Nanda Parbat was quiet.
Snow drifted between the prayer towers, settling on carved stone untouched by time. Eternal fire burned in the sacred brazier, undisturbed by wind or season. Above the mountain cliffs, stars blinked in perfect harmony. This was the place beyond death, beyond time—a sanctuary of the soul, watched over by one of the oldest divine forces in the universe.
Rama Kushna knelt before the fire, her hands open, palms skyward, eyes closed.
She had felt many disturbances across time. The death of Krypton. The Anti-Monitor's war. The cries of reality each time magic unraveled. But this… this was older. Older than memory, older than myth.
It wasn't a cry.
It was a hunger.
> "O Presence," she whispered into the void. "I sense something unnatural. An absence that moves like shadow across the firmament. I ask for your light. Your judgment. Your will."
Her voice echoed faintly through the temple.
No answer came.
A single flame in the brazier flickered. Then another. Then a dozen. The shadows of the temple bent and twisted, like they were recoiling from something behind them.
Rama Kushna opened her eyes.
Above her, the stars were dying.
One by one, they winked out—not dimming, not fading—just… gone. Entire constellations erased from the sky like ink blotted out by a careless hand.
The fire turned black.
Then the sky tore open.
A spiral of swirling darkness, deeper than space itself, bled open in the heavens. It wasn't just a hole in the sky—it was a wound in the very concept of being. From it spilled a soundless scream, a feeling of collapsing memory.
And from that void, he came.
A mass of jagged bone and voidlight, tendrils spiraling like dead stars, mouths whispering in languages that had no vowels. Vorax. The Starving Void. His presence made the temple age around him—stone cracked, banners dissolved, and the air tasted like dust and forgotten names.
The monks collapsed in prayer.
Then vanished.
Not killed. Not banished. Simply… undone. Like they had never been born.
Rama Kushna stood as the last soul in Nanda Parbat.
"Begone, thing," she said, her voice echoing with divine authority. "This world is protected."
Vorax's form pulsated with silence. Where he hovered, light bent inward, trying to escape him.
> Protection.
From what? Me? Or the memory of what I was before time?
She raised her hand. Pure karma burst from her palm—a spiraling lattice of soul-force and cosmic will, drawn from every living thread she had ever touched.
It struck him in full.
Nothing happened.
The divine energy shattered on his presence like glass on stone.
Rama Kushna flinched—not from fear, but from recognition. This thing… it was beyond the Source. Beyond Death. Beyond even her comprehension.
"You are not life. You are not death. What are you?"
> I am what remains when meaning dies. I am the mouth that consumes hope. I am the silence between gods.
She summoned her full power. The temple lit with gold fire. The floor cracked. The mountain trembled.
Vorax drifted forward—slowly, steadily—as if time obeyed him and not the other way around.
> You are light. Light has shape. Shape has memory. I starve both.
He reached her—not with hands, but with the idea of hands. A twisting spiral of void wrapped around her waist, lifting her from the floor.
She did not scream.
But her soul did.
Images flashed through her mind in reverse—her temples collapsing, her name crumbling from worshippers' lips, her influence eroded from the books of magic. Every prayer she ever answered was undone.
In her final moment, she whispered a name.
> "Boston…"
And then she was gone.
Not dead.
Not even dust.
Just… forgotten.
---
Elsewhere…
Boston Brand—Deadman—floated above Gotham, phasing through rooftops in his usual brooding silence. The world was loud tonight. People fighting. Praying. Screaming. The usual mess of human life.
Then it happened.
His chest—his incorporeal chest—felt like it had been stabbed. Not by a blade. By absence.
He collapsed, losing his spectral balance, crashing through a tenement wall and landing in a child's bedroom. Toys scattered. Posters peeled from the wall. The lights flickered.
Something inside him snapped.
He couldn't feel her anymore.
Rama Kushna. His guide. His tether. The only divine presence that had ever cared whether he rose or fell.
Gone.
Deadman tried to reach into the spirit stream. Tried to call her name.
Nothing answered.
Just silence.
And then… laughter.
---
Back in the temple ruins…
The fire had gone out. The monks never existed. The walls were erased. Only ash spiraled where once stood a sanctuary.
Vorax hovered over the emptiness, absorbing the last soullight of Rama Kushna. The divine essence swirled around him, crushed into nothingness. Reality trembled.
And then… she appeared.
The Batwoman Who Laughs.
She stepped out of a curling spiral of red laughter—like a tear in the fabric of the world made from a hyena's giggle. Her boots were stained with blood. Her grin wide, cracked, and gleaming.
She clapped slowly.
"Bravo, Voidy. One goddess down. Dozens to go."
Vorax pulsed. His aura brushed against her, testing her mortality.
She embraced it.
> She did not scream.
"Too proud," Batwoman said, trailing fingers across the air where Rama Kushna once stood. "You know how these balance types are—so obsessed with fate and karma and all that other overpriced garbage."
She turned and leaned her head against the swirling void.
"You're doing wonderfully, by the way. Want me to go prepare the next snack? I hear Zatanna's performing soon."
> Let them believe they can resist. Let them gather. Hope is richer when it rots.
Batwoman Who Laughs licked her lips. "Ooh. Poetry. You're getting more romantic every day."
Together, the Void and the Grin turned toward the horizon.
The gods of Earth were trembling.
They just didn't know it yet.