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PLANET RYU – THE BLACK CENTRAL POWER BATTERY
The Black Central Power Battery loomed here its frame a monolith of absence, swallowing the light around it. The air, if it could be called that here, trembled with a low, endless sound.
Scar floated in the shadow of the titanic construct, her eyes catching every flicker of the abyss. Her fingers traced the air lazily, the edge of her grin sharp enough to cut.
"It was a huge success," she said, her voice dripping with venom and satisfaction, echoing in the unnatural air. A faint laugh followed, one that started low in her throat and rolled out into the emptiness like a ripple of madness. "A shame the human didn't kill every last one of them… but what we have right now…"
Her grin widened, almost unhinged. "…is more than enough. Just a little more time… and then..." her gaze lifted to the Battery's dark light, "we proceed with the final step."
She raised one hand, palm outward, toward the Battery. The black surface pulsed once then again, deeper, like the beat of a dead heart.
"Rise, my darlings," she whispered. "Go… and tear open the silence of the grave. Go… and find your hosts."
The Battery answered.
From its depths, an ocean of black rings erupted, spilling outward in a swarm that filled the sky. They moved without sound, without hesitation, cutting through the darkness like shards of void.
Scar watched them go, her laughter following them into the infinite night of space high, sharp, and cruel.
DEEP SPACE – WHERE ARTHUR'S SHADOW LEGION HAD FOUGHT
The former battlefield was empty now, silent. Here, bodies drifted beside shattered remains, the remnants of the slaughter Arthur and his shadow legion had wrought. Limbs floated in slow, eerie spirals. nothing but frozen faces. Hundreds lay scattered through the void, their eyes empty, their souls long gone.
And then, a flicker.
Black light cut through the stillness. Dozens, hundreds of the rings swept in, weaving between debris and corpses, each one whispering in a voice not of sound but of cold thought.
'Rise.'
The first to move was a fallen Lantern. His jaw, frozen slack in death, began to tighten as a black ring slid onto his finger. Frost cracked over his skin as the lightless symbol flared. His head snapped up, and dead eyes ignited with void.
'You belong to the Black.'
Another followed an alien warrior, also a fallen lantern, his torso torn clean through by a shadow blade. The wound did not heal, but it no longer mattered. His broken mouth curled into a grin too wide, too wrong.
'Serve.'
Bodies began to twitch everywhere. Some clawed through floating rubble, some simply turned their heads, their movements stiff and jerking, like marionettes pulled by strings of pure darkness.
Among them were faces Arthur himself had slain some he had cut down mid-charge, others he had crushed without a second glance. Now, their voices, once filled with life, bled back into existence, warped and overlapping into an unholy chorus.
Their eyes snapped open in unison, burning not with fire, but with a hollow, devouring light. Across the dead field, the void was suddenly alive again with killers who could never truly die by normal means.
OA -
A dozen Green Lanterns stood in formation, their rings maintaining translucent emerald cages around piles of broken constructs, scorched alien beasts, and the shattered corpses of enemy lanterns and even fallen comrades. The stench of burnt flesh lingered in the air, carried by the faint breeze under Oa's eternal emerald sky.
One Lantern, broad-shouldered with skin like bronze stone, spoke with a low grunt.
"Let's get this over with. The Guardians want the remains scattered into the red star by midday."
Another, thinner, his voice tight, stared at a heap of charred limbs that had once been a fellow Lantern.
"Feels wrong just… tossing them away. They fought for..."
"Don't," the first one cut him off sharply. "The more you think about it, the worse it gets. Just focus on the job. The Guardians have their reasons for this I'm sure."
They were lifting the containment cages when the air shifted.
It wasn't a sound, not at first more like the feeling of a storm building where no storm should be. The light around them seemed to dull, as though something was swallowing it.
A Lantern frowned, checking his ring.
"Sector's clear. No anomalies."
Then they heard it.
A whisper.
Not from the air, but from everywhere inside their skulls, under their skin. It wasn't words, not really, just the sound of something ancient and hungry moving through the void. The thin Lantern dropped the cage he was carrying, emerald energy flickering in his grip.
"…Did you hear..that?"
The sky above them cracked with shadow.
Dozens hundreds of black rings poured through the atmosphere, each trailing an oily smoke that seemed to eat the green light of Oa. The Lanterns stepped back instinctively, their rings sparking with defensive constructs.
"What the hell are those?!" one shouted.
The first ring reached the ground.
It hovered for a heartbeat, spinning lazily… then darted forward with unnatural speed, burying itself into the chest of a twisted alien beast's corpse. Black light flared cold, suffocating and the carcass convulsed. Its ribs cracked outward like they were pried apart from within.
And then… it breathed.
One by one, the other black rings found their marks, Lantern corpses, torn-apart enemies, even the mangled remains of monstrosities.
The air filled with the sound of bones snapping back into place, flesh knitting together with wet, tearing sounds. Emerald light flickered and died where it touched them, replaced by a suffocating black glow.
The dead opened their eyes pure, unblinking void and the world seemed to tilt.
A Lantern screamed, ring flaring. "They're moving!..The dead they're..." His voice cut into a strangled cry as a skeletal hand punched through his construct shield like glass.
The reanimated Lanterns moved with unnatural precision, their jaws opening wider than they should, exhaling a sound that was part growl, part whisper, part the memory of a scream.
The first wave of Green Lantern fire lit the place in emerald brilliance. For a heartbeat, it seemed to hold. But the black light was stronger. Rings of death clamped around still-living Lanterns' wrists, draining the green from their constructs, smothering their light.
One Lantern, his voice breaking into panic, shouted into comms, "This isn't possible...they were dead!" A wet crunch silenced him.
By the time the alarms began to blare across Oa, it was no longer a place of only the living.
EARTH -
Batman stood in the dark, cape draped like a shadow over his shoulders, eyes fixed on the feed from the Justice League Watchtower on his Batcomputer.
A faint, unnatural pulse rolled across the sensors, not a sound, not light, but something in between. A ripple.
On the Watchtower's lower most secured containment levels, the security drones picked it up first. A whisper of motion in the sealed vault where Doomsday's corpse had been kept in stasis, locked in layer after layer of reinforced tech. The stasis field flickered once. Then again.
The room's temperature dropped ten degrees in seconds.
From deep in the black, it appeared a single ring. Matte black, edges glinting. It drifted forward, slowly. It hung over Doomsday's still chest for a moment… then sank into it.
The heart that should never beat again thudded once.
The sensors screamed warnings. The drones opened fire and Doomsday's eyes snapped open, burning with a lightless void. The blasts managed to tore chunks from him… but the wounds sealed instantly. The corpse that had once fought Arthur Blackwynd and Kara Zor-El moved again.
Elsewhere, far from orbit, black rings poured across the Earth like a plague. Over the swamps of Louisiana, they sank into half-rotten hulks of monsters felled in forgotten battles. In the wreckage of Blüdhaven's underworld, they found old gang lords, assassins, and killers whose bodies had never been claimed.
And in Gotham…
A slab in Arkham's morgue rattled violently before shattering. A pale hand clawed free. The Joker's grin was wrong now stiff, frozen in a mockery of life, his eyes pits of abyss. His laugh when it came was nothing short of terrifying.
In a quiet cemetery, a no named grave, Slade Wilson split it open, and the man who had been Deathstroke rose, slower, heavier… but utterly unkillable now. The black ring burned in his finger like a brand.
Back in the Batcave, Batman's jaw tightened as the feeds lit up with simultaneous alerts. An unusual activity in Arkham. Doomsday offline, or rather moving.
For the briefest moment, he just listened, the distant hiss of rain outside the cave, the sound of the Batcomputer, the faint static in the comms.
Then he said, low and cold
"…This is worse than I thought."
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Solo leveling in Westeros.
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want