Gotham never truly slept. Even in its darkest moments, the city groaned — metal and grime, ghosts and silence. But beneath the rain-slick rooftops and shattered remnants of old battlefields, something had begun to stir. Something buried. Forgotten. Whispering.
Elias Kade was twenty-one, orphaned by war, raised by chaos, and tempered by brilliance. Not the heroic kind. Not the Justice League kind. His genius wasn't found in labs or towers, but in underground servers, black web networks, and a mind honed by decoding the world like a machine too cruel to understand compassion.
He didn't believe in gods. He believed in systems. Systems could be broken. Or rewritten.
Elias stared down at the crater that had once housed a Parademon hive. The Justice League had cleaned up what they could, but Mother Box energy signatures still radiated like echoes from deep below.
His fingers tightened around his glove. The air was heavy. He liked that. The atmosphere told the truth more than people did.
"Drone 3, scan again," he muttered.
A small orb blinked in response, hovering above the crater.
[Omega-Residual: 76%]
[Multidimensional coding pattern detected]
[Danger Level: Lethal]
He smiled. "Beautiful."
With a grunt, Elias hooked a cable to his belt, clicked his boots against the lip of the concrete edge, and descended into the belly of the old battlefield.
Forty meters down. Darkness thick enough to choke on. But his augmented goggles filtered the environment, highlighting the veins of scorched earth and fused alien tech. Then he saw it — nestled like an egg in the rubble.
A fractured shard of a Mother Box, still pulsing.
It was calling him.
Elias moved closer, hearing the static hum build into something like a heartbeat. His boots crunched glass and bones. Parademon remains. Old blood.
His hand hovered inches from the box.
"AI, scan the frequency again."
[Unknown code structure. Omega Symbol detected.]
[WARNING: Exposure to artifact will result in permanent neural fusion.]
Elias didn't flinch.
"Good."
And then he touched it.
The world screamed.
Not with sound, but with memory. Color exploded behind his eyes. He saw planets burning, civilizations kneeling, a sea of eyes that glowed red, and a throne of obsidian carved from the remains of dead gods.
"He is not gone," said a voice in a tongue older than stars.
"He waits. In code. In power. In flesh."
The fragment surged. A burst of energy slammed through his body like lightning soaked in hatred.
Something invaded his mind. Not just power, but a system.
[ΩMEGA ASCENSION SYSTEM: ONLINE]
User: Elias Kade
Level: 1
Power Unlocked: Omega Skin (passive durability +5%)
Quest: Survive the Awakening – 24 hours
Symbols danced across his vision. His veins glowed faint red. His chest burned with a circular mark forming — an Omega sigil.
Elias collapsed to one knee, coughing blood. But he was alive. More than alive.
He was changing.
The world around him slowed.
Raindrops froze midair.
Time had cracked.
He looked up — and someone else stood in the shadows.
A black cape fluttered. Armor glinted. A jaw clenched.
Bruce Wayne. Or rather — Batman.
"I knew someone would find it," Bruce said coldly. "I just didn't think they'd touch it."
Elias stood, shaky but defiant. "It chose me."
"It doesn't choose. It infects."
The tension thickened. Batman's eyes flicked to the Omega mark glowing through Elias's shirt.
"You need to come with me. Now."
Elias laughed. "You're not in control here, Bats."
Suddenly, his vision blurred — the Omega symbol in his chest pulsed like it was alive, reacting to Bruce's presence.
[Warning: Authority Protocol Detected]
[Engage or Submit? Alignment path will diverge.]
"I don't answer to anyone," Elias growled.
The Box shard behind him ignited, hovering midair, flickering with distorted faces — old Apokoliptian echoes. One of them was Darkseid.
Bruce took a step forward.
"I'm giving you a chance. Don't make me call the League."
Elias stared at him. Then he said something that would haunt Gotham forever:
"Call them."
The Omega System surged. Elias vanished into smoke and static.
And far across the cosmos, on a dying world near the edge of the Source Wall…
Darkseid's eyes opened.
"The seed has sprouted."
....The Justice League is about to hunt Elias down. But what they don't know is... Elias is already in contact with the Anti-Life Equation.