"I can do this. I can handle it..." Darkseid's eyes blazed with fire, muscles bulging grotesquely as his body swelled at a frenzied pace. Within moments he'd become a giant over ten meters tall, but the energy was accumulating far faster than he could manage. His brute-force suppression hadn't brought order—it had triggered a full-scale backlash.
Blood-red flames erupted across his body, burning wild and uncontained. Waves of dark energy rose to smother them, but only fed the fire's spread.
Steppenwolf took one look at the scene and seemed to recognize what was coming. Without a word, he grabbed his axe and bolted. DeSaad the arch-sorcerer, Granny Goodness, and a host of other New Gods realized something was very wrong and scattered in every direction.
Only Kalibak remained where he stood. He couldn't care less whether his father lived or died—he was looking to snatch the biggest prize from the flames.
This evil-flavored version of father-son affection was truly touching. Darkseid had always despised this particular son, and operating on the principle of if I can't have it, neither can you, he threw a punch.
"Old bastard! If you won't give it to me, I'll take it myself!" Father and son finally came to blows. Kalibak unleashed every ounce of his potential, lunging like a rabid beast, dodging the iron fist and raising his serrated greatsword for a savage overhead strike.
But the gap in power was enormous, and Darkseid had just surged to a whole new level. Kalibak's attacks were laughable—one exchange and he was on the ground, reduced to a punching bag.
The energy inside Darkseid had swollen to critical mass. Having finally found an outlet, he hammered away like a man possessed.
Two punches drove Kalibak to the brink of death. A third obliterated him completely.
Body, divine position, soul—all annihilated. The Anti-Life Equation and the Omega Effect tore through what remained until nothing was left. Kalibak simply ceased to exist.
Sensing Kalibak's presence vanish, the fleeing New Gods ran even faster.
"Why aren't you running? Aren't you afraid of me?" Darkseid had swollen to thirty meters tall. His voice came out muffled as he addressed Thea.
She craned her neck to look up at him, frowning slightly. Deep reserves, solid foundation—she'd give him that. But this was as far as he'd go. The aura of death clinging to his face was impossibly dense. He was holding on to life through sheer willpower alone.
Too bad his time was up. Crack—crack— From the absolute depths of his soul came a faint, almost imperceptible fracturing sound.
It grew louder, spreading outward to his mind, his will, his body.
Darkseid's chest split wide open. A pillar of light punched clean through him, front to back. One became three, then more than ten, each roughly a meter in diameter and brimming with unfathomable energy.
He opened his mouth to call for help—he believed Thea, a being from a higher dimension, could save him.
But before the words left his lips, the world around him changed. Everything was black and white. Only two colors existed in this place. Thea watched him with the same expression as before, and he found himself back to normal size.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it—the thirty-meter giant beside him, energy hemorrhaging from every surface, seconds from detonation. He knew that was also himself.
"I...?" The frenzy of moments ago had vanished completely. Reason returned, and he finally understood his situation.
"Am I dead?"
"Technically, not quite yet. You're right on the edge." Thea pointed at the giant. "When he explodes, that's when you die."
"Are you going to save me?" He asked with a sliver of hope.
Thea shattered the illusion without mercy. "Not a chance. You're this far gone—who could possibly save you?"
She'd wanted to say she was simply here to witness this moment, but was afraid the declaration would literally kill him on the spot.
"I'm a friend of life. Starting with you, I'll absorb sufficient death and officially begin fulfilling my duties."
"While there's still time, if you have any contingencies in reserve, now's the moment to use them. Otherwise it'll be too late..." Her words carried a pointed implication.
Darkseid clenched his teeth, widened his eyes, balled his fists—but here he was nothing more than a dying man's phantom. Not a shred of power answered him.
"You won't try to stop me?"
Thea shook her head. "Use whatever tricks you want. Whether you live or die is none of my concern. I only need to witness the death. I'll say this much: you're lucky. If I complete the rules, escaping won't be nearly so easy for you."
She closed her eyes and said nothing more. The death of a top-tier god like Darkseid was a momentous event for the multiverse and equally significant for her. It involved rules of staggering complexity, and she needed to sort through every last one to ensure nothing went wrong.
Darkseid gave a heavy snort. Facing his own death, he'd finally allowed a trace of fear to surface. He drew two deep, ragged breaths and forced himself steady.
"Let me out!"
Thea waved a hand and flung his consciousness back into the world. What happened next was the most spectacular firework she'd ever seen.
Darkseid's body detonated from the inside out.
The blast echoed across all of Apokolips, then rippled outward through the Sphere of the Gods and the multiverse itself. The shockwave obliterated the palace and leveled every structure within a hundred-mile radius.
Apokolips had always been a hellscape. Now it was even worse. The entire planet seemed one heartbeat from bursting apart. Surface temperatures spiked instantly—a rough estimate put them at 80°C (176°F). Only because ordinary inhabitants here carried a trace of divinity in their blood did they avoid instant death; without it, half the population would have been cooked alive on the spot.
Thea swept a glance across the surface and counted thirty volcanoes erupting simultaneously. The entire world reeked of sulfur. Earthquakes and hurricanes tore through civilian areas unchecked. Everyone was fleeing, though none of them knew where to go—there was no safe ground on this planet. All they could do was follow the crowd blindly.
Darkseid's mountain-sized body crashed to the ground. At the center of his chest, a vortex wreathed in deep crimson energy churned—the Anti-Life Equation.
The Equation tried to flee. Thea locked it down.
Even after catastrophic damage like this, Darkseid still retained some instinctive will and residual life force. Had he been merely a New God, he might have reawakened after millennia. But the Omega Effect negated that possibility. Its power of absolute termination denied him any conventional path to resurrection.
The light faded from Darkseid's eyes. This evil sovereign who had loomed over the multiverse for eons was ultimately killed by his own ambition and greed.
The five Divine Positions—Darkness, Evil, Power, Tyranny, Slaughter—formed Darkseid's foundation, and they were also one of the world's own foundations. If his death today triggered instability, the entire universe would suffer the consequences, especially on the eve of the Dark Multiverse's emergence.
Thea had suppressed the Anti-Life Equation, and with it, the deeper Omega Effect and all five Divine Positions.