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Joseph regained consciousness, immediately realizing he was lying on cold dirt.
His body felt wrong—fragile, incredibly weak. Like he was just a regular human again.
The warmth of his Nova Force and the psychic presence of Nova were gone. His senses were dulled, and his Nova Sense had completely vanished. Knowledge he knew was stored in the Data Archive was simply absent from his mind.
The weight of his vulnerability—and mortality, or lack of it, since he was technically dead—settled heavily over him.
The feeling of helplessness was hard to describe. It was like having your eyes, ears, arms, and legs taken from you after having them your whole life, and then becoming mentally impaired on top of that.
Joseph wanted to stay lying down.
He was tired—and though he didn't want to admit it, scared. What if he opened his eyes and this was another Hell? He knew he hadn't lived righteously and didn't want to endure even more suffering while waiting for Nova to revive him. And from what he knew about how wonky time could be in different parts of Hell—like in Trigon's dimension—that wait could be years.
But he knew this wasn't where his journey would end. Nova would restore him. He just had to hold on.
Even if Nova couldn't repair his body, the purified dionesium he'd obtained from Joker would be able to bring his soul back and they could figure things out from there.
Joseph pushed himself up, finding he was wearing only a white linen kilt. No—it was more accurate to call it a schenti.
A rectangular piece of linen wrapped around the hips and tied at the waist with a golden belt—something ancient Egyptian men wore.
He surveyed his surroundings: an unfamiliar landscape.
Joseph looked up at the sky. The sun had set, and it was shifting from orange into a deep, bruised purple.
The sight was both awe-inspiring and terrifying—a mirrored, mystical version of the Nile Valley, filled with turquoise forests, lakes of fire, and sky high iron walls visible from far away.
A short distance ahead lay a vast black river, glowing faintly gold beneath the surface.
Near the shore was a massive solar barque, roughly 150 feet long and 20 feet wide. It was slowly approaching, as if waiting for him.
On the banks, just a few feet in front of him, stood twelve gods and twelve goddesses representing the hours.
The deceased had to "pass the gates." This wasn't simply walking through a doorway—it was a legal and spiritual checkpoint. They had to prove they possessed Heka (magic) and knowledge of the gods' names to be allowed onto the boat.
They did this by speaking the secret names of the gods and the gate itself. In Egyptian belief, knowing a being's true name granted power over it.
As for Heka: if they had been buried with the proper scrolls—like the Book of the Dead—they could recite spells to ward off hostile entities that might try to block their path to the water's edge.
Relief flooded Joseph.
He was at the threshold—the transitional space between reality and the Duat, the Egyptian underworld.
He didn't have to undergo the trials required to reach Aaru, the Egyptian equivalent of heaven—an idealized Egypt without illness or toil.
He didn't know if Nova would still be able to bring him back if he went there. But even if it were possible, he wasn't ready. He didn't know what he would do if he saw his mother in Aaru—or worse, if he didn't.
As the evening boat, the Mesektet, approached, the twelve gods of the Entrance and the twelve goddesses of the Hours began a rhythmic, booming chant. They weren't speaking to Joseph—they were opening the way.
In Egyptian, they intoned:
"Come to us, O Ra! Proceed, O thou who art in the Horizon! Open the hidden gates, illuminate the darkness of the Duat!"
Then the Guardian of the Gate stepped forward—a deity with a serpent's head. His voice was cold, authoritative, and hostile.
"You reek of a demon and Chaos. Who art thou? State the names of the parts of this gate if thou desirest to pass."
Joseph understood the hostility. They had to ensure he wasn't an intruder—or a demon trying to infiltrate the sacred cycle.
"You guys can go on without me. I'll just wait here. I'll be leaving soon, I hope," Joseph said.
"Are you sure? Once we depart, you will be outside the protection of Ra's boat and vulnerable to Isfet."
Isfet—chaos, injustice, violence, evil. The antithesis of Ma'at, which most Egyptian gods upheld. Without the sun god's protection and the presence of other justified souls, a spirit would be defenseless against the demons and serpents that roamed the edges of the underworld.
The goal of every deceased person was to become an Akh—a transfigured, effective spirit. That required passing through the gates and eventually reaching the Hall of Truth for the weighing of the heart.
If a soul refused to progress or failed to move with the solar cycle, they risked the Second Death—not a peaceful fading, but total annihilation. The complete cessation of existence.
There was also the matter of sustenance. The threshold wasn't a resting place. Offerings of food and drink from the living were spiritually directed through proper channels in the afterlife. Without them, hunger would grow—until it twisted a soul into something lost and tormented.
"Yes. I'm an expert at dealing with Isfet," Joseph replied.
The god regarded him coldly, serpent eyes unblinking—as if his refusal confirmed him as a being of chaos that should be destroyed. Then, deciding Joseph wasn't worth the effort, he turned away without another word.
All the gods vanished from the shore in a flash of gold, and the barque slowly departed, its light receding as it drifted along the river.
Joseph sat and watched them go.
Waiting.
The sky deepened into a purple so dark it became black, and Joseph was left in the Kek-semau—the primordial darkness.
And contrary to expectation, the darkness did not bring silence.
It brought noise.
Joseph turned—and saw them.
Monsters gathered in the darkness.
Some were grotesque hybrids, their bodies stitched together from nightmares: crocodile heads, lion forequarters, and hippopotamus hindquarters. Others were little more than serpentine shadows, writhing and coiling through the gloom.
Worst of all were what used to be human souls.
The ones who had failed judgment—or never reached it at all. They drifted in fragments, whispering, crying, screaming. Some begged. Others raged. But Joseph could tell… there was nothing left to save. They were already gone.
All of them had converged on him.
They crept closer as the last of the light faded—hungry. Waiting.
And the moment darkness fully claimed the shore, they surged forward.
Joseph rose to his feet and rolled his neck with a quiet crack.
He'd faced worse.
These things? They were nothing.
His body might be gone—his powers stripped with it—but he still had a few tricks left.
He reached inward for the Speed Force—
—and frowned.
It was there. He could feel it.
But it wouldn't answer.
It resisted him, like a locked current just out of reach—as if it had decided he'd used too much of it in Trigon's domain and was now cut off.
Joseph exhaled slowly.
Figures.
The cosmic forces had always seemed… selective. Almost sentient. And the Speed Force clearly didn't like him.
It had never made sense. It had capped him at 8% the speed of light while Barry Allen and Zoom brushed against lightspeed. Meanwhile, Wally was growing faster exponentially and was probably faster than him by now.
What did they have that he didn't? Was it because he preferred to fly instead of running?
No matter.
The Strength Force had chosen him.
That was enough.
Joseph drew on it, reinforcing his body—sacrificing all his strength for durability as the creatures descended.
They hit him all at once.
Jaws clamped down on his arms—crocodile teeth digging in. A massive serpent swallowed his lower half. The lost souls clawed and gnawed at him, tearing, pulling, trying to rip him apart piece by piece.
And through it all—
Joseph smiled.
This was an astral plane.
And his body was already dead.
There would be no pain from taking too much psychic energy. Here there were no limits.
Just opportunity.
Just like he had with Count Viper. With Despero. With the Gordanians.
Joseph reached out—not physically, but psychically—and pulled.
Energy.
He ripped it from them.
The creatures faltered instantly. Their forms flickered, turning translucent as their essence was dragged into him. One by one, they unraveled—dissolving into nothing.
Some tried to flee.
Didn't matter.
Joseph lifted them into the air with a flick of gravitational manipulation provided by the Strength Force and dragged them back, consuming them just the same.
Within moments, the swarm was gone.
Silence returned.
Joseph exhaled, rolling his shoulders as the last traces of energy settled within him.
At least this solved one problem.
He wouldn't starve.
"A little bitter," he muttered, glancing at where they'd been. "But it'll do."
Then he looked out into the endless dark.
The dunes stretched on forever.
No light. No horizon. Just the vast, suffocating expanse of the Duat's threshold.
Joseph stepped forward.
"Well," he said to himself, a faint smirk returning, "let's see if there's anything tastier out there."