Thought-Made Flesh
In the infinite heart of the Monitor realm, time did not flow.
It waited.
And now, it waited no longer.
The armor stood tall—nearly twelve feet of radiant gold, etched with ancient runes that pulsed like the lifeblood of dying stars. It bore no cape. No insignia. Only the mark of existence itself: The House of El, carved across the chest like a cosmic promise.
Within it, Kal-El stirred—not as a child of Krypton, but as the Thought Robot: a sentient defense mechanism created to match any threat that could ever exist… or ever be imagined.
He remembered dying.
He remembered every death.
Kingdom Come. Injustice. The anti-life plague. Flashpoint. Over and over across realities, he had fallen.
And yet… he was here again.
"Status," he said, his voice neither human nor machine, but something truer.
A Monitor stepped forward—tall, robed in ivory, faceless beneath a hood of light.
> "Entity designation: Void-Sentry. Narrative Class: Apex Entropic. Effect: Multiversal erasure. Current body count: Seventeen realities. Projected breach into Prime Continuity in six cycles."
Superman flexed his fingers. They groaned like shifting tectonic plates.
> "You were summoned because you are the only being who can resist the conceptual erosion he brings."
"You made me for him."
> "We made you for this moment. Not for victory. But for choice."
Superman closed his eyes. He could hear them—millions of versions of himself, echoing across universes. Some broken. Some triumphant. All watching.
All hoping.
---
Elsewhere—in the chasm of erased time—the Void sat alone in a throne of nothing.
He had no kingdom.
No worshipers.
Just absence.
Just silence.
And that pleased him.
But a shiver ran through the un-space around him.
He turned.
Something approached.
Something inevitable.
A golden figure, rippling with celestial script, stepped into the erasure zone, untouched by the decay.
The Void rose slowly, black tendrils of un-matter swirling at his heels. His voice crawled through the void like poison mist.
"Kal-El."
Superman answered with stillness.
"You are early," the Void said. "I was hoping for more worlds to disappear before we danced."
Superman didn't respond with words.
He extended his hand, palm open, glowing with the force of a billion suns' worth of willpower.
The Void's smile faltered for just a moment.
"So be it."
They moved.
Faster than thought. Deeper than meaning. They collided not with fists, but ideas.
Light clashed against dark.
Hope met despair.
And reality around them screamed.
---
Across the multiverse, sensitive beings—gods, sorcerers, prophets—collapsed. They saw only a flash. A war not of men, but myths.
Some whispered a single word before falling unconscious:
"Ragnarök."
But no.
This wasn't the end of the world.
This was the end of stories.