Three hours past midnight, Paradox stood in front of a mirror that didn't reflect him.
It was an old piece—salvaged from a failed S.T.A.R. Labs pocket dimension experiment, reinforced with a crystalline lattice of soranium glass mined from a dead timeline. The frame was gold, but the gold wept red when exposed to entropy. The mirror itself shimmered with static, not silver—its surface occasionally showing glimpses of places no longer real.
This wasn't an invention. It was a wound. One he'd chosen to keep open.
"Still bleeding," he muttered, tapping a diagnostic wand against its side. The readings were erratic, like the mirror resisted being understood. A few of his tools fried on contact, even those built with layered quantum foam derived from remnants of Galactus' shadow. That had only happened once before—with a cube he made from entropy dust and Promethean soul-glass, and that thing had eaten Constantine's left boot.
Speaking of Constantine—
"Oi," the mage called, descending the lift with a mug in hand and a glowing rune branded lazily onto his wrist. "Tell me again why we've got a cursed mirror bleeding cosmic vinegar in your lab like a horror show run by IKEA?"
Paradox didn't look away. "Because I'm fairly certain it's calling me."
"To do what? Lick it? Whisper your trauma to it?" Constantine raised a brow. "That thing's cursed six ways to Sunday and none of them involve good life choices."
"It's not a curse. It's a beacon. A relic from a timeline I haven't lived yet."
Constantine blinked. "You're saying it remembers a version of you that hasn't happened yet?"
Paradox finally turned toward him, slow and deliberate. "I think it's watching me back."
Before Constantine could answer, a low-frequency thrum filled the air. The lights dimmed. Ivy, barefoot and wild-haired, stormed in from the greenhouse wing with a sentient orchid hissing in her hand.
"Paradox," she snapped. "Why is a black hole forming in the compost pit?"
Constantine looked at the mirror. "You sure you're not cursed?"
Paradox didn't answer right away. Instead, he touched a hand to his chest, triggering the new compact suit folded inside his synthetic dermal layer. Liquid metal spread across his torso like silk, locking at the spine and shoulders. The plating was dull-black with streaks of cobalt—his own alloy, forged from vibranium dust, Apokoliptian armor scrap, and nanocircuitry stolen from a drone in Knowhere.
"Whatever it is," he said, voice lowered and calm, "it's leaking through more than just the mirror."
He turned to Ivy. "Where exactly in the compost pit?"
She gave a sharp nod. "North quadrant. Under the bone-gourd hybrid."
He blinked. "The one that bit Bruce last week?"
"The same."
He grabbed a wristband from the Forge wall—a newly finished Tachyon Diver, designed for point-blank temporal disruptions. Built using a fusion of stolen Kree tech, Shazam-touched capacitor coils, and a circuit matrix modeled after the Eye of Agamotto, the device wrapped itself around his wrist with a satisfying hum.
Then he ran.
Not walked. Not flew. Ran—because sometimes, the old ways still felt more real.
The compost pit was steaming by the time he arrived. The soil churned in slow, unnatural rhythms, and the temperature dropped with each step. There, nestled among rotting mutant vegetables, was a hole.
A perfect black circle. Not a tunnel, not a portal. Just… absence.
He crouched beside it, scanning. Readings flickered in and out—his scanners weren't failing, they were being rejected. This wasn't tech. It wasn't even magic. It was negative reality.
He activated the Tachyon Diver and dropped a node into the pit. "Stand back."
"Define 'back'," Ivy called from the treeline.
"Five dimensions if you've got them."
The node pulsed once, then unfolded—projecting a containment field using time as a solid. The hole rippled, resisted, and then… expanded.
And that's when they heard it.
From the mirror behind them—back in the lab—came a scream. Not of pain. Not of rage.
It was recognition.
Back inside, Constantine watched the mirror flicker. For a moment, his own reflection stepped forward, winked, and said:
"You're late."
And then the glass shattered.
Not outward. Inward.
To be continued…