They descended at dusk.
Not by gates or colliding meteors but as winds that writhed, as shadows that advanced against light. The gods did not walk. They descended. Royal. Quiet. Smiling like tyrants who already claimed the throne.
I felt them before they came like knives jammed into my skull. Their presence warped reality, made the air taste like burning ash and thunder. Even in the Watchtower's fortified chamber, space started to buckle.
Diana was the first one to notice their essence.
"Old gods," she grumbled. "Banished ones. From before Olympus."
I was at the primary console, staring at the rippling map. "They're not merely old. They're furious. And they're coordinated."
Zatanna advanced, the new choker glinting with magical tension. "Why now?"
"They sensed it," I replied. "The power shift. Us. The tipping of the scales."
Raven emerged from the darkness to our side, her voice a frigid warning. "They're not here to seize power. They're here to reclaim what they believe was theirs."
Cairo was the first to be attacked.
Not a bomb, not a burst of cosmic energy. A command. Given in the language of creation. The Nile seethed. The pyramids shattered. And time. froze. Men suspended in place like shattered puppets in the middle of an action.
Within minutes, five such points were scattered around the world. Each bearing a renegade god once removed from time. Each with control over some part of reality: Blood. Silence. Despair. Hunger. Chaos.
I knew them by name. Anun, the Wordless. Velkith, the Devourer. Neh'tar, the Mirror Prince. They weren't legends. They were mistakes ancient powers the multiverse attempted to erase.
They recalled me.
That was the most horrible part.
While we followed their activities, one of them defied procedure.
He didn't destroy a city.
He arrived here.
Velkith, Devourer of Light, coalesced within the Watchtower as a mist seeping from an open wound in the fabric of space. He was constructed like obsidian carved into nightmare too many teeth, no eyes, only a maw of hunger where his face should have been.
"Child of the Shattered Flame," he spat, his voice in my bones. "You don the hide of a man and wield the instruments of giants. But your throne was always ours."
Batman and Flash advanced to fight, but I raised a hand. "Stand down."
This was my battle.
I advanced. Level. Measured. Every nerve screamed at me to destroy him but I must know what the rogue gods sought.
You had your moment," I told him. "You were wiped out for a reason."
"We were betrayed," Velkith snarled. "By your people. And now you expect to guide this world?"
He attacked out of nowhere.
Walls dissolved. Magic warped. The Veil of Azarath closed in a flash around me as Raven protected the others. Zatanna wove a silence spell to trap the reality warping shockwave, as Diana called her gauntlet's fire.
I took Velkith's attack square in the forehead.
For an instant, time faltered. Then I shoved back, cosmic power spilling from my core like a star exploding. The blast sent him flying across the chamber screaming, disintegrating.
But alive.
"More shall come," he snarled, reassembling as vapor. "This world shall bow."
Then he disappeared.
We stood amidst the wreckage of the command deck, alarms shrieking, systems crashing.
Silence.
Then Bruce said. "You said this was your battle. Is it still?"
I glanced around at the faces some terrified, some determined.
"No," I said. "It's our fight."
But I knew better.
The rogue gods weren't interested in Earth alone.
They were interested in me.