The Final One
Location: The Core Memory — Realm of the Editor
The Final One hovered above the infinite book, its form a contradiction—both erasure and creation. Every breath it took bent the laws of causality; every blink unraveled choices across space and time.
Superman and Sentry stood still, feeling the pressure of a being not meant to exist within storylines—a plot hole made flesh.
Sentry narrowed his eyes. "What are you?"
The Final One's voice was layered, as if every discarded possibility of every character across the multiverse was speaking at once:
> "I am the error they buried. The secret they couldn't delete. The shadow cast by the pen that writes fate."
It stretched out its hand toward Superman.
> "You were their golden boy… but you hesitated at divinity."
Then toward Sentry.
> "You were their accident… and you chose freedom."
Behind it, the Editor's pages began bleeding red. Code lines warped into ancient glyphs. The book was breaking.
Sentry looked at Superman. "We can't let it finish its rewrite."
> "We're not strong enough to fight that," Superman muttered, sensing the gravity this being carried. "Not yet."
The Final One opened its palm. A singularity appeared—an event that hadn't happened yet.
> "You want answers? Here is your end."
And with a thought, it cast Superman and Sentry into the moment of their deaths.
---
Elsewhere — Justice League Watchtower
Reality folded again.
The Flash sprinted through distorted time-loops, trying to trace the anomaly. But each step brought him to different versions of himself—dead, villainous, erased.
He stopped.
In one flicker, he saw a future version of Earth—a broken sky… and statues of Superman and Sentry, crumbling side by side, beneath the shadow of a third being with no name.
Back in the infirmary, Batman pulled off his cowl.
> "We're not dealing with a threat to Earth," he said. "We're dealing with a threat to the concept of Earth."
---
Back in the Rewrite — Future Deathscape
Superman landed on cracked crystal. Before him, the sun was black. Corpses of every Superman variant littered the ground.
Sentry appeared beside him, blood leaking from his nose.
> "So this is how it ends…"
But then a figure stepped forward from the ruins.
It was them.
A fusion.
A version of Superman and Sentry merged into one—a godlike form forged by narrative desperation.
It looked at them with calm regret.
> "You weren't supposed to meet me yet."
> "I'm your last choice."
> "I'm what you become… when you finally stop holding back."