The room shuddered like glass the instant she uttered the name.
Ner'Valun.
It resonated not in the air, but within the bones. Within the very weave of the room. The Watchtower's arcane wards quivered. The celestial window shaded. Even my cosmic senses withdrew, as though they'd stroked an open nerve in reality itself.
I didn't bat an eye. But within?
I shattered.
Zatanna appeared in front of me, standing with her arms by her sides, no paint covering the fear on her face. Her normal composure lost. Her voice shaking, but she met my gaze. She intended me to see.
"Ner'Valun," I echoed, slowly. "The Wyrm Below. The Memory Eater. The first god of forgetting."
She nodded. "I bound him. Years before you came. Before I joined the League."
I gazed at her, frozen. "You bound him?"
She raised her hand barely and slipped the charm away from her wrist, where it had stuck like a bracelet. Under it was a burn. A circle. Softly glowing. Alive.
A god's brand.
"I didn't mean to," she breathed. "I was careless. Panicked. My father… he was dying. I was still studying the old texts his texts and I opened a doorway I couldn't shut.
I'd seen madness. Faced beings made of screaming dimensions. But this this was Zatanna. The woman who stood with me when Diana weakened, who battled through the Abyss to reclaim Raven from breakdown. The one I trusted enough to bleed alongside.
And she'd concealed a *odtier entity?
"Why now?" I questioned. My tone didn't increase. I didn't scream. That hurt her more.
"Because it's brewing. And because the cults worship you. And Ner'Valun… he remembers you from the last time."
I tensed.
That name had been gouged out of even my mind. I hadn't understood why. Now I did.
"I did not tell the League," she went on, "because I knew they would lock me in a containment field. I knew Constantine would come for me. And I… I couldn't let Ner'Valun get loose just because they panicked."
"So you risked me."
She clamped down on her lip. Her eyes were shiny. "No. I made that decision. Because if anyone is going to stop him if anyone is going to stop me, if things come to that it's you."
I turned away, grinding my jaw. "You know what happens when a god breaks full binding. Particularly one of oblivion."
"I do," she said softly.
My thoughts divided into strata, attempting to do math on possibilities, timelines, containment fields, reality fracture patterns. Nothing came up clean. Not unless I did the unthinkable.
Erase Zatanna.
Wipe her from the multiverse's memory.
I spun back to her. She hadn't budged. She stood there, open, exposed, holding the metaphorical blade to her own throat.
"You should've told me earlier."
"I know."
"You should've trusted me with this before cults began calling me a god."
"I didn't want to lose you."
Silence.
Thick. Tense. Shattering at the edges.
I took a step closer, bridging the gap between us. My hand hovered over the brand. It vibrated with evil sleeping, but aware.
"I'm not going to let you go through this by yourself," I said at last. "But if Ner'Valun awakens… if he even breathes on this plane"
"I'll destroy myself," she completed. "Before I let him use me."
We stood there for a moment, poised. Warrior and witch. God and woman. Truth and regret hung suspended between us like blades.
Then I nodded.
"Then we do this together."
Because I knew what was coming now.
The cults were one thing.
But Ner'Valun?
He was something different.
And he remembered me from a time before time. Before the DC Universe. Before existence.
And worse?
I remembered him now, too.