The chasm spread like a wound through Gotham, frost racing up every building, swallowing windows, bridges, and stone. From the abyss rose claws larger than any tower. The Frostbearer dragged itself higher, its body no longer resembling man or beast. It was becoming something older—something closer to the void it came from.
Its torso split open, and within the ribbed cavern burned a lattice of runes, carved into ice that pulsed like veins. The fragments were no longer spilling out—they were being pulled back in, absorbed, reknit into the monster's growing mass.
Superman dove, fists like meteors, smashing into its chest. The blow landed with thunder, cracking the lattice. For an instant, the giant staggered. Then the runes flared, and a shockwave of frost hurled him across the skyline, embedding him in the side of a tower.
"Clark!" Lantern shot constructs to catch the crumbling building, his voice strained.
Flash circled, striking in rapid succession at the monster's ankles, but the ice regrew faster than he could chip away. "This thing is literally cheating!"
Wonder Woman vaulted upward, shield raised, sword trailing light. She carved into its arm, nearly severing it, but the wound sealed before her boots hit the street again.
From below, Batman's voice cut across the comms. "It's rebuilding faster than we can destroy. We need another angle."
Oblivion walked forward through the froststorm, untouched. His eyes flicked to the runes etched in the creature's chest. I've seen this binding before. Frost-anchored revenants. They draw from the deep plane. Kill the anchor, the husk falls.
The Frostbearer turned its hollow gaze toward him. For a moment, the battlefield stilled. Its voice split the air, every word like an avalanche grinding stone.
"Ghost… you still walk…"
The League froze. Superman tore free from the tower's wreckage, frowning. "It knows you?"
Oblivion said nothing. His blades whispered free, black steel cutting faint arcs of cold fire. His voice was calm, as though speaking to himself: "It remembers cages it could not break."
The monster shrieked, and its body fractured into three towering forms—each one a shard of the original, each marked with burning runes. One stepped toward Lantern's dome. Another lurched at Wonder Woman. The third advanced on Oblivion.
The League split to meet their foes. Oblivion didn't rush. He watched the shard move, its limbs jagged with frozen spines. The core shifted. Right shoulder. Bury the blade two inches deeper than bone.
The shard swung an arm the size of a tree. Oblivion slid beneath, his movement precise, almost measured, and drove his left blade into the joint. The rune flared, then shattered. The shard screamed, its arm collapsing to shards of useless ice.
He pivoted, cutting again, severing the rune in its chest. The shard crumbled, nothing more than frost collapsing onto the street.
From across the battlefield, Wonder Woman's voice rang out as she struggled against her shard. "How did you—"
But the answer didn't come. Oblivion was already moving, already turning toward the others. His silence was sharper than steel.
The Frostbearer's true core, hidden within its central body, burned brighter. Each rune pulsed like a heartbeat. Mist wrapped tighter around Gotham, suffocating the city in endless winter.
Batman's voice cut in, low and urgent. "If he knows how to stop this thing… we let him lead."
Lantern gritted his teeth, holding back claws of ice from piercing his dome. "Since when do we take orders from ghosts with knives?"
"Since the ghost is keeping us alive," Batman answered.
Oblivion raised both blades, gaze fixed on the core. His tone was almost inaudible, but the League felt the weight of every word.
"This ends when I cut the heart."
And then he moved, vanishing into the storm, faster than even Flash's eyes could track. The Frostbearer roared, runes flaring, the world trembling under its voice.
The true battle had begun.