The Abyss wasn't dark. It was alive.
It tore at the mind the moment we passed into the void, telling secrets no one should ever know, revealing futures never lived unless you chose poorly. It had no heavens above it, no stars, but a black sea of space and beneath it ground made of shattered memories and hardened despair.
I led them. My cloak glimmered with starlight, the sole light in that location. Behind them, the new Justice League lingered at the edge of sanity and the unknown.
"Why here?" Barry grumbled half seriously. "You couldn't have chosen a beach?
"This is the one place where your boundaries are irrelevant," I told them. "The Abyss undresses you. No tools, no deities, no time to catch your breath. You evolve here… or you shatter."
Diana didn't blink. Zatanna set her teeth, her aura expanding like a shield against the probing whispers. Raven, quiet, looked comfortable already.
We went down further.
The air thickened, a weight that seemed to press down with each step, one of guilt. Each took a different trial an individual crucible meant to test them to beyond their own expectations.
Flash disappeared first. The Abyss parted for him, and he saw an endless corridor of frozen moments in time. He'd need to run faster than his regrets literally.
Then Aquaman. The dark sea at our feet churned and welled up, pulling him under. His test would be authority: shaping the will of an ocean that refused any king.
Diana's road burst forth with the bones of dead warriors figures of her past, her future, her legends. She was confronted by the question all immortals sooner or later face: what does your legacy become when gods no longer count?
Zatanna… hers was silent. A library made of ash and blood. Each book breathed incantations she'd never had the courage to learn. Her trial was temptation total knowledge at total price.
That left me, Raven, and Batman.
Bruce didn't say anything. He never questioned where we were or why I'd brought them. He simply walked alongside me, expressionless, until a mirror appeared before him reflecting a version of himself who had murdered Joker. Who had broken every rule. He moved forward, unafraid.
I faced Raven.
"This place reacts to inner turmoil," I told him.
She looked up at me, eyes burning dimly with her father's curse. "Then it should feel right at home with me."
The Abyss convulsed.
A gulf yawned beneath her feet, and a throne of bone and darkness pulled her down. I nearly stopped her. Nearly.
But this was needed.
Only I stayed in the middle of the storm now.
I sat cross-legged, suspended over the broken reality below. The Abyss throbbed around me. It did not greet me. It recognized me. Like one predator to another.
"Show me what I've been avoiding," I spoke out loud.
And it did.
Visions swamped me alternate realities, lost truths, forbidden methods. My divine blood seethed. My mortal soul shattered under the pressure. But I clung, breathing through it.
I wasn't here to endure the Abyss. I was here to overcome it.
A voice, ancient and infinite, whispered in the dark.
Child of the Folded Realms. Why do you seek power still?
"I don't seek power," I said. "I craft it."
The darkness hesitated then surrendered.
When the others came back days or hours at best, time lost all meaning here they were altered. Their eyes burned brighter. Their strides had new purpose. No more hesitation. No more frailties. Only determination.
Diana's eyes met mine. "We're ready."
"No," I stood, my words echoing in the void as the Abyss wrapped around me like a shroud of darkness. "We're nearly ready."
Because war was coming. And I'd just learned the name of the being leading it.
A name that even the gods feared to speak.