In the void of the Negative Speed Force, time collapsed in on itself. For Kal-El, there was no past, no future—only the ceaseless hum of his own heartbeat, echoing against infinite darkness. Day and night meant nothing here; pain and despair were constants, as real as the oppressive weight of silence.
At first, the twisted realm sought to break him. Shadows of Ultraman lunged with mocking laughter. The Injustice Superman's voice whispered accusations of cowardice. Even the Batman Who Laughs offered him a gauntlet of poisoned light, promising escape in exchange for surrendering hope.
But Kal-El stood firm. Each taunt, each vision, only fueled the spark Barry Allen had planted within him. He drew on the memory of sunlit fields implanted long ago—a boy's laughter beneath a blue sky. He held onto the promise he made to Thomas Wayne.
I will return things to how they once were—and how they should be.
He clenched his fist. His eyes burned with a quiet fire.
---
On Earth-0, life went on as if nothing had changed—because nothing, outwardly, had changed. The New 52 was everything and nothing. Superman soared above Metropolis, but he was a different man: unfamiliar with Barry's warmth, unshaped by the century under a blue star. Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash—all carried memories of past threats, but no one remembered the cosmic sacrifice that saved them.
Barry Allen awakened to a crisp morning in Central City. He donned his red suit out of instinct, racing errands and saving cat burglars with the efficiency of a man with no mistakes to weigh him down. He felt... lighter, unburdened, but a small, confusing ache fluttered in his heart. He couldn't place it—a name, a face lost to time.
Meanwhile, Lucius Fox detected anomalies in the timestream—residual tremors from the Flashpoint corrections. He swore he glimpsed a signature, a pattern unlike any known meta-human. But before he could inform Bruce Wayne, he was rebuffed. The world had been rewritten; there was no place for ghosts from a timeline that never existed.
---
In the Negative Speed Force, Kal-El discovered pockets of temporal residue—fragments of the world he once knew. Each fragment was a whisper: a family reunited, a child rescued, a city saved. They floated like dying embers begging for revival.
He reached out and touched one. The pain of loss struck his mind like a physical blow—images of Barry Allen watching him vanish, the world forgetting his name.
He closed his eyes.
And for a heartbeat, he reached back.
The Negative Speed Force resisted—its very nature was to erode willpower. Yet Kal-El—charged by a century of blue-sun energy—pushed through the barrier. He channeled the raw hope that Barry had embedded in him. Each thought, each memory, sharpened his focus.
He wasn't just a prisoner here. He was a guardian of possibility, a beacon in unyielding night.
Slowly, the darkness around him began to ripple. Light fractured the void, carving a path toward...
---
On Earth, Dr. Manhattan observed with detached curiosity. The New 52 universe was stable, but brittle—as though its core had been forged in haste. He noted the anomalies with interest; somewhere, a constant insisted on existence beyond his calibration. He tracked the faint signal back to the Negative Speed Force, a place he'd only touched once.
He considered intervening—this Kal-El was not part of his experiment. Yet he hesitated. The boy was a paradox: an echo of hope and sacrifice. For now, it would be his error to correct.
---
Deep within the entropy, Kal-El felt the river of time stirring again—an echo of the Speed Force's positive current surging to reclaim its lost child. He vaulted forward, the darkness fracturing beneath his will. Faces of ancient Krypton, his parents' gentle voices, Barry's final promise—all guided him home.
And then, he emerged.
He stood on the boundary between worlds: the void behind him, reality before him. He'd become more than a man; he was a force of renewal. Yet even as he prepared to step through, he understood his penance was not over. The Spectre's curse would not be broken by a simple return. He would need to restore not just events, but faith—to remind the world that hope, once lost, could never truly die.
A ripple in the void heralded something unexpected: a faint, familiar pulse—a vestige of Barry Allen's essence.
Barry, running through the timestream once more, chasing a memory he could not name.
At that moment, hope crystallized.
To be continued...