Steel shrieked. Glass screamed. The air reeked of ozone, blood, and raw fear.The skyline—once a proud silhouette of human ambition—was now a blackened graveyard of burning husks and skeletal towers, half-collapsed from days of unrelenting war.
The Justice League, Earth's last line of defense, stood on the knife's edge of annihilation.
Superman hit the ground first—hard.
He cratered through a department store, plowing through layers of steel and concrete like a meteor. His body finally stopped when it met the base of a collapsed skyscraper. He groaned, the sound barely human. Blood—his blood—dripped from his split lip and pooled beneath him.
"Clark!" Wonder Woman's voice cracked as she soared, sword gleaming with divine fire.
She intercepted an energy construct mid-air, cleaving it in two—but the force of the impact still sent her careening into the side of a van, which exploded in a burst of flame and shrapnel.
BOOM.
The shockwave rolled like thunder. Flash was caught mid-run—his leg twisted under him, bones snapping audibly as he was flung down the asphalt, red streaks of blood trailing behind his tumbling form.
Martian Manhunter screamed mid-phase. Green flames engulfed his skin as he barely reformed in time to vomit blood onto scorched pavement, smoke pouring from a wound that wouldn't heal.
Cyborg was in ruins.
His lower half was a mangled mess of shattered alloys and torn sinew, wires sparking as he dragged himself across the ground by his fingertips, teeth clenched against a scream.
Aquaman lay still.
Half-buried beneath collapsed debris, ribs shattered, his trident broken off at the base and impaled into the street beside him.
Above it all, hovering like a false god, was Luthor-Amazo—a blasphemous fusion of Lex Luthor's intellect and ambition with the infinite mimicry of the Amazo android.
There was no grandeur. No pretense.
Just a monster clad in armor laced with Kryptonian crystal and Martian alloy, his body pulsing with Lantern energy, his voice layered with a dozen stolen powers.
He spoke like mountains grinding together.
"Is this all?" he sneered. "Earth's champions? Pitiable. Mortal."
He descended like death itself.
Superman struggled to his feet, veins bulging, eyes dim. He lifted one trembling arm.
Luthor answered with a backhand that shattered Clark's jaw and sent him pinwheeling across the street.
He collided with Diana. Their bodies rolled together, limp, broken.
"I—I-can't…" Superman rasped.
Diana screamed in defiance, intercepting another blast, her shield glowing white-hot. The heat scorched her arm. She didn't let go.
But she collapsed to one knee.
The city itself cried out. Sirens blared like a dying heartbeat. Distant screams echoed from the underground bunkers. Fires licked up to the heavens like prayers unanswered.
The League had fallen.
And then…
The ground rumbled.
At first, a whisper beneath the devastation. A low, unholy vibration. The kind that made your bones ache.
Then it deepened.
BOOM.
Like something ancient was waking.
Dust shook loose from ruined beams. Windows still intact shattered from the pressure. Rubble trembled.
BOOM.
Closer now. Focused. Rhythmic. A war drum pounded by some forgotten god beneath the earth.
And then—
CRACK!
The street erupted.
A figure exploded upward in a geyser of rock and flame. A blur. A streak of pale flesh and divine power.
And then—
BOOOOM!
A white-knuckled fist collided with Luthor-Amazo's jaw.
The fusion monster disappeared in an instant, hurled backward like a broken doll. He crashed through six buildings before the seventh crumbled beneath him in a landslide of steel and dust.
Silence followed.
Even the fire held its breath.
In the epicenter of the crater stood a boy.
Bare-chested. Pale. Scars ran like rivers across his arms. Behind him hovered a rotating wheel of radiant blades and divine script.
His fists were clenched so tight they bled.
And his face…
Empty.
Not expressionless. Empty. Like something else wore the skin of Kai Reyes now.
Mahoraga had awakened.
The memories hit like a flood.
A thousand battles. A thousand deaths. The roar of curses. The stench of blood. The cold logic of adaptation.
Kai's soul twisted inside a vessel no longer solely his own. Mahoraga didn't understand restraint. It didn't comprehend fear. It was not a protector.
It was retribution incarnate.
Kai inwardly blinked—and vanished.
Luthor-Amazo stood, steam rising from his cracked armor. His face was twisted in rage and confusion.
"What in god's name was—"
CRACK!
Kai reappeared mid-air and delivered a spinning heel kick directly into Luthor's ribs. The impact folded the android-hybrid in half and launched him into the pavement, cratering the street a second time.
He rose, glowing with stolen Martian abilities, hardening his form.
"NEW ENTITY DETECTED. ANALYZING—"
Mahoraga was already on him.
He leapt thirty feet, fists glowing, a blade grew on his right arm, and he brought it down, shattering the villain's force field like glass.
The wheel spun.
Click.
Luthor's next energy blast was absorbed, mirrored, and hurled back into his face at tenfold force.
The League watched in stunned silence.
Flash groaned, wiping blood from his mouth. "That… that's not a kid."
Green Lantern limped forward. "Did we even call for backup?"
Martian Manhunter winced. "I've never seen an aura like that. Not even Darkseid's…"
And then, emerging from the smoke—Batman.
Covered in ash, cowl torn, eyes narrowed to slits.
"No," he said flatly. "That's not backup."
He stared at the wheel.
At the boy.
"That's not one of ours."
Luthor-Amazo snapped. His voice cracked with synthetic rage.
He unleashed everything.
Heat vision. Zeus's lightning. Lantern constructs shaped like death itself. Telepathic knives. Gravitational singularities.
Mahoraga didn't dodge.
The wheel spun.
Again.
Again.
Each rotation shifted his physiology, bending physics, rewriting weaknesses.
Heat turned to warmth. Force turned to momentum. Mind became shield.
He was the blade that could not dull. The shield that could not shatter.
Luthor's desperation peaked. "WHO ARE YOU?!"
Kai stepped forward. The wheel pulsed behind him like a halo of wrath.
The voice that came was both human and divine.
"I am the adaptation of violence. The hand of balance. The punishment you earned."
He raised a hand.
"I am Mahoraga."
What followed wasn't a fight.
It was a purge.
Buildings collapsed from the shockwaves. Roads split open like wounds. The skyline bled light and ash.
Luthor-Amazo adapted to nothing.
Teleportation failed.
Phasing was countered.
Energy beams were eaten.
Until finally, broken and screaming, Luthor tried to escape.
Mahoraga caught him mid-flight by the throat.
"No escape," he said.
And slammed the fusion monster into the earth so hard, the world shook.
He dragged him across the street, leaving a trench of molten pavement, and hurled him skyward.
Where Superman—recharged, furious—met him mid-air with a punch that broke the sound barrier and Lex's pride in one clean strike.
Silence.
Ash drifted like snow.
The wheel slowed.
Kai staggered.
Collapsed.
The League approached, awestruck.
Diana stepped closer. "He saved us, but he didn't look like he was in control..."
Batman knelt beside him, scanning.
"Magic... no, Mutation...possible," he muttered. "If anything, this seems all too fortunate, he came here for a reason."
The wheel flickered—and vanished.
Flash swallowed hard. "Then what is he?"
Batman stood slowly.
Gazed at the sky.
Almost hypnotic.
And answered like a prophecy.
"An angel of war."