Thea's plan was simple: take everyone to the Vanishing Point—the end of time itself, beyond the Omega Effect's reach.
First, fuse the godhood. Then the Omega Effect.
A small, semi-transparent mass trailing wisps of dark energy hovered in her palm.
"Ready?"
Receiving his nod, she drove the godhood straight into Batman's body.
Every nerve lit up at once. Only sheer willpower kept him standing—jaw clenched, face burning red—because if he made a sound, he'd never live it down.
When Superman fused his godhood, it had looked effortless. Nothing like this.
As if reading his mind, Thea explained from the side. "Don't compare yourself to Clark. His body was already at that level. The godhood was just a catalyst—barely registered."
There was no getting around Kryptonian cheat-code genetics. For Superman, fusing a godhood was like getting an IV drip at a hospital—walk in, hook up, walk out. For Batman, it was major surgery. He wouldn't be out of bed for ten days to two weeks.
Thea hadn't immediately severed his connection to the Dark Multiverse. Leaping from a mortal straight past the demigod stage into a New God—that was a fundamental transformation of one's very being. No amount of willpower could compensate for inadequate hardware. Deathstroke had suffered the same ordeal and barely pulled through with her help.
Batman did have one advantage: the Dark Multiverse link acted as a pressure valve, absorbing part of the strain, while Thea directed the godhood's force to accelerate his body's reconstruction.
As the fusion neared completion, she drew Excalibur. "Brace yourself. I'm cutting your connection to that side. The final surge of the godhood is going to hurt."
Watching Thea raise that enormous gleaming sword as though she intended to carve something out of him, Bruce felt a chill run up his spine. But there was no room for objections. He gritted his teeth and nodded.
"Give me some of your Dream Power." She addressed Daniel the way she'd address a subordinate—which, at this point, he essentially was. Daniel didn't even think twice before channeling a portion of his Dream Power into the blade.
Thea left the Vanishing Point, then left the universe entirely, positioning herself at a vantage point vast enough to observe both realities at once.
Countless threads—some thick, some impossibly thin—bridged the two universes. The Bat-tribes, no doubt: the earliest humans corrupted by the darkness.
The densest, most tangled cluster of connections centered on Gotham. Thea spent some time using the Vanishing Point as her anchor, tracing the lines in reverse until she finally isolated the original thread buried deep in the tangle—the root of it all. Once Batman's transformation had reached eighty to ninety percent, she locked onto its position and swung.
The blade seemed to cut through empty space, but Dream Power carried the stroke across time and distance to the boundary between universes.
A massive hand lunged from the fog, grasping at the arc of light. Thea smirked, flicked her wrist, and opened a bloody gash along the side of the hand before angling the blade down from a different trajectory.
Against the sheer scale of two universes, the thread was infinitesimally small—but resilient. The Dream-infused blade sheared through it at the midpoint.
Furious howling echoed from somewhere within the black fog, though none of it carried across. Thea ignored it entirely.
Her strike apparently violated some unspoken rule, because the other side retaliated without hesitation—threads punching into the main multiverse in a frenzy, trying to multiply the connections.
"Oh? Feeling brave, are we?" Thea's blade flashed. Thread after thread fell away. She'd lacked the strength before, but now? If Barbatos dared make a move right under her nose, she wasn't going to tolerate it.
She turned to her subordinate. "Daniel—activate the positioning setup."
Daniel had no idea why she'd suddenly shifted to a full-war footing. This wasn't the plan. But he had no time to question it and activated the setup they'd left in the Batman Who Laughs' world.
A faint glow pierced the heavy darkness of that universe. Small, fragile—but a tenth of the Nightmare had been scoured clean. Daniel could now channel a measure of Dream power there, rallying the multiverse's strength to reshape that world from within.
Simultaneously, Thea locked down the rules of that parallel universe. Unless someone surpassed her in raw power, rewriting those rules was off the table.
From this day forward, the inhabitants of that world would no longer spiral downward into suffering. Not every choice would lead to the worst possible outcome. Something called hope had begun to take root in the darkness.
Her actions finally drew out the master of the house. Draped in a dark hood, skeletal bat-wings spreading behind a gaunt, emaciated frame, Barbatos emerged from the deepest reaches. His silent roar was a clear rebuke—why are you breaking the rules of the game?
She couldn't have cared less. Barbatos was peak multiverse-level at best. If not for the delicate matter of universal fusion, she could cut him down right here and now.
Excalibur's tip leveled at him. You want a fight? Let's go.
Barbatos hesitated, unable to read her. He chose retreat. Thea had lit a lamp in his territory, true, but the channel between worlds hadn't closed—only shifted the dynamic from offense to defense.
The relationship between the two universes was much like Journey to the West: whether Tang Sanzang traveled west to retrieve the scriptures or the Buddha sent them east to Tang China, the end result was more or less the same.
Thea's actions hadn't crossed the ultimate line. The handful of cosmic spectators who'd been watching expressed token interest, then turned their attention elsewhere.
Barbatos withdrew, seething. Thea returned to Batman's side.
The heavy shackles had been severed. Had Bruce still been mortal, he would never again be plagued by nightmares.
Now the change ran deeper. His body had been remade at a fundamental level—every old injury erased, every trace of aging receding from his face. Vitality returned to features that had carried decades of wear.
"Hold on, Bruce." Diana stood nearby, cheering him on. She could see the fusion entering its final phase. Maintain your sense of self and master the godhood, or be consumed by it—everything hinged on this moment.
Thea wasn't particularly worried. Bruce had overreached a bit with the size of this leap, but maintaining his core identity was hardly the man's weak point.
Countless streams of dark energy enveloped him. Low, murmuring whispers rose from within the darkness. The ordinary members of the Time Masters Council stood nearby with glassy, vacant stares, and Thea had to extend a barrier to shield the area.
A full day passed before the dark energy began to recede. It took another three days for it to fully retract into his body.
Bruce slowly straightened, lifting his head. The spinal injury Bane had inflicted years ago, the countless wounds accumulated from decades of street-level warfare—all gone. He felt light. Free.
Like being born again.