Whispers from Beyond
The Watchtower hovered in low Earth orbit, its shields flickering from the aftershock of Superboy Prime's defeat. Inside its main observation deck, Superman stood in silence, gazing at the planet below—not with hope, but with dread.
Even after all his years as a protector, nothing he had faced could compare to this.
"Clark," Batman's voice cut through the silence as he entered the deck, "Sentry didn't win. He survived. That's not the same thing."
Superman nodded grimly. "He's changing, Bruce. I saw it in his eyes. He wasn't fighting Prime. The Void was."
"And the Void wants out," Batman finished, his tone as cold as the vacuum beyond the glass.
---
Elsewhere…
Robert Reynolds drifted in his own mindscape—an infinite abyss speckled with broken mirrors. Each shard showed a different version of himself: the kind man, the unstable god, the destroyer, the protector. None of them were whole. None of them were real.
But one reflection stared back… and spoke.
> "You were never made to be Robert Reynolds. You were made to be the End."
It wasn't the Void.
It was the original program—Sentinel-0—the divine protocol designed by the Architects.
> "They forged you as a failsafe. Not for evil. Not for chaos. But for balance. You are the blade that trims the overgrowth of creation."
Robert shook his head. "I don't want to destroy. I just want to be human again."
> "That path is gone. You were never human."
A surge of agony tore through him as the truth sank in. His past—his memories—were implants, forged by higher forces to stabilize his identity. There was no serum. No accident. The man he thought he was... had never existed.
He wasn't broken.
He was programmed to break.
---
Meanwhile, in the Astral Realm…
Doctor Strangefate—fusion of the greatest magical minds—stood before a seer made of stardust and whispering time.
"Is he the end?" Strangefate asked. "Or our last chance?"
The seer gave a cryptic answer:
> "The Sentry is not a hero. Nor is he a villain. He is the mirror of creation's guilt. And soon… the Architects will come to erase their mistake."
---
Back in the Watchtower, a portal opened.
Not magic. Not technology.
It was raw code—reality's framework rewriting itself.
From it stepped a being cloaked in geometric robes, faceless and silent. One of the Architects.
Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman turned to face it.
> "You tampered with a world you had no right to touch," Superman growled.
The being answered with a voice that bypassed sound and echoed into the soul.
> "The anomaly must be corrected. The balance restored. The Sentry must be deleted."
Superman stepped forward, fists clenched. "He's not a program. He's a man."
The Architect tilted its head. No emotion. No threat.
> "Then the man will perish with the Void."