The gathering was grim.
Inside the Watchtower's shadowed war chamber, the core of the Justice League stood silent. Every chair was filled, but no one spoke—not even Superman. The air itself seemed wary of breaking the quiet, as though it knew the gravity of the name that now haunted the stars.
Vorax.
"Show it again," Batman said coldly.
A screen flickered to life above the obsidian table. Static gave way to an image—distorted and blurred, like reality itself couldn't focus on what it was displaying.
The footage was from the Magus Observatory, before it was swallowed by nonexistence. A camera pointed into a stretch of deep space, just beyond the orbit of Neptune.
What it captured defied explanation: a patch of void consuming stars, unraveling cosmic filaments like threads, moving without momentum—without rules. And at its center… something impossible. Not a being, but an absence so absolute it seemed alive.
Even now, watching it, Wonder Woman's grip tightened on her lasso. The truth burned in her mind.
"It devours gods," she whispered. "Not kills. Not consumes. Erases."
"No wonder the Lords of Order tremble," said Aquaman, his voice low. "I felt it in the ocean—like the tide turned inside out."
"We've fought gods before," Green Lantern offered, though his voice lacked confidence. "We've stopped anti-life, reality-warpers, time itself—"
"Not this," murmured Superman. "This… thing doesn't belong in our scale of comprehension."
Batman leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. "Then we need new comprehension."
---
Elsewhere — The Void Between Dimensions
There was no sound, no time, no mass.
Only the pressure of absolute hunger.
In the great gap between galaxies and gods, Vorax stirred.
He didn't awaken. Not like mortals. There was no slumber in his existence—only stillness between feedings. Only stretches of patience as lesser beings gave him reason to move again.
And now, something pulled him.
She pulled him.
A cackling melody in the fabric of reality. A voice unafraid. A grin painted in cosmic blood. Her laughter sang across the thresholds of dying realms, tickling his awareness like a siren made of entropy.
> "I've been practicing my vows, Voidy," she whispered through the layers of unreality.
"'Til death do us part' won't work though. Neither of us dies easy."
Vorax did not "feel" in the mortal sense. But curiosity… curiosity was close.
She was not of his making, and yet she understood. A parasite of madness and brilliance. A predator who devoured meaning, like he devoured existence.
> The Batwoman Who Laughs.
In the darkness of his un-body, Vorax coiled inward.
He saw the Earth through a billion fractured timelines. He saw its gods—so loud, so proud. He saw the League gathering. He saw the mages tremble. He saw the final moment before silence.
And he moved.
Not with speed, but with inevitability.
Reality warped behind him, bleeding color and purpose. Nebulas dimmed. Wormholes collapsed into themselves like ashamed eyes closing before him. In the dying vacuum where angels once wept, he pressed a fragment of himself into direction.
He approached Earth.
---
Back on Earth — Hall of Magic, Antarctica
Zatanna trembled, her hands soaked in ancient sigils.
The wards had failed. Every barrier they'd erected around Earth's mystical axis—sigils carved in dragonbone, spells from Merlin's vault, dimensional locks guarded by the Spectre—had begun to fracture.
Doctor Fate stood beside her, helm pulsing.
"His presence is a paradox," Fate said. "To name him is to lessen him. But to ignore him is to die."
John Constantine lit his seventh cigarette, fingers shaking. He hadn't said a word since dawn.
Deadman hovered above them all, flickering. "It's not just Earth. He's brushing against the Astral Layer. I heard the cries of dying worlds… and I heard someone laughing with them."
That's when the cold came.
A sudden drop in temperature, but not from weather. From will.
The great obsidian doors of the Hall creaked open without being touched.
Zatanna raised her hands, eyes glowing.
"Who dares—"
The laughter answered.
A slow, slinking, dripping giggle that turned into a velvet moan of insanity.
She entered without fanfare—her smile arriving before her form.
The Batwoman Who Laughs.
Clad in ragged red and black armor forged from Gotham's shadows and Apokoliptian iron, her face was carved in the likeness of both a bat and a jester. Her smile stretched too far. Her eyes glowed like dying stars.
And behind her dragged a leash of laughter—four Jokerized Justice League corpses, puppeted like marionettes, twitching with sick grace.
"Play nice, boys," she whispered to them.
Zatanna summoned fire.
Fate reached for the Weave.
Constantine turned pale.
"Relax, lovelies," the Batwoman cooed. "I'm not here to dance. I'm here to warn you."
The room pulsed.
> "He's coming. My Voidy. My husband-to-be. My silence incarnate."
"You still think you have time? Darlings, he's already tasting your sun."
---
Deep Space — The Edge of the Solar System
Beyond the Kuiper Belt, telescopes blinked out.
One by one, the stars vanished.
Not exploded. Not destroyed.
Just... gone. Like erasures on a canvas.
A ripple spread across Saturn's rings.
And from behind Pluto, the void bloomed like a wound.
Vorax had arrived.