"Shrine of Frenzied Death"
The Shrine erupted into existence around them.
Endless pillars rose from nothing, their surfaces black and cracked, each one burning with yellow flames that flickered and danced in the void. The sky above was not a sky, it was an absence, a pitch-black void that had no depth, no end, no beginning. It was the black of endings, of things that had been consumed and would never return. Each pillar stretched toward that void, impossibly tall, impossibly ancient, as if they had been standing since before time itself began.
At the top of each pillar, a skull.
Different shapes. Different forms. Monsters and men Jason had killed. The Absolute Joker's rictus grin was frozen in eternal mockery. Neron's horned skull oozed black ichor from its cracks. Azrael's split skull stared with hollow eyes. Others, too many to count, all the enemies who had fallen before the King of Curses. They watched in silence, their empty sockets fixed on the battle below.
The ground beneath them was yellow flame....not burning, not consuming, just existing, a sea of fire that stretched to the horizon. It cast the only light in that endless darkness.
Jason sat on his throne at the end of the pillars. His form was no longer human, it was the Frenzied Lord, a mass of orange-yellow flame with a black core at its center. The black haori and white kimono of a demon king draped over his burning form. His eyes...if they could still be called eyes, burned with the light of a million dying stars.
Empty Hand stood in the center of the domain, his dark form surrounded by the yellow flames. He looked around at the pillars, at the skulls, at the throne. His galaxy eyes took in every detail. And then he laughed.
Not a mocking laugh. Not a bitter laugh. A genuine laugh, full of amusement and recognition.
"I feel him," Empty Hand said, his voice carrying across the domain. "I feel you, Jason Anderson. The real you. The one who has been hiding beneath all that borrowed power." He spread his arms, his darkness spreading outward. "This domain is beautiful. It is truly you."
He looked up at the sky...the pitch-black sky of absence and endings. His smile widened.
"But you made one mistake."
The sky parted.
Jason's eyes went wide. The black void that he had created, the domain that was his, the representation of endings and absence....it split open like a wound. A massive beam of void energy descended from the tear, aimed directly at Jason's throne.
Jason raised his hands. The Frenzied Flame erupted from his palms, a beam of yellow-orange chaos that met the void in mid-air. The two forces clashed...chaos against darkness, creation against erasure...and the space between them screamed. The flames ate at the void, corrupting it, burning away its edges. The void consumed the flames, erasing them, leaving only absence in their wake.
They pushed against each other, neither giving ground.
"You are a fool," Empty Hand's voice echoed across the domain. "You think you can challenge me? You think you can win? I am not like the others you have faced. I am not a Demon Lord. I am not a God. I am something older. Something darker."
He pushed harder. The void beam expanded, forcing Jason's flames back.
"I am the one who was denied. The one who was cast aside. The one who was forgotten." His voice rose. "And I will never allow myself to be dominated by a fool who was handed everything he has."
Jason did not respond with words.
A massive eye opened in the air above them.
It was black...not the black of night, not the black of absence, but the black of death itself. A black slit pupil, surrounded by orange flames that burned at its edges. The eye looked down at Empty Hand, and in its gaze was the weight of every ending that had ever been.
A new beam emerged from the eye...black like death, but with a hue of Frenzied Flame all around it. It descended toward Empty Hand, not fast, not slow, but with the inevitability of death itself.
Empty Hand crossed his arms. The void gathered around him, forming a shield of pure erasure. The black beam struck the shield, and the two forces clashed, death against void, ending against erasure. Empty Hand's arms trembled with the effort of holding the attack at bay. His feet slid backward, carving trenches in the yellow ground.
"You think death can stop me?" he snarled. "I am beyond death. I am the end of all things."
But Jason was no longer on his throne.
Empty Hand's eyes went wide. He turned, too late, and saw Jason behind him. The Frenzied Lord held a massive greatsword in his hands...a long, twisted blade resembling intertwined roots or blackened branches, ending in a razor-sharp, spear-like point. Its dark bronze and iron surface was gnarled and uneven, with thorn-like protrusions near the hilt that gave it the appearance of a cursed stake rather than a conventional blade. The Greatsword of Damnation.
Jason dropped from the air, the sword aimed directly at Empty Hand's head.
The blade pierced through Empty Hand's skull, burying itself deep in his form. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the thorns exploded.
Razor-sharp protrusions burst from Empty Hand's body, tearing through his dark form from the inside out. Jason's flames followed, burning through the wounds, consuming the void that tried to heal them. Empty Hand screamed...a sound that echoed across the domain, a sound that had never been heard before, a sound that shook the pillars and cracked the yellow ground.
His body was visibly burning. His dark skin, akin to hundreds of galaxies, was slowly being consumed. Within his form, the galaxies, suns, and stars that made up his existence began to explode. They burned from the inside, their light swallowed by the Frenzied Flame.
Anger. Pure, absolute anger.
Empty Hand grabbed Jason by the flaming neck. His grip was iron, his fingers burning with void energy. The darkness began to strip Jason of his powers, erasing them one by one.
Jason felt it happen.
His powers of death were the first to go....the connection to Death herself, the ability to deliver Destined Death, the understanding of endings. Deleted. Erased. Removed from existence as if they had never been.
His powers of the soul followed. The ability to cut souls, to understand their nature, to harm beings that had no physical form...gone. It didn't take long for the void to delete his Avatar of Death status, to remove everything he had learned from his encounters with the Endless.
His Dimensional Cleave was next. The ability to cut through reality itself, to split dimensions and carve through existence...erased. Deleted. Removed from his understanding as if it had never been.
But Empty Hand was not faring any better.
His legs began to burn first...the darkness that made up his form consumed by the Frenzied Flame. Then his horns, one by one, crumbling into ash. Then his chest, his arms, his face. The galaxies within him were dying, their light extinguished. His body was being unmade from the inside out.
His eyes were the last to go.
The galaxy eyes that had seen the birth and death of universes, that had witnessed eons of suffering and pain, that had held the weight of a billion years of existence, they burned. The darkness within them was consumed, leaving only empty sockets.
His dark form was completely deleted. Gone. Erased.
In its place stood a man.
A naked man. A human man. His skin was pale, his body thin, his eyes wide with shock and confusion. He looked at his hands, human hands, flesh and blood and bone. He looked at Jason.
Only the void had saved him. In deleting Jason's Frenzied Flame powers, it had given him a reprieve. The two had canceled each other out.
Jason stood there, also in his human form. His clothes were gone. His body was bare. He looked at Empty Hand...at the man who had been a god, a monster, a force of nature, and saw only another human.
They stood there, barren, completely done in by their powers.
Empty Hand looked at his hands again. He laughed.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
The sound echoed across the empty domain. The pillars still burned, the skulls still watched, but there was no power left to command them. The Frenzied Flame flickered weakly around them, its energy spent.
"So in the end," Empty Hand said, his voice hoarse, "none of us win. And God always has the last laugh."
He looked at Jason. His eyes were human now...no galaxies, no madness, just the eyes of a man who had been broken by eons of pain.
"Look at you," he said. "Barren and falling like me." He laughed again, softer this time. "How does it feel? Being nothing? Back to your original true existence. No longer the hero, or the main character." His smile was bitter. "Just a man."
He nodded, satisfaction in his eyes.
"You lost as much as I did."
Jason smiled.
It was a tired smile, a worn smile, but it was genuine.
"Sorry to break your heart," he said, his voice weak but steady. "But I truly am the main character....."
He grinned "....You burned it all except the one thing that mattered."
Empty Hand's eyes narrowed. "And what is that?"
"The powers that I didn't work for. The ones I was gifted....I still have them" Jason raised his hand, his fingers forming the familiar gesture. "You failed to delete the one thing you hate the most."
Empty Hand's eyes went wide.
Jason aimed his hand at his head.
"Dismantle."
The basic slash. The first thing Jason had unlocked. An invisible cursed energy slash that cuts through whatever is in its path. Simple. Primitive. Useless against gods and demons and forces of nature.
It moved through the air and cut Empty Hand's head.
The man who had been a god, a monster, a force of darkness, fell to his knees. Blood poured from his neck. Human blood. Red and wet and final.
He looked at Jason one last time. His mouth opened, but no words came out. His eyes went glassy.
He fell forward and did not move.
Jason stood over the body, his hand still raised, his chest heaving.
"I win," he said.
Then he fell.
The domain shattered around him. The pillars crumbled. The skulls fell. The yellow flames flickered and died. The black sky cracked and faded, replaced by the void of space.
Jason fell through the emptiness, his body limp, his powers gone, his mind blank. He had given everything. He had lost everything.
But he had won.
The void that had been Empty Hand, the darkness that had consumed him, the erasure that had tried to end him, it needed a new host. With the death of the other Beyonder, Jason was the only suitable vessel. The winner in the Battle of Beyonders.
The powers of the void, of the Frenzied Flame, of Death and the Soul and Dimensional Cleave, they all needed a place to return to. They surged toward Jason, seeking a home, seeking a host, seeking the one who had proven himself worthy.
He fell into the darkness, and the darkness fell into him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was floating in nothing. The void surrounded him, calm and waiting. He was naked, powerless, alone.
But he was alive.
He had won.