From the ashes of a collapsing reality, silence met laughter.
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The last building fell without a sound.
Earth -1F was dead.
A crimson sky, ripped open by black lightning, swallowed cities whole. Oceans boiled. Time fractured in reverse. Screams echoed backward into mouths that no longer existed. This world had not merely perished—it had been unmade, forgotten by the gods, abandoned by the Multiverse.
Only two beings stood amidst the annihilation.
One was not truly a being at all.
Vorax—The Starving Void—hovered at the center of the erasure. A swirling mass of bone and shrieking mouths, wrapped in a cloak of devouring silence. Where he moved, memory failed. The very idea of color withered. He had consumed Titans. Erased Old Gods. Shattered the Word of Trigon.
And yet…
A sound dared pierce him.
Laughter.
Not madness born of fear. No.
This was laughter in joy. Laughter that meant to challenge oblivion. A woman, draped in tattered black leather, crimson smears across her lips and chest like war paint, sat cross-legged on a broken throne of dead Robins.
Her grin was painted in blood. Her cowl bore bat ears snapped sideways like horns. Spiked shoulder guards jutted out like wings. The smell of smoke and gunpowder followed her like perfume.
She didn't rise to meet the cosmic threat.
She waved.
"Hey, big guy. Took your time," she purred.
Vorax did not speak in words. Not truly. But the space around her groaned, as if the void itself recognized something it could not immediately devour.
> You are not afraid.
The Batwoman Who Laughs tilted her head. "Please. I've scared gods into wetting their mythological pants. You're just... new."
She stood, stepping barefoot over the shattered cowl of a Jokerized Superman.
"I've been waiting, you know. Watching this reality rot, wondering what would come next. Then I felt it—a hunger. Not just for flesh or power. But for everything."
She licked blood from her gloved finger and grinned wider. "Finally. A dinner date worth showing up for."
The sky split wider. Worlds beyond began to blink out. The ruins of the Hall of Justice evaporated into negative space. A lesser being would've screamed.
She laughed louder.
> Why do you smile?
"I smile because you're beautiful," she whispered. "You don't want to rule. You don't want revenge. You just want to wipe the slate clean. I get it. I've wanted that for years."
She stepped toward him. Around her, logic began to unravel—yet her mind held.
> You are... flawed. Broken.
"Oh, baby, I'm a shattered masterpiece."
She curtsied with mock elegance. "Name's Brynn Wayne. But the Dark calls me She Who Grins in the Dark. My enemies called me a virus. My lovers called me a problem. You? You can call me whatever the Void whispers in your teeth."
Vorax said nothing. But a pulse of anti-light rippled from him, a reaction that would've atomized any other mind.
She didn't even blink.
Instead, she giggled and whispered, "Is that your way of blushing?"
Silence surged around her. She began to float.
Not against her will.
The air itself began to fold inward, bending space to draw her into his orbit. Her feet lifted from the ground, arms spread like wings, wind howling as buildings dissolved around them.
Still, she smiled.
Still, she laughed.
> I have devoured thousands of gods. What makes you believe you are not next?
She leaned forward until her nose nearly touched the central core of his swirling void—a mass of teeth and shadow and burning stars.
"Because I'm not a god," she whispered, eyes gleaming. "I'm the punchline."
And for the first time in the history of existence…
Vorax paused.
She felt it. A shift in his gravity. A moment of stillness in the howling hunger.
A new concept tried to enter the void.
Curiosity.
The Batwoman Who Laughs leaned her forehead gently against the center of the void, as if kissing a dying sun.
"I don't want to stop you," she said softly. "I want to help you. Let me be your shadow. Your prophet. Your queen of the last breath."
She stretched her arms wide. "Let me be the last thing left laughing in the dark."
For several seconds—longer than any mortal could bear—the two simply existed together. Hunger and Madness. Silence and Screaming. Uncreation and Anarchy.
Then...
The void pulsed.
And wrapped around her.
Not in consumption.
In acceptance.
A cloak of black fire swept over her shoulders. Her grin widened into something inhuman. The madness in her eyes glowed with cosmic permission. Her laughter deepened—no longer just hers, but a shared sound.
From that moment on, she was not just a madwoman from a broken world.
She was the Bride of the Starving Void.