Fate battled Stomna. Despite her massive frame, she displayed terrifying speed in short bursts, giving Fate no moment to catch his breath. Yet, she completely disregarded any form of defense. The reason was simple: any significant damage to her shell—whether from a magical strike, physical penetration, or a powerful energy blast—would trigger an immediate, catastrophic explosion. This blast would release thousands, if not millions, of supernaturally virulent strains of diseases, plagues, and poisons into the surrounding area, instantly infecting and killing all life across a vast portion of the battlefield, ensuring the inevitable defeat of Fate and his allies. Simultaneously, Stomna constantly attempted glancing blows against Fate. A single touch of her skin or secretions would infect him with an incurable, fast-acting pathogen, guaranteeing a swift and agonizing death.
Doctor Fate's actions boiled down to two critical tasks: constantly dodging contact with Stomna's body and her infectious aura while actively shielding her from stray bullets, projectiles, and energy volleys fired by his own allies. He conjured barriers to deflect any errant fire that could accidentally hit her and trigger disaster.
From the battle's outset, Fate faced severe limitations. Attempts to teleport Stomna failed; spatial manipulations simply didn't affect her. He also observed that parademon projectiles and allied war machines' beams struck Stomna without causing visible damage or, crucially, triggering an explosion. Bullets ricocheted or were absorbed; beams dissipated harmlessly. This led Fate to conclude that Stomna possessed a conceptual defense—her explosive reaction seemed to trigger only in response to "hostile" attacks meeting specific criteria.
While physically evading, Fate employed his ability to foresee probable futures. However, this process was agonizingly slow and inefficient. His mind couldn't simultaneously process millions of possible action-consequence combinations. He was forced to review options sequentially, like frames on a film reel. Analyzing these future timelines revealed a horrifying truth: even if Stomna wasn't attacked and all contact was avoided, she posed an escalating, inevitable threat. As she moved, fought, and simply existed in her active state, uncontrollable proliferation and mutation of pathogens occurred within her. She was physically "swelling," with cracks in her shell widening, leaking increasing amounts of toxic substance. This internal growth would inevitably reach a critical point where the kinetic energy of her own movements became sufficient to trigger the explosion. She couldn't intentionally cause the blast; it would occur over time, without external interference, purely from her activity and internal limits. The speed of this growth meant Fate was running out of time to sift through all possible futures. Reviewing them one by one, he physically couldn't find a viable solution before detonation.
Fate desperately needed a vector—not a random stroke of luck, but a key principle, a fundamental idea to build a winning strategy. Only with such a vector could his foresight narrow its search, focusing solely on feasible paths to realize that idea, discarding millions of dead-end branches.
An epiphany came from memory: Alex's tactic against Granny—using the enemy's own defense against them. Something similar was needed here. A quick analysis of the battlefield and their nature revealed Stomna as Plague, Gridd as Famine, Bekka as Death, and Steppenwolf as War—pale imitations of the true Four Horsemen, crafted by Darkseid.
Then, Fate realized how to safely kill her. His mind shifted instantly. Millions of chaotic, useless future branches awaiting review were discarded like ballast. Now, he scanned only the narrow probabilities where victory was achieved through Death.
On another battlefield, Aquaman and Wonder Woman fought Bekka—and were losing. Their fight wasn't a battle but a desperate defense, a struggle awaiting an inevitable end. They clung to each other, bound by trust and desperation. Arthur deflected a strike with his trident as Bekka appeared behind Diana; she parried with her sword when Death's claws targeted Aquaman's unprotected flank. Bekka was the embodiment of lethal efficiency. Her claws, shimmering with distorted space, didn't merely wound—they carried the principle of decay. Worse was her mobility. She didn't run—she flickered, vanishing into one shadow and materializing from another behind a hero, striking with unbearable suddenness. Only divine artifacts—Diana's sword and Aquaman's trident—gave them a chance to block these deadly strikes. Without them, they would have fallen long ago.
Then, the inevitable mistake occurred. Fatigue, desperation, and an endless barrage of lightning-fast attacks—Aquaman misjudged a strike's direction. Bekka's claw, sharp as night, was a centimeter from his throat when a crimson whirlwind tore into reality. The Flash burst into the fight at the speed of thought, grabbing Arthur and pulling him from harm's way a microsecond before the claws sliced the air where his neck had been. Bekka materialized before the three heroes, and for the first time, her voice rang out—cold, laced with perverse pleasure:
"What a splendid fight… I can't wait to taste your souls."
She didn't attack directly. Instead, she materialized three pitch-black kunai and hurled them—not at the heroes, but at their shadows cast on the sand.
Barry Allen didn't understand the exact mechanics of this move, but instinct screamed danger. If those kunai hit their shadows, something irreversibly bad would happen. In his subjective slowed-down world, he surged forward, repositioning Diana and Arthur with rapid bursts, ensuring the kunai struck empty sand. But Bekka only smirked. The kunai reappeared repeatedly, like black marks of death, embedding around them, forming an unseen web.
The Flash realized endless dodging was a path to ruin. They had to attack. In time slowed to its limit, he approached Bekka. A kryptonite blade, still with him from the Parademon battle, was aimed at her eye. His hand moved with relentless precision, the blade's tip centimeters from her pupil. Bekka couldn't match his speed, but her power let her sense her own potential demise, giving her a chance to react. A moment before fatal contact, as inevitability hung in the air, she dissolved into shadow, as if she'd never been. The blade pierced nothing.
Barry spun, his super-speed perception already seeking her. She reappeared behind Diana, claws raised. He moved to help. Most think he runs in super-speed, but he walks, as in normal life. To cover a kilometer in super-speed, he takes as many subjective steps and time as he would normally—only the measure of time shifts, from subjective seconds to objective fractions of an instant. A war lasting three days for the world had been a month for Barry. As he walked toward the heroes, he felt… or rather, didn't feel. His legs below the knees became alien, heavy, dead weights. He collapsed onto the sand.
The kunai weren't random. Had they hit a shadow, they'd have pinned the victim in place, paralyzed. But here, Bekka used them as nodes for a network. Invisible threads—shadowy, woven from death's essence—stretched between the embedded kunai. They didn't cut armor or flesh. They sliced through space, severing neural impulses in their path. Barry's legs were disconnected from his brain by these unseen blades of darkness. Bekka emerged behind Diana for a strike, but Aquaman, ever vigilant, repelled her with his trident.
Seeing Flash helpless on the ground, Diana and Arthur rushed to him. His cry stopped them:
"Don't move! Or you'll end up like me!"
Bekka materialized beside Barry, her shadow falling over him. She lifted him by the throat with one hand, like a rag doll. Her gaze slid to the frozen heroes:
"Don't worry. They'll join you."
In her free hand, a dagger appeared—not merely black, but an absolute void, absorbing all light. It held concentrated death energy, orders of magnitude stronger than her claws. She raised it for the killing blow.
This was what Fate awaited. As the blade of absolute death was about to pierce Barry, he teleported Bekka—not aside, but directly before Stomna, mid-strike. The blow meant for Flash struck Plague's flesh with fate's inevitability.
No explosive release of diseases occurred—just instantaneous, total disintegration. The Death energy in Bekka's blade met the perverse vitality of Plague within Stomna. Viruses, bacteria, all diseases didn't explode—they ceased to exist, crumbling into inert, harmless ash, swept away by the wind. Stomna was no longer a threat. Fate could have teleported Bekka earlier, but to neutralize Stomna without a catastrophic explosion, he needed the moment of Death's maximum concentration.
Bekka recoiled from the suddenly appeared and vanished Stomna. She stood frozen, clutching the void dagger. Her eyes, usually cold and calculating, widened in shock. She stared at the swirling ash where her "sister" had been.
Slowly, with icy, seething rage, Bekka turned her head. Her gaze, filled with a silent promise of unimaginable torment, found Fate. She looked at him as if he were already a corpse awaiting the inevitable. Her voice, when it finally spoke, was quieter but all the more terrifying.
"I always wanted to kill her; she was repulsive for many reasons. But to kill her myself is one thing—" Her fingers gripped the dagger's hilt until her knuckles whitened. "To be a pawn in another's hands… that's entirely different."
Fueled by rage after Stomna's destruction, Bekka unleashed herself on Fate. She didn't just attack physically—she released her Death aura, a black, suffocating shroud of her warped essence. Had she been the true, cosmic embodiment of Death, her mere presence with this aura would have instantly severed the life threads of all within its radius. But Bekka was only an artificial imitation.
Her aura didn't instantly kill the healthy and strong. If she walked through a city, most would feel only an inexplicable chill or fleeting weakness. But where life hung by a thread—in ICUs, hospices, battlefields among the gravely wounded—her aura tipped the fragile balance toward death, making the possible inevitable.
This aura enveloped the Helm of Fate's avatar, Nelson. During this war, guided by the Helm's ancient power, Nelson had achieved the impossible. He'd saved humanity multiple times: destroying Darkseid's Annihilation Complex, neutralizing countless threats, including aiding in Plague's demise. Each act demanded titanic effort, draining the Helm's magic and Nelson's physical and mental reserves.
Nelson was at his limit. His body was exhausted, his spirit worn by endless battles and weighty decisions. He clung to existence through willpower and the Helm's magic. Bekka's aura was the final straw. Under its lethal influence, his fading life drained at a terrifying, unstoppable rate. He felt his strength ebb, his consciousness darken.
At that moment, as Bekka furiously attacked Fate while sustaining her aura, a voice echoed within the Helm, in the depths of the avatar's mind—Nabu's voice:
"I will remember you, Kent Nelson. And all of Earth's people, whom you gave a chance, will remember your sacrifice and valor. Your duty is fulfilled. Rest, my faithful friend. You've earned peace."
The Helm of Fate would not let Death, in the form of Bekka, claim Nelson's soul for dark purposes or eternal torment. Saving his utterly exhausted and poisoned body was impossible. So, Nabu, using the Helm's final magical reserves and his own will, initiated an ancient, final ritual. He didn't fight physical death—he ensured an immediate, protected, and blessed transition for Kent Nelson's soul. Its destination wasn't the chaos of the afterlife but Paradise, the eternal rest and light reserved for the greatest heroes.
Thus fell one of Earth's mightiest protectors. Kent Nelson's body, freed from Nabu's spirit and drained of life, collapsed lifelessly. In that instant, the Helm of Fate, having fulfilled its final mission for this bearer, rolled from his head and vanished in a shimmer of golden-red magic, returning to its extradimensional vault to await a new worthy avatar in a coming era. On the battlefield remained only the lifeless body of the old mage, a symbol of yet another irreplaceable loss.