled out into the League’s lunar medbay. Zatanna was already moving toward him, Fate’s helm tilted just enough for him to see the concern in her eyes.

“You can’t keep doing this alone,” she said.

Barry shook his head. “There is no one else.”

---

Somewhere deep in the Rock of Eternity, the Wizard paused mid-step. His staff hummed. The voice of Krishna returned, quiet but certain.

 “One thread frays. Another must be strengthened. The hour is close, Mamaragan. Lady Freya too gets impatient by the hour.”

The Wizard’s eyes closed. “I know.”

"Not only the boy, the champion of the Amazons too has only you left by her side Wizard. Wasten it not"

Wizards all-seeing eyes were transfixed on both - Billy, his champion & Diana, the last of the living olympians. Protecting them was his duty, even her, whether she knew it or not.

---

Billy Batson sat in a corner of the evac ship’s mess hall, knees drawn to his chest. The little girl from before slept beside him, head on his arm. He stared at the emergency lighting overhead, listening to the hum of the engines.

He didn’t know it yet, but the choice that would decide the war was already reaching for him.