Magic never came without a price.
We just didn't think the fee would be this high.
It began with a resonance spike on the periphery of the mystic grid a cascading surge ripping through magical ley lines under the Himalayas. Zatanna had detected it first. By the time she alerted the Watchtower, the pulse had already infected seven arcane nodes and was spreading fast.
I gazed at the information on the holographic screen turbulent glyphs collapsing into runes I'd never encountered. That in itself should have set off all the warning bells. But what caused my back to stiffen?
The signature was Eighth-Dimensional Divine Script.
Forbidden.
Lost.
And impossible to decipher unless you'd once stood before the Source itself.
Which I had.
"We need to go," I said.
Zatanna, Raven, Constantine, and even Doctor Fate geared up. No questions. No arguments. Only that chilling quiet before you go into the jaws of something you shouldn't make it out of.
We fell into the ritual ground in minutes. A crater had torn across the mountainside, and reality throbbed like a failing heart. A ring of burnt stone held dozens of sorcerers broken around it charred not by flame, but by unbound spell failure. Their souls had been half dragged into the astral, trapped in agony.
"What in the world occurred here?" Constantine grumbled, lighting a cigarette he would not smoke.
"They attempted to call a god," I said, crouching beside the central sigil. "But not one from this plane."
Zatanna's eyes went wide. "They drew from the Outer Void?"
I nodded. "Or worse."
Before I could even think it, the glyphs shrieked.
They contorted in real time, burning red-gold as a presence burst through. Space broke. The wind stilled. Something ancient and unknowable started pushing its way into this world.
Divine Interference, take two. But this wasn't a being with a form. This was concept Entropy Incarnate.
"We can't hold it," Doctor Fate declared, his voice the thunder in a hurricane. "This isn't magic. This is divine entropy primordial devastation granted intellect."
I closed my eyes, drawing upon the deeper well that I didn't visit often. My system awoke, feeding me access codes to techniques buried below my own consciousness Cosmic Code: Tier Omega.
"I'm going in," I told her.
"No," Raven growled. "You open that channel by yourself, you burn. I'm coming with you."
Zatanna moved closer. "Then we all go. Divine magic or not, this is our world."
I didn't protest.
Together, we created the Pentacle Lock, an ancient pattern that combined divine, mortal, and abyssal magic into a unified stream.
My power was the center the divine anchor. Zatanna did the language strands, with Raven channeling raw emotional energy into the pattern. Constantine added it to the mix with sigils that predated the Bible, and Fate warped reality enough to give us dominance.
Air shrieked as the being started descending.
And I looked, beholding the source of the catastrophe.
This wasn't random.
A human had seeded the glyphs. Someone wanted this world upset from within. And they'd utilized our own magical grid as a point of entry.
My system came to life.
Alert: Disastrous Magical Breach Foiled. Culprit Identity Concealed. Divine Lock Activated. You have acquired: [Astral Forge Magic]
The seal collapsed in on itself, sucking the entity back into nothingness. The instant it was gone, the world breathed again. The ley lines cooled.
But the damage was done.
We'd made it through.
By the skin of our teeth.
And someone out there had just tested Earth's magical defenses and mine.
This was no one-time attack.
It was the first domino in a much larger game.
And now they knew we had divine capabilities.
The question wasn't if they'd attack again.
It was how soon.