Nekron threw his forces into the raven's path. Against Raven's fully-charged strike—and with his core weapon intact—he could have taken the hit. In his current state, he decided not to bother.
It didn't matter. His pawns were mere mortals. They flew into the shadow like moths into a flame and came out as ash. Scarface chose to eat one of Superman's punches clean in exchange for positioning—then used the opening to drive one of the controlled Guardians into the raven's path.
Thwump. Thwump. Thwump. Three Guardians, in rapid succession. The shadow raven punched through each of them, and by the third the dark sorcery was spent. Maintaining that level of power had taken a brutal toll on Raven's mind. She released her bloodline form and sank to her knees, breathing hard.
The price on Nekron's side: three Guardians burned to ash.
Three beings of eternal lifespan, reduced to nothing. Scarface felt no grief—she'd surrendered emotion long ago. But she was in serious danger now. Diana had already saved one Guardian earlier; three more were gone. She had only four left under her control.
Fewer bodies meant more concentrated control, but under Superman's unrelenting assault she had no time to appreciate the advantage.
The battlefield settled into a grinding stalemate.
On the outermost perimeter, human military forces evacuated the civilians of Coast City while engaging the Black Lanterns at range. Inside the city, Black Lanterns had seeded every block—absorbing fire from the perimeter while focusing the bulk of their pressure toward the center.
In the city's heart, the seven Lantern Corps and Earth's heroes fought to hold the line. And at the very center of everything: Thea and Nekron.
A dark miasma rolled off Nekron, shot through with threads of something else—the void-breath of the Anti-Monitor, the scent of a force that had unmade entire universes. It was ancient and immense, like a constant that predated time itself. The energy was powerful, yes—but it sat poorly in Nekron's body. He could only draw on a fraction of it, and even that he'd have to shed afterward. He didn't care about the cost of recovery. He had nothing but time.
Against that darkness, the other side blazed like noon.
Anyone with eyes could see what the two poles meant. Black Lanterns and heroes alike fought with everything they had, all for the sake of holding on until this moment of dawn arrived.
Thea's white light had started impure—like a white cloth with scattered stains. As she worked to harmonize the seven emotions, the stains slowly faded. At fine scale, trace impurities still lingered, but the overall picture was clean.
"Death is not a catastrophe," she said, the words rising on their own. "It is life's companion. Growing old is not a bad thing—it is a blessing."
Nekron, who had been utterly silent, finally showed something that resembled emotion. This was a war of philosophy now. He answered loudly: "Death is the end of life. The final destination of all living things, without exception. What waits there is only eternal peace."
"That's wrong. Death is life's companion. Every living thing meets Death twice—once at birth, and once at the end. Death waits at both the beginning and the close of every life."
"That's absurd—"
They argued. Back and forth, each pressing their interpretation of the same truth, neither willing to yield. The Black Lanterns Nekron controlled flickered in and out of focus as his attention divided—and one by one they faltered, leaving heroes blinking in confusion.
Are we... winning a fight by talking him to death? Why didn't someone say so earlier? We could have roasted him.
Thea, of course, hadn't started the argument on purpose. She'd been genuinely turning something over in her mind, and the thought slipped out before she could stop it. But once she noticed Nekron was agitated—actually scrambling to argue back—she saw no reason not to stall.
She'd seen far more of death than he had. His conception of it was pure, ancient, undisturbed—hundreds of millions of years of solitary contemplation, arriving at a stillness like a stone in deep water. But her understanding had grown wider. Doomsday's arc from destruction to death; the Rot's path from death into decay; Helronmir's death, the Black Racer's death—each was a facet, each partial, each true in its own way. She could throw those fragments at him and let him wrestle with the contradictions.
She feared the pure, undivided Nekron. She was less afraid of a distracted one.
While she talked, she gathered.
When the seven emotions finally harmonized—she felt a whisper of regret. Three of the seven weren't originally hers, and no matter how hard she'd worked, a ghost of imperfection remained. But it was enough.
Light poured out of her. More than light—light. Diana and the others shielded their eyes. It wasn't hot. But it was alive, radiantly alive, and the heroes who had been fighting for an entire night, emptied of strength, battered and bleeding—they felt it land on them like cool water. Every wound closed. Every exhausted muscle filled again. When they looked up, they were whole.
Click. Click. Click.
Three sharp sounds. The three rings on Thea's fingers cracked and crumbled to dust.
From beneath the earth, a ring rose.
Luminous. Snow-white. It settled onto her left hand on its own.
"Thea Queen of Earth—destiny has waited long enough."
A wave of white light filled every field of vision at once—but softly, like a friend leaning close to whisper something only meant for you. Warm. Gentle. The kind of presence that made you want to draw nearer.
Even Larfleeze, who hadn't felt anything but want for longer than he could remember, found himself standing in a memory—some dim, half-forgotten time before the Orange Ring, before the constructs. He'd been small and ignorant and had nothing. And he had been happy.
The Red Lanterns' hearts had been replaced by their rings long ago, but from Atrocitus down the line, every one of them felt a heartbeat.
The Violet Lanterns stepped out of their burning devotion. Life held more than romantic love—friendship mattered. Family mattered.
Across the battlefield, hero and villain alike felt the same thing arrive without warning: as though countless emotions were flooding into their hearts all at once, and as though countless others were there to help carry whatever had been weighing them down.
Superman thought of his last argument with Lois and smiled quietly. It had felt enormous at the time. Now it was nothing.
Dick thought of Barbara and Starfire, and of a conversation he'd been putting off. He'd have it, after this.
Across thousands of people, across a thousand different weights—they set them down. The white light asked nothing, explained nothing, and healed something anyway.
None of them could see the pillar of white light, a hundred meters wide, drilling up through the clouds and breaking through like a fist through paper. Fragments of brilliance scattered upward—and then fell back, raining down across the world below.
When their eyes cleared, they all looked toward the same place.
White boots. White gloves. A white capelet over a flowing skirt. No mask. The emblem on her chest echoed the Black Lantern symbol in structure—but in meaning, it was the absolute opposite. Where the Black Lantern showed an inverted triangle with five fingers splayed outward, the White Lantern showed the same triangle with a vertical line through the fingers—as if drawing something back in.
She'd taken a few extra seconds stepping out of the light. The suit underneath had been completely unacceptable—one hundred percent skintight, and while it covered everything, the sensation was unbearable. It felt like wearing nothing at all while being squeezed on all sides. She'd nearly been unable to breathe. And it wasn't even an all-female audience.
Fortunately, she had her own emotional foundation and wasn't relying entirely on the ring, which left the Entity without much authority over her. They'd had a brief negotiation—two quick concessions, one from each side—and arrived at the current arrangement.
Her end of the deal: she had to recite the White Lantern oath. Properly. Once. The Entity gave ground on the costume; she didn't push back on the words. One recitation wasn't worth making an issue of.
In brightest day, by purest light,
Cleanse the soul of error and delusion.
When darkness falls, lift your gaze—When the new day comes, light is boundless!