"There is no freedom. There is no choice. There is only Darkseid."
---
The Fourth World was ending.
New Genesis burned, its silver towers shattered and crumbling into cosmic dust. Apokolips cracked under its own weight, the planet's infernos choking on the corpses of its own legions. The skies—once alive with warships, firepits, and the screams of gods—were silent. The Source Wall, that ancient and final barrier beyond comprehension, had shattered during the final war, unleashing truths and horrors best left forgotten. From the breach, entropy poured in, dissolving time, matter, and memory alike.
And yet… he remained.
Darkseid stood alone at the edge of a dying universe, a black silhouette against the collapsing stars. His armor was cracked, dented from a hundred battles. Smoke coiled from his shoulders like death's cloak. Behind him, the broken ruins of the Mobius Chair sparked uselessly beside the limp, mangled corpse of Metron. To his left lay the body of Orion, his son—his greatest disappointment. To his right, the ashes of Highfather drifted on solar winds.
The gods were dead. The armies scattered. The war was over.
But not for him.
Darkseid did not fall. He did not flee. He had been cast down before, buried, betrayed, fragmented across multiverses and time—but he always returned. Because Darkseid was not merely a being. He was a truth. A force. The final shape of will made absolute.
He raised his gaze toward the rift that tore through space like a wound. It shimmered, unstable, a breach between realities—a collision point where the multiverse frayed at its edges. Through it, he saw another realm. Vast. Unfamiliar. Pulsing with life and chaos. A universe vibrant with cosmic forces, gods in mortal skin, and fragments of something he knew all too well.
Anti-Life.
He could feel it—woven into the fabric of this alien reality. In the minds of its gods. In its sorcery. In its stones. Scattered, incomplete, but present.
His cracked lips parted, and his voice rolled through the emptiness like a funeral bell.
> "So be it."
With no fanfare, no final words to the world he had consumed, Darkseid stepped forward—and the breach accepted him like a gate to destiny.
And the Fourth World died.
---
Elsewhere… In Another Universe
The Marvel Universe pulsed, unaware of what was coming.
On Earth, the Avengers were fractured, scattered across missions and borders. The X-Men debated politics and prophecy on the mutant island of Krakoa. Far beyond, the Silver Surfer drifted between galaxies, sensing new tremors in reality. The Celestials stood dormant, and Galactus—though ancient and mighty—felt an unfamiliar chill in his bones.
Then the stars screamed.
A burst of impossible energy tore through the void beyond Saturn, swallowing sensor arrays, distorting gravity, and sending waves of static across every monitoring system from S.W.O.R.D. to the Kree Empire. What they detected was not a meteor. Not a weapon. Not a ship.
It was something… wrong.
The object crashed into Titan, the ruined moon of Saturn—once a thriving civilization, now only bones and dust. The impact shattered mountains, sent moonquakes rippling across its fractured core, and created a crater a mile wide.
Silence followed.
For hours, no probes returned data. No scans penetrated the crater. It was as if reality around it refused to cooperate—as if the laws of this universe were... resisting something that shouldn't exist.
And then it moved.
From the smoking crater rose a figure—a silhouette at first, black and jagged against the embers. Then shape. Then form.
He rose slowly, deliberately. As if the world itself had to remember what gravity was. As if space had to ask permission to exist around him.
Gray skin like carved obsidian. Eyes glowing with cold fire. A symbol carved into his chest—not of this world, not of any. A symbol of domination. Of fate. Of finality.
Darkseid had arrived.
The dust swirled at his feet as he took his first step into this new realm. He did not look around in wonder. He did not marvel at alien stars or unfamiliar constellations. He judged. Instantly, he assessed the structure of the universe—the weak gods playing at power, the fractured cosmic balance, the false freedom spread like poison across its peoples.
A place without order.
A place that needed him.
He raised his hand. The Omega Effect surged from his fingers—pure will manifest, rewriting laws as it moved. A ridge of mountains on Titan simply ceased to exist, erased not by force, but by command. His command.
From orbit, alarms sounded aboard the Watchtower satellite S.W.O.R.D. had stationed nearby. Energy levels beyond Category-10. Gravitational anomalies. Non-Newtonian distortion. Multiple warning systems failed outright.
Earth's heroes had faced Galactus. The Celestials. The Mad Titan.
But this… this was something else.
A presence.
A truth.
---
Aboard the Peak (S.W.O.R.D. Headquarters)
"Run that again," Abigail Brand snapped, eyes locked on the fluctuating readings. "What the hell is that signature?"
"It's not one of ours," her technician said. "It's… foreign. Alien. No, worse than that—invasive. Like it's rewriting baseline physics."
"Location?"
"Titan. Just beyond Saturn. We're already getting quantum bleed into local space. Gravity distortion's spreading fast. And ma'am... the readings are matching nothing in our archives. Not Kree. Not Skrull. Not Celestial. Not even Beyond Class."
She turned slowly, already knowing what she had to do.
"Get Richards. Stark. T'Challa. Strange. Everyone. We have a Level Omega Threat inbound."
---
Back on Titan
Darkseid stood motionless for a long time, letting the wind circle him. Somewhere in the distance, he felt the approaching minds. Watchers. Observers. Perhaps even Celestials stirring in their silence.
They would come. They would challenge him.
But they would kneel. Or they would die.
> "This reality is flawed," he said aloud, not to himself, but to the very universe.
His voice resonated through the void like a verdict.
> "Its gods are weak. Its people are confused. Its will... divided."
He stepped forward, and with each stride, the stars themselves seemed to dim.
> "They believe in freedom."
A pause.
> "I will teach them truth."
His eyes burned—twin eclipses of the void itself—and in that light, the Omega symbol shone like an omen.
> "And when all hope fades... when the last light dies…"
> "They will know Darkseid."