"...Who are you?! Where's Raven?!"
Thea spun around, and her breath caught in her throat.
The girl who had been standing beside her was gone. In her place stood a tall, gaunt man wrapped in brown robes, his eyes rolled back to solid white, cradling a massive book that seemed tethered to his very existence by some invisible chain.
The man looked at her with that blank, rolled-back gaze—as though he could read every secret she had ever carried, effortlessly, the way most people read headlines.
"Who are you? What happened to Raven?" The edge in her voice was genuine. This being was neither fully human nor divine. He radiated almost nothing—no pressure, no crackling power, no aura of threat—and yet beneath that surface was something that felt inexhaustible. The Spectre would have been out of his depth here. The Phantom Stranger didn't come close. In all her travels through the outer layers, she had only encountered one entity that registered stronger, and that was Szerina. Everyone else she'd met out here had already been more powerful than her. She allowed herself a private moment of nostalgia for Earth, where she had been, without question, the strongest person in the room.
"The girl has returned to her own world," the robed man said. His voice was rough and low, though his manner was almost courteous. "I came for you."
Thea studied him carefully, her mind already running through the short list of possibilities. There were plenty of cosmic heavyweights scattered across the outer layers. But beings who existed on an entirely different level from everyone else? That list was short. Cross-referencing his appearance, his bearing, and what remained after elimination—there was only one name left.
The man spoke as though he had already read her conclusion.
"I am a member of the Endless. I am Destiny."
Destiny.
The word landed like a hand grenade. This was one of the most powerful beings in all of existence—the eldest of the Endless family, considered equal in standing to Lucifer Morningstar, who himself was said to wield half of God's own power. That placed Destiny beyond the Highfather. Beyond Darkseid. Beyond both the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor. A tier that made the word powerful feel laughably small.
Thea made a face—jaw slightly dropped, eyes a little too wide—and waited for the man to continue.
"The Endless do not seek to control," Destiny said. "We transcend. We are deeper truths made manifest. Destiny is freedom. Death is life. Dream is reality. Destruction is creation. Desire is hatred. Despair is hope. Delirium is sanity."
When he spoke the words Destiny is freedom, his gaze settled on Thea with quiet, deliberate intent.
Then came the line that hit her like a lightning strike.
"Your longing for freedom shattered the shackles of your original fate."
The color drained from her face. Before she could even attempt to mask it, his next sentence nearly launched her straight off her feet.
"You have earned the right to join the Endless."
Destiny. Death. Dream. Destruction. Desire. Despair. Delirium. Those were the seven.
Which one would be hers? Her mind took off at a full sprint. Against the Endless, even New Gods were a footnote.
She was still mentally auditioning initiation ceremonies when Destiny spoke again.
"You who transcended your own fate—you will be my sister. You will be Death."
Thea waited two full seconds. She glanced left, then right. Nothing felt different. Her divine power, her magic—identical to what they'd been two seconds ago. If this was Death claiming her, it was channeling power she couldn't yet detect.
She stared at him with perfect blankness. Was this a test? Some kind of cosmic joke? Or had a higher authority already vetoed the appointment before it started?
Before she could spiral into a full crisis, Destiny spoke with that calm, all-knowing tone of his.
"Not yet. Come with me—to the beginning of time. That is our home. There is much you need to learn before then."
The world lurched. Nausea swept through her like a wave—the unmistakable, deeply unpleasant sensation of skipping along a timeline. She'd done it enough times to recognize the feeling.
Rubbing her temples, she looked up as her vision cleared.
She was inside a colossal structure unlike any architecture she had ever encountered.
If forced to describe it, the closest approximation would be an irregular heptahedron—seven-sided, asymmetrical, and seemingly incapable of holding still. The building felt alive, capable of reshaping itself according to some invisible will, and what stood before her was the accumulated result—a collision of incompatible styles that somehow coexisted without apology.
Color had lost its meaning here. Stare long enough at the walls and you could convince yourself you saw every shade that had ever existed; focus more closely and none of them were quite right. From the perspective of someone who carried an art goddess's sensibilities, the place had no aesthetic coherence at all. It felt as if someone had grabbed six entirely different architectural traditions and stacked them on top of each other out of pure indifference.
At the center of the hall stood a long rectangular table. A high-backed throne occupied the head position, its back carved with the image of an open book and shackles—Destiny's seat, unmistakably. Three chairs lined each side of the table, facing each other across the narrow width.
The first chair on the left felt faintly connected to Thea. It wasn't an invitation—more like a distant, noncommittal acknowledgment. Sitting down now would be a decision with severe consequences; she could feel that clearly enough. The energy swirling through that seat was dense and layered, the residue of countless contenders.
"Should've known it wouldn't be that easy," she muttered, frowning at it.
She looked across to the other seats. Several were empty. Others radiated tangled, unresolved power. That, at least, gave her something to hold onto: besides Destiny, none of the others seemed to have settled into their seats yet. The competition for Death's chair was fierce beyond comparison to the rest.
"Destiny has decreed that Death must be female," Destiny said. "You are currently the most qualified candidate. I sincerely hope you will become my sister."
"As a candidate, you'll have access to Death's domain. If you have questions, you can find the answers there. We will not meet again until you are ready to claim your seat."
He delivered those perfectly composed final words, and simply ceased to be present.
Thea stood alone in the vast, silent hall. The quiet was profound enough to feel like pressure against her ears.
She breathed slowly, pulling at the edges of the chaos in her thoughts.
Where exactly is Death's domain?
She turned, looking in every direction. There were no signs, no map, and no one to ask for directions.
Can I really take Death's place among the Endless? She ran through everything she knew about Death—omnipresent, absolute, bound by nothing, exempt from every hierarchy. Every person, every god, and everything eventually came to Death's door. Measured purely by scope, it was the universe's ultimate power.
And she was the kind of small fry who, whenever the real heavyweights fought, could only stand back and watch.
Wishful thinking wasn't going to get her anywhere. She had to try regardless.
Seven directions spread out from the hall. The central path was clear and wide as a highway compared to the others, which ranged from winding footpaths to absolute void. Thea felt an immediate, bone-deep aversion to it. That was Destiny's domain. She had walked away from her assigned fate a very long time ago, and she was not about to go back.
A pitch-black corridor made her pause. She reached toward it mentally, then pulled back. That one whispered of Dream, but it wasn't hers.
She turned to the remaining side. One passage was thick with drifting gray mist, dense enough to swallow sight entirely. From somewhere inside came a layered murmur of voices—laughter, cursing, the distant chorus of countless presences—and something in her gut said, plainly and without hesitation: that's the one.