Black Adam fought at the heart of a parademon vortex. His kryptonite sword rose and fell, slicing through dense flesh with a wet, squelching sound. Black, oily blood from Doomsday's copies coated his body and face, clinging to his skin and obscuring his vision. But the real danger lay elsewhere. Parademons weren't just a horde—each one carried a fraction of the original's power. Their claws and teeth tore through the air, capable of piercing even his divine invulnerability, leaving deep, burning wounds. The green glow of his sword was his salvation: kryptonite not only cut through them but weakened them, slowing their terrifying regeneration. Without that radiation, Adam would have long succumbed to their relentless onslaught.
Beside the battle's roar, a golden streak flashed. Powergirl crashed into the parademon ranks like a living torpedo. Her fists, capable of shattering mountains, smashed into enemy skulls, stunning them, knocking them down, and scattering entire groups. She couldn't kill them outright—without kryptonite, her blows lacked lethal impact, and dazed parademons soon rose again. But each strike bought Adam a precious moment to plunge his sword into a vulnerable spot. The sword's ominous green glow rolled over Powergirl in heavy waves, inducing nausea and sapping her strength. She had to keep her distance from Adam, striking from the flanks. Despite this sacrifice, their coordinated efforts broke the backbone of the parademon assault, turning deadly chaos into a grueling but manageable fight.
Then, something strange happened. In an instant, the battle's furious din fell silent. Every parademon in sight froze as if on command, their heads turning in unison toward the southeast. They sensed the source, the core—Doomsday himself. The connection between the original and his copies snapped into place like a flicked switch. Without a sound, the entire swarm broke away from Adam and Powergirl, rushing off in a unified stream, leaving only silence and confusion in their wake.
Where they headed, hell already raged. Parademons swarmed Doomsday like a colossal ant colony, trying to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. The original roared, his bellow shaking the earth. His massive limbs tore through their bodies like kindling. But he lacked kryptonite. His devastating blows crippled but didn't kill. The parademons, resilient and adaptive like him, though to a lesser degree, quickly healed their wounds, their flesh pulsing and knitting back together. It was a stalemate: a titan unable to land a decisive blow and a horde unable to break him. The fight threatened to drag on forever, until one side collapsed from exhaustion.
Then Doomsday erupted. Savage, primal fury boiled over. He seized a parademon clinging to him—not to throw it off, but to sink his massive fangs into it. Bone and flesh crunched. Doomsday tore off a massive chunk and swallowed. The effect was immediate and horrific: the parademon convulsed, went limp, its wound failed to heal, and it died for real. Doomsday felt a surge—foreign energy from the copy flooded his muscles, swelling them, restoring his waning strength with a surplus. Stunned and intoxicated by the sudden power, Doomsday roared in triumph. His gaze, now filled with a predatory understanding, locked onto the other parademons. He grabbed the next one and began to devour it. This was no longer a fight—it was a feast. Each swallowed parademon vanished forever, and Doomsday's power grew, tipping the battle decisively in his favor.
The silence following the parademons' sudden retreat didn't last. The air crackled with energy as Grid, the embodiment of Hunger, shot toward Adam and Powergirl without warning or words.
Adam reacted first. Without hesitation, he charged at Grid at full speed. His kryptonite sword carved a green arc through the air. The strike was monstrous, a vertical slash followed by a supersonic boom that shook the ground. Adam expected devastation, or at least serious injury.
But the impossible happened. Grid simply raised her hand, palm forward. When the sword met her palm, there was no explosion or spark. The shockwave dissipated, the strike's kinetic energy… vanished. Grid didn't flinch or step back. She stood unharmed, as if the sword had struck an infinite void.
In response, she swiftly drew two blades. Their material was familiar and dangerous—kryptonite. Her counterstrike was as fast and monstrously powerful as Adam's attack. Unlike her, Adam couldn't absorb the force. The blow from her blades sent him flying across the battlefield like a ragdoll.
Powergirl caught him. For a split second, she pulled him close, her quick, quiet whisper delivering a clear plan. He nodded in response.
Wasting no time, Adam charged Grid again. His trajectory, speed, and swing all suggested a repeat of the same devastating vertical strike. Grid prepared to catch it with her palm again. But at the last moment, he altered his trajectory. Instead of striking her, he delivered two lightning-fast blows directly to the kryptonite blades in her hands.
Since the attack targeted her weapons, not her directly, Grid's defense—absorbing force aimed at her—didn't fully activate. The blades flew from her grasp, tracing green arcs through the air before landing far away.
Adam spun to Powergirl:
"Handle it from here!"
Kara gave a thumbs-up, signaling she had it under control. Black Adam immediately sped off, seeking another battlefield.
Grid stared at her lost blades, then at Powergirl. Contempt gleamed in her eyes.
"You think disarming me of kryptonite means you can win?"
Grid's power absorbed any energy—kinetic, energetic, magical. She could store it and release it back. To her, Powergirl was just a snack.
Powergirl didn't argue. She only smiled.
"I think it'll be a piece of cake."
Without another word, she surged forward at incredible speed. But instead of striking, she wrapped Grid in a powerful grapple, locking her arms behind her back. This wasn't an attack or an attempt to deal damage—it was a restraining move. Grid struggled, but the energy she'd expended repelling Adam had taken its toll. At that moment, her physical strength couldn't break Kara's hold.
Powergirl rocketed upward, dragging Grid with her. Her goal was clear: space. If she couldn't deal damage, she'd take her enemy where conditions were lethal. Kara bet that Grid couldn't survive or navigate in open space like she could.
Like a missile, Powergirl pierced the stratosphere, accelerating. The atmosphere fell behind. As they burst into the vacuum of space, Kara released her grip. She simply let Grid go.
Grid tried to scream, her mouth opening in a silent grimace of horror and despair. Sound had no place in the vacuum. Her body, without support or the ability to fly in space, began to drift helplessly. With no air resistance and the colossal velocity imparted by Powergirl, Grid hurtled into the depths of space. Her trajectory was unrelenting—she'd exit the solar system in hours, doomed to eternal, icy oblivion in the void.
Doomsday devoured parademons one by one. Each consumed copy didn't vanish without a trace—its biomass and energy fused into him, fueling every cell. He grew stronger, faster, more resilient. What began as a furious battle turned into swift, almost mechanical annihilation. Power surged through his muscles, pulsed in his veins—a concentration of strength he'd never felt before. Finally! Finally, he could crush that persistent Superman, rid himself of the maddening itch of his presence.
Then he felt it. A foreign, repulsive sensation, a cold worm slithering down his spine. Fear. True, primal fear. He'd never known it before. His gaze, instinctively, like a beast sensing a hunter, found the cause. Amid the battle, deep within the ranks of the human army, Amazons, and Atlanteans, moved Bekka . She cut down warriors one by one, methodically, with chilling efficiency. She was Death—distorted, artificial, but carrying its very essence. And he… he was a living paradox of adaptation to Death, a being born to die and rise stronger, ultimately to overcome it.
Two opposing forces, an eternal paradox: the Invincible Shield versus the All-Destroying Sword. Who would win? Adaptation, capable of surviving anything, or Oblivion, capable of consuming everything?
He didn't have to confront her. She clearly didn't see him as a primary target. But when a creature faces the source of its deepest, singular fear, ignoring it is impossible. Only two paths remained: submit and hope for mercy, unthinkable for Doomsday, or destroy the source of fear. His nature dictated the choice.
With a furious roar that drowned out his fear, Doomsday launched himself toward Bekka , leaving a trench in the sand. She merely cast him a contemptuous glance, cold and indifferent, before dissolving into the nearest shadow as if she'd never been there.
Bekka didn't waste Death's precious power on him. For a creature of his resilience, it would have demanded immense energy, unjustified in the heat of battle. Instead, materializing behind Doomsday from his own shadow, she drew a kryptonite blade. Though designed for Kryptonians, its lethal radiation could harm him too. With a lightning-fast motion, she drove the blade into the base of his skull.
The blade pierced bone and tissue—a strike that should have been fatal. But Doomsday was no longer the same monster. The energy absorbed from the parademons swirled within, completing his evolution: kryptonite could no longer poison him. Fueled by his feast, his adaptation peaked. With a guttural roar, he jerked his head, wrenching the blade from the wound, which was already pulsing and healing, and snapped it in half with his massive paw.
Bekka , noting her plan's failure, raised an eyebrow with a hint of surprise and a shadow of regret. Without hesitation, she dove into a shadow to vanish. Doomsday was a problem, but not her target.
But Doomsday wasn't letting her go. He felt her. Not with eyes or ears—on an instinctual, primal level, he sensed his natural antithesis, the source of his fear. And that source was trying to escape into the shadows. No one had ever struck Bekka in the shadows because no one could pinpoint her in their infinite expanse. Doomsday could. His fear became a locator. He swung his fist, channeling all his accumulated rage and power, not at a physical object but at the shadow itself.
The effect was immediate. The shadow rippled, warped, and Bekka shot out like a cork, forced to materialize early to avoid the strike that deformed her refuge. She landed several meters away, her cold eyes flaring with true, icy anger for the first time in the battle. She no longer saw Doomsday as a mere nuisance but as a threat demanding immediate elimination.
"You've gone too far, you bastard," her voice dripped with hatred.
Before, she'd crafted a dagger infused with Death's energy. Now, the space before her warped and condensed. In her hands materialized a scythe—a physical manifestation of her essence, as close to the concept of Death as she could embody. Its blade seemed carved from nothingness, blacker than the darkest night, distorting the light around it. It carried the infinite weight of oblivion.
And so, Bekka , the Rider of Death, neither retreating nor hiding, lunged at Doomsday. Her scythe traced lethal arcs, not merely cutting flesh but washing the space with the chilling breath of finality.
Thus began their battle. Not a clash of monsters, but a collision of fundamental principles: Invincible Adaptation versus Absolute Demise.