The Echo of a Forgotten Death:
SMiD Volume 2.
Despair holds a unique, unsettling distinction among her siblings as the only member of the Endless to have died once and been replaced by a second aspect.
While the concept of Despair eventually reawoke with all her past memories intact, she was left with a haunting void: an absolute lack of knowledge regarding what actually happened to her original self or what catastrophic event caused her initial death.
In time, this missing truth plunged her into a profound existential crisis. Like most of her other siblings, she grew deeply weary of what she represented—the heavy, suffocating weight of endless sorrow—and wanted nothing more than to be free of it.
Unlike her brother Destruction, she could not find the strength or the courage to simply abandon her post. The very thought of trying to walk away only caused her to despair further, because she intimately knew she could never truly outrun who she was.
She realized her only possibilities of escaping her nature were locked behind two extreme paths: she must either completely transform into her alternative conceptual opposite, Hope—an impossible, uphill task—or she must find a way to be claimed by Death once again.
Despair chose to test the first option, the path of transformation, though not through herself directly. She began whispering into the heart of Rao, the red supergiant sun of Krypton, subtly nudging the cosmic scales until the star destabilized and violently shattered the planet below.
Her goal was to create the ultimate monument to sorrow, leaving only a single survivor to mourn the total loss of an entire civilization. Yet, where the child should have been entirely consumed by her namesake, the last son of Krypton became something more than just hopeful—he grew to become Superman, the universal symbol of Hope.
The more brilliantly Superman's hope shined across the cosmos, the more Despair faced a crushing realization. Looking at his light, she knew it was fundamentally impossible for her own dark, heavy essence to ever transform into something so bright and beautiful, and so, she despaired deeper than ever before.
Left with only the second option, she transformed her appearance into a desperate, mournful imitation of her older sister, Death. She began wearing Death's famous silver Ankh symbol around her neck, silently praying that her sister would finally notice her quiet cry for help and put her to rest for a second, permanent time.
This endless cycle of longing and sorrow took an unexpected turn when her path crossed with the intergalactic bounty hunter, Lobo. The two crossed paths inside the extradimensional confines of the Oblivion Bar—the Main Man having been sent on a bizarre cosmic errand by Death herself to track down a mysterious entity known only as The Spider.
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A/N: I just want you to know that the ending of Volume 2 will be so emotional for Death😭 Give me strength. Despair is appearing around the corner, so keep reading.