The first warning came from Doctor Strange.
Alex was in the orbital command sanctum when the Eye of Agamotto flared on the holo-feed, its glow sharp and uneven, like a heartbeat out of rhythm. Strange did not waste words.
"Something is pressing against reality," he said. "Not slipping through. Pushing. The Source Wall fracture is reacting."
Alex felt it a second later.
Not fear. Not danger.
Recognition.
Deep within Cybertron's core, far beyond the forges and planetary guns, the fused Mother Box construct resonated. It did not resist him. It did not rebel. Instead, it pulsed like a lighthouse, sending a signal outward into the dark. A beacon answering a call older than the universe's current shape.
"They're broadcasting," Alex said quietly. "Not escaping. Pointing."
Tony Stark's voice cut in from the command ring. "That's comforting. In the same way a nuclear countdown clock is comforting."
Alex's eyes hardened. "Sound the alert. Full planetary posture."
Across Earth, the sky subtly changed. Orbital shields thickened, overlapping layers of gravitic distortion and hard-light geometry sliding into place. Cybertron's planetary arrays rotated, star-facing weapons warming, machine spirits humming under strict command. From Wakanda to New York, from lunar batteries to Martian shipyards, every defense grid snapped to readiness.
For the first time since Thanos fell, Earth prepared not for invasion—but for war in space.
Then space tore open.
A Boom Tube the size of a continent flowered into existence beyond Earth's orbit, its edges burning with fractured Source energy. Reality screamed as geometry folded inside out, the void bleeding gold and black.
Darkseid stepped through.
Not an avatar. Not a projection.
This Darkseid carried the scar of the Source Wall in his flesh.
Cracks of radiant void energy ran through his stone-like form, glowing veins of fractured creation. His eyes burned with an Omega Effect twisted into something denser, heavier—gravity made hostile. Behind him poured legions of Parademons, their armor reforged with Source-touched alloys, wings cutting arcs of fire through vacuum.
The universe seemed to recoil from him.
"Target acquired," FRIDAY announced. "Threat designation: god-tier. No upper ceiling detected."
Darkseid's voice rolled through space without sound, imposed directly onto every sensor, every mind.
"Earth," he intoned. "Cybertron. Bearers of stolen authority. You stand upon borrowed order."
He raised his eyes—and fired.
Omega beams lanced outward, twin rivers of annihilation striking Earth's planetary shields.
They broke.
Not shattered—but bent.
Energy cascaded across the shield layers, rippling like oceans under hurricane winds. Cities dimmed. Satellites screamed telemetry overload. The shields held, but the impact echoed through every system.
Tony exhaled sharply. "Okay. That's new."
Parademons surged forward, thousands becoming tens of thousands, pouring toward orbital platforms and defense arrays. Earth's guns answered. Rail lances, plasma cannons, antimatter flak turned space into a burning storm. Entire wings of Parademons evaporated, only for more to replace them.
And then Alex moved.
He vanished from the command sanctum in a pulse of folded space and reappeared between Earth and Darkseid, his battleship already unfolding behind him, Cybertron's sigil blazing across its hull. Reality bent around him as layered systems activated—Kryptonian reinforcement matrices, AllSpark authority fields, Mother Box computation folding probability into weaponized certainty.
Darkseid turned his gaze fully upon him.
"So," Darkseid said. "The thief reveals himself."
Alex did not answer with words.
He struck.
A blow that shattered asteroids kilometers away from the point of impact slammed into Darkseid's chest, detonating in a storm of compressed force and stellar plasma. Darkseid skidded backward through space, boots carving furrows through vacuum as if it were stone.
He laughed.
Darkseid surged forward, fist wrapped in Omega energy, meeting Alex head-on. Their collision sent shockwaves rippling across the asteroid belt, rocks cracking and spinning into debris fields. Space itself warped, light bending around the clash like a lens under strain.
They traded blows faster than human perception—Darkseid's strength backed by Source corruption, Alex's movements guided by predictive systems running on planetary-scale processing. Omega beams carved past Alex's shoulder; he answered with gravitic spears that pinned Darkseid momentarily before being torn apart.
Below them, the Avengers entered the fray.
Captain Marvel tore through Parademon formations like a comet, energy blazing. Thor hurled Stormbreaker, lightning chaining between enemy craft. Iron Man led coordinated strikes, his new living-metal armor reshaping mid-flight, weapons adapting with each exchange. Wakandan ships and Asgardian remnants held the line alongside Earth's fleets.
"Alex," Tony said over the comm, strained but focused, "tell me this guy's got an off switch."
"He does," Alex replied, parrying an Omega-infused hammer strike that could have cracked a moon. "I just haven't found it yet."
Darkseid locked his hands around Alex's forearm, crushing pressure radiating outward. Source energy flared, attempting to overwrite Alex's systems, to impose Darkseid's will upon machine and matter alike.
For a moment—just a moment—the Mother Boxes inside Cybertron responded.
Alex felt it instantly.
He tightened control.
The resonance cut off like a severed nerve.
Darkseid's eyes narrowed. "You bind what should kneel."
"I command," Alex said, and headbutted him hard enough to fracture a small planetoid behind them.
Darkseid was hurled back, but this time he did not pursue. He straightened, surveying the battlefield—the shields still standing, the Parademons being ground down, the Avengers refusing to break.
A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face.
"This universe has changed," Darkseid said. "Good."
He raised his arm, Boom Tube energy coiling around his fist.
"This is not conquest," he continued. "It is a measurement."
With a final Omega blast that scorched the outermost shield layer, Darkseid stepped backward into a collapsing Boom Tube. The Parademons followed, retreating with brutal discipline as the rift sealed behind them.
Silence fell.
Debris drifted. Fires burned in vacuum. Earth still stood.
Alex hovered in space, watching the stars where Darkseid had vanished.
"He wasn't trying to win," Thor said over the open channel.
"No," Alex replied. "He was confirming we exist."
Tony swallowed. "And?"
Alex turned back toward Earth, toward Cybertron looming like a forged god in the sky.
"And now," he said, "everything beyond the Source Wall knows it too."