Night fell over the scarred desert, replacing scorching heat with a cold, dust-laden darkness. A changing of the guard: Black Adam took the forefront from the Kryptonians. His arrival was heralded by cascades of lightning, tearing through the dark and incinerating ranks of Parademons with divine fury. His wrath alone seemed to form a wall.
At that moment, Darkseid struck.
A deep, earth-shattering roar, born in the heart of a mountain of corpses, drowned out even Adam's thunder. The sea of dead flesh, amassed over hours of slaughter, erupted. Not in a single explosive charge, but in a wave of detonations rippling from the portal toward their forces.
But the League was not caught off guard.
The Flash became a scarlet whirlwind. At superluminal speed, his movements imperceptible to the eye, he darted around the perimeter. He didn't extinguish the explosions—he redirected them. Every body, every fragment primed to detonate, he seized and hurled into the densest pile of corpses near the portal. His goal: to concentrate the monstrous destructive energy, channeling the infernal blaze inward to the epicenter rather than letting it spill outward, sweeping away the defenders. It was a mad, desperate tactic, demanding impossible precision and speed—both of which, fortunately, he possessed.
Above the ground, in the ominous glow of an impending apocalypse, Doctor Fate and the Green Lantern Corps were already in action. Soaring into the sky, they merged their wills as one. From their rings burst a concentrated surge of energy, rising to form a colossal, roofless energy tube—a massive barrier. Their aim: to capture the primary shockwave and vent it into the stratosphere.
The explosive wave slammed into the green barrier with devastating force. The Lanterns' construct groaned. Sector by sector, ring by ring, their barrier began to crack under the unbearable pressure, splintering into emerald sparks. Even the strongest wills faltered. It seemed all was lost, and the hellish flames were about to flood the earth…
Then a red barrier ignited. Doctor Fate, his eyes blazing with otherworldly resolve, poured all his magic into creating it. A crimson glow, fierce and unrelenting, flared above the ruins of the green. It became the final shield, a fiery stopper in the throat of the energy tube. Fate's red magical barrier buckled, groaned, but held. It channeled the concentrated inferno, directing a monstrous column of plasma, decay energy, and pure destruction vertically into the sky.
High above, at the edge of the atmosphere, Deadshot had received a curt order from Batman ten minutes earlier: "Retreat. Maximum distance. Now." The sniper didn't hesitate, bolting from the combat zone. He wondered—why? The enemy was below. Five minutes later, confusion turned to shock. Turning back, he saw a blinding pillar of light shooting from the desert. It pierced the clouds, streaking into the blackness of space, illuminating the continent brighter than day for a moment. Deadshot froze, staring at this display of raw destructive power.
"Holy hell…" he exhaled, his cynical soul shaken. "This is… insane."
When the light faded and the roar subsided, the site of the dead sea revealed a landscape more alien than earthly. A trench. A massive, smoking furrow stretching from the portal to the defenders' positions. But it was no ordinary trench. Its floor and walls were fused into a solid mass of black glass, bubbling and frozen in bizarre shapes. The air above it shimmered with heat and hummed with tension. Fate didn't rush to dismantle the remnants of his barrier. His scanners and magical instincts screamed of danger. Analysis revealed the blast had unleashed a staggering amount of radioactive isotopes, toxic biological agents, and other deadly filth brought by the Parademons from the depths of Apokolips. The threat was as great as the explosion itself.
Alex, monitoring the readings, only nodded grimly. He had anticipated this outcome—radioactive and biological contamination was a logical consequence of an Apokoliptian blast. That's why he'd given Fate a packet of strange seeds before the operation began. Fate made a few swift gestures, and in the center of the glassy hell, within the remnants of the protective field, a mound of pale green seeds materialized. These were Pamela's plants, engineered for rehabilitating ecological disaster zones like Chernobyl, capable of voraciously absorbing radiation and toxins from soil, water, and air, using them as catalysts for rapid growth. Here, in this newborn inferno, they had a mission to fulfill.
But there was no time for recovery. From the still-gaping portal, shrouded in smoke and twisted energy, emerged Darkseid's true forces.
First came the Furies of Apokolips—Gridd, Bekka, and Stomna. Their figures, clad in deadly armor, radiated cold, professional cruelty. Behind them, burning with vengeance, stepped Steppenwolf, his eyes seeking Shazam. Beside him, exuding an almost maternal yet no less terrifying aura, floated Granny Goodness, ready to unleash her magic. And then came the horde… but not the Parademons of before. These were larger, scarred, covered in bony growths, their eyes glowing with dull, unstoppable rage. They roared, beating their chests—a living echo of Doomsday, an unrelenting machine of destruction.
The true battle for Earth was just beginning.
***
At a depth of eleven kilometers beneath the Pacific Ocean, in the eternal darkness of the Mariana Trench, Doomsday rested. He lay on the ocean floor like a sunken monument to his own rage. The giant liked it here. The crushing pressure, capable of obliterating anything, enveloped him like a tight blanket, massaging his back. Absolute silence reigned, broken only by the faint hum of tectonic plates.
Here, he rested. He sank into oblivion, quenching the smoldering embers of endless fury.
But there was always an itch. A faint, persistent prickle, like a shard of glass in his mind. He knew its source—Superman. That beacon of inhuman strength, shining somewhere far above on the surface. Doomsday felt him constantly. The connection was an open wound, festering with hatred. He had to find him, break him, kill him—only then would the itch subside. But for now… he rested. He gathered strength, damping the flames to later ignite them brighter.
And then…
A new pulse. Sharp, stabbing. Not one—many! Dozens, hundreds of tiny, yet achingly familiar sparks. As if his own essence, his rage, had been shattered and scattered across the world. He felt them—there, on land. Not Superman, but himself? Simplified, primitive, but identical in their core essence of destruction. Like dozens of scalding needles piercing his consciousness at once.
The silence of the deep exploded.
Reflex outpaced thought. A deep, low-frequency roar, shaking the very water, erupted from his chest.
Rest was over.
The rage, dormant under the ocean's pressure, flared into blinding flame. The itch became an unbearable, crippling pain in his mind. He didn't just want to destroy the source—he had to erase it, these pitiful imitations, from the face of the earth.
Powerful legs pushed off the rocky bed. Doomsday surged upward. Not swimming—launching like a living supersonic torpedo. The water didn't resist—it tore apart before him. His massive form, defying the crushing pressure of the depths, sliced through the ocean with accelerating, devastating speed. His course was direct and relentless: toward the source of the unbearable itch. Toward the place where dozens of his grotesque reflections swarmed.