"Ha, I can't believe it worked. Honestly, I thought the fusion would've failed and she'd have to train to merge the two forms," Ashborn said, summoning his shadows with a casual wave.
"You can't just act on impulse like that," Susan said, clearly displeased with his recklessness. Ashborn let out a light laugh at her words, but he gave a small nod in acknowledgment.
"Why hasn't her appearance changed?" Ember asked, narrowing her eyes as she noticed Susan still looked the same, even after Ashborn had fused her with several new shadows after he had recovered.
"I… didn't even notice," Ashborn admitted, blinking in surprise as he realized she was right. Ember gave him a deadpan look, clearly unimpressed.
"Pervert," Ember said in disgust, which instantly enraged Ashborn. Yes, he had wished for Susan to keep her appearance, but was that really such a bad thing? Why would he want her to transform into some grotesque shadow monster?
"It's making its move!" Warper suddenly cried out. In an instant, they all teleported outside the Source, just in time to see a massive hand of darkness tearing through the void, its fingers shooting straight toward the place Ashborn had been moments ago.
It had sensed him. Raven's ascension to godhood had triggered something. A surge of power too immense for the Darkness to ignore.
Ashborn appeared in a flash, immediately activating Full Counter. The massive hand of darkness was hurled back with incredible force, just as Mage shot into the sky, casting a radiant spell that bathed the Great Darkness in searing light.
Simultaneously, Ashborn raised his palm, using his authority to manipulate the Great Darkness. Though it fought back, the effort forced it to divert its power, weakening its hold—and that was all the opening his shadow soldiers needed to strike.
"The name's Ashborn, by the way," he said casually, eyes locked on the towering entity. "Do you go by 'Great'… or something else?"
In response, the Darkness condensed, molding itself into a massive humanoid figure cloaked in swirling blackness. Its presence was suffocating—immense, ancient, and very much aware.
"Ashborn! You think you can control me?" the Great Darkness roared, its voice shaking the very fabric of reality. Ignoring the onslaught of attacks, it reached out, its massive hand closing in on Ashborn.
"You really shouldn't aim for me," Ashborn said with a casual laugh, unfazed. "It's not like I'm going to attack you or anything."
Instantly, the Darkness froze—then twisted toward Mage, who had been quietly chanting a spell behind the scenes, hidden in plain sight.
"I fused each of my shadows with the countless lifeforms of a dying universe. This one here—" Ashborn raised his hand, his voice calm but commanding, "is Thunder."
Boom!
The Darkness was struck by a force beyond comprehension, a speed that transcended speed itself. It never even had the chance to react.
This was Thunder, a shadow born from the fusion of the greatest lightning users across Marvel and DC. Among them: Black Adam, the Flash, Zeus… and many more.
Like lightning itself, Thunder was fast—easily the fastest shadow under Ashborn's command. But speed wasn't its only strength—its attack power was equally unmatched.
"These are two of my strongest shadows," Ashborn said, his voice steady as he gestured behind him. "Power and Warper."
Power was the fusion of Hope, Rogue, and the greatest power manipulators from both universes.
Warper, on the other hand, was a terrifying blend of the most powerful reality-warpers—Franklin Richards, Mr. Mxyzptlk, and countless others.
Hope, now wielding every power across both Marvel and DC, unleashed her full might. Beside her, Warper—with unmatched reality-warping capabilities- did the same. The two combined their strength, delivering an Omniverse-shaking blow to the Darkness itself.
But just as Mage's light spell disappeared, allowing the Darkness to return to its peak form, the Darkness suddenly vanished. Appearing before Ashborn.
"This is Susan."
Boom.
The Darkness's fist slammed into an invisible barrier. Susan's face went pale as she poured every ounce of power she had into maintaining it. Despite her growth, despite training in the time-bending training dimension, mastering the Speed Force, and acquiring countless other abilities, the first barrier shattered instantly.
But she had prepared for this. One after another, multiple layered barriers rose up to stop the attack. And one after another, the Darkness shattered them with terrifying ease.
"You forgot about Mage?"
The Darkness's head snapped toward Mage, just as the sorcerer finished casting his spell, birthing a massive star into existence. And by massive, I mean unimaginably massive. A multiverse, by comparison, would look like an atom next to it.
'How did I forget him?' the Darkness thought, its gaze shifting rapidly toward Mega Mind, who had been working quietly to manipulate its thoughts.
Then its eyes fell on Ashborn, and realization dawned. Ashborn hadn't been trying to control it with full power. No, he had only been doing two things:
One, subtly weakening the Darkness, just enough to keep it from one-shotting them all.
Two, distracting and loosening its mental defenses, so that Mega Mind could slip in through the cracks he left behind.
That way, the Darkness was weakened even further—without ever realizing it. It believed Ashborn was the one pushing it back, unaware of the true strategy unfolding.
"This is the Doctor. He's smart as hell," Ashborn said casually.
The Doctor, a fusion of the greatest minds across Marvel and now DC, stepped forward. In his hands, he held a weapon powered by the Source itself. He calmly took aim.
"I might be far weaker than you," Ashborn said with a grin, "but I've got an army."
At those words, the sun itself appeared, teleporting directly before the Darkness, just as the Doctor pulled the trigger and fired the weapon.
"Another mistake." The Darkness's pupils shrank as it realized the sun it had been trying to push back wasn't an attack; it was a sealing spell.
Before it could react, the beam fired by the Doctor struck its core, activating the trap. The sun expanded, glowing with celestial power as the seal ignited, swallowing the Darkness whole.
This alone wouldn't have been a problem, after all, what had been fighting wasn't even its true form.
But then the Darkness felt it. The seal wasn't just binding the projection. It was reaching beyond space and time, anchoring to the true form of the Darkness—the Primordial Void itself.
"Ashborn, you bastard!" the Great Darkness roared, its true form stirring in the Overvoid, the endless canvas of creation. The void itself trembled as the Great Darkness fully awakened, resisting the seal meant to entrap even it.
This caused Ashborn's eyebrow to rise. This Darkness… it might actually be stronger than Oblivion. He was confident that with all his shadows working together—along with his countless techniques—he could take on and defeat most High Omniversal-level beings.
But this? This was the full might of the Great Darkness, and Ashborn knew he wasn't ready for a direct confrontation.
"Well then…" he muttered, sighing. "You've forced me to use my strongest technique…"
He raised his hand.
"Summoning Art: Phoenix."
A sea of chocolate, unmatched in quality, manifested out of nowhere and launched toward the Great Darkness in a surreal and overwhelming tide.
The Darkness looked on in disdain, moving to obliterate the absurd attack. And that's when it hit, a beam of pure flame erupted from the Omniverse itself, slamming into the Darkness with unimaginable force.
Shocked, the Great Darkness turned its gaze toward creation—and there, with eyes burning red, the Phoenix Force ignited.
She shot forward like a comet of divine flame, rocketing toward the sea of chocolate Ashborn had summoned.
But the Great Darkness misread the intent. It believed the Phoenix Force was targeting it directly and rushed to clash head-on. That miscalculation infuriated the Phoenix Force.
In an instant, two High Omniversal-level beings collided—flames and darkness ripping through existence itself. Fueled by overwhelming emotion, the Phoenix Force clashed evenly with the Great Darkness, her very soul ablaze with purpose.
Meanwhile, Ashborn's shadows moved in unison, surrounding Mage.
He was the strongest spellcaster among them all, born from the fusion of Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, and countless other mystics.
But Mage didn't move. He simply stood there, still and silent, patiently gathering power—waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
"O axis unbound by chronology,
O symmetry lost before the notion of form—
By the sovereign paradox of Light and Abyss,
I command the conceptual bedrock to fracture.
In the name of the Eternal Lattice,
In the silence between genesis and cessation,
Let the Chains that bind Ideation itself descend.
Chains wrought not in metal,
But in lawless axioms—
Chains that tether Titans,
That suffocate the infinite
That entomb the Primordial Without Name.
Descend, O Enkidu…
Shackle that which defies being.
Collapse that which believes itself beyond end. Enkidu: Chains of Heaven."
Mage's voice echoed through the Overvoid. Magic circles bloomed across the infinite void like constellations, and from them, the chains emerged, golden, radiant, and endless.
Sensing the incoming danger, the Great Darkness tried to flee. It couldn't. The chains surged forward, latching onto it with blinding speed. The Darkness roared, shattering the first wave with ease—yet the moment they broke, the chains reformed… thicker, stronger, and faster than before.
With every rupture, they regenerated mightier than before. There was no end to them. The Overvoid trembled as the relentless tide of divine chains overwhelmed the Great Darkness. Bound by a force that grew stronger with resistance, the once-unstoppable entity found itself slowly, inexorably sealed.
Mage and the other shadows vanished—the cost of casting that spell had been their lives. But the outcome made one thing clear: the Darkness was sealed. Not forever, only for about a year or so. Still, that brief window gave the forces of light a fighting chance to fight. Then again… the forces of darkness still had Ashborn's armor.
"Ember, a little help getting back home?" Ashborn asked, knowing he wasn't yet strong enough to return to the Omniverse on his own. The Phoenix Force ignored him, shifting into her human form and leaping into the sea of chocolate, where she happily began to eat. Ashborn sighed, resigned to wait until she was finished.
He turned to glance toward the Omniverse, then froze. Standing before him was someone he hadn't expected.
Ashborn instinctively took a step back. This person, while not as powerful as the Great Darkness… was far more dangerous.