Orion frowned. He'd lived long enough to know this wasn't as simple as it appeared. The mission looked difficult, and there were clearly things Highfather wasn't saying.
At least Highfather offered a measure of reassurance. "The Goddess of Death recently led an expedition to another world. She's wounded and in a deep slumber—she won't interfere."
Hearing that he wouldn't be crossing paths with Thea, Orion breathed easier. The power gap was one thing.
His genuine rapport with her was another. Darkness still coiled within Orion's soul, and it hadn't faded simply because he'd been raised as Highfather's son. Living on New Genesis, surrounded by paragons of virtue, was its own form of torment.
Thea had always been ambiguous about righteousness, which made her one of the few people Orion could talk to without filtering every word through a moral lens. No good-versus-evil framing, no scrutinizing whether his thoughts were sufficiently virtuous. If he was being honest, Orion's regard for Thea ran warmer than his feelings toward Diana.
That was the darkness in his soul talking.
Orion considered for a moment. "If I may be so bold—was the Goddess of Death's expedition to the other world righteous?"
Highfather understood what his son was really asking. He suppressed a sigh. Good thing I didn't involve the legion commanders. Even my adopted son, with all that darkness in his soul, is reluctant to back this.
But Highfather didn't lie to his face. "It was righteous. The Goddess of Death averted a crisis spanning two worlds and was gravely wounded in the service of justice."
That made Orion feel even worse. Thea had bled for justice, and now he was supposed to exploit her incapacitation to sneak into her home and steal. By any measure, this was beneath him.
If anyone else had ordered this, Orion would have put his massive fists to work making the argument. But his devotion to Highfather overrode his own moral compass.
"As you wish, Father. I'll bring the Earthling to New Genesis."
Orion went to assemble his soldiers. The four main legions were off-limits—he could only draw from Highfather's personal guard [?], selecting those with the highest loyalty.
Meanwhile, on Oa.
Kyle Rayner had saved the universe, but like so many tired stories, the returning hero found no flowers waiting—only suspicion.
"Colleague Rayner, you claim you have absolutely no memory of your time behind the wall. That's difficult to accept. If you didn't restore the Emotional Spectrum Reservoir, then where were you for three days? I believe you owe the Guardians a full account." One of the former Templar Guardians—now a sitting Guardian—opened the inquiry.
He spoke for the rest of them. They all wanted to know what lay beyond the wall. Beings who'd lived for billions of years didn't take kindly to unknowns, and the Source Wall was their one remaining blind spot. Kyle Rayner had gone in and come back right under their noses. Their curiosity was consuming.
Curiosity was the stated reason, at least. Whether avarice lurked beneath it, no one could say.
"I genuinely don't remember anything. I remember becoming a beam of white light and hitting the wall. The next thing I knew, I was coming out. If you hadn't told me, I'd have had no idea three days had passed." Kyle's temper was steady. This was already his third time explaining.
But the little blue faces showed no sign of believing him. Only Ganthet chose to take him at his word.
"Kyle, you've been through a great deal. What are your plans going forward?"
Kyle looked down at the White Lantern Ring on his finger. The light was almost gone—a faint residue where a universe-spanning radiance had once burned. It could barely function as a flashlight.
This was because he'd taken shortcuts to White Lantern status. Without the Entities' emotional support, The Entity—the embodiment of life itself—didn't truly recognize him. The only reason the ring still functioned at all was that each of the seven Entities had given him a small fragment of their power in their final moments, just enough to escape the Source Wall. Those emotional remnants sustained a feeble White Lantern at best.
"The White Lantern hasn't given up on me, so I won't give up on it. I intend to continue as a White Lantern. Thea won't be in this universe forever. It's my turn to protect this place." His voice carried quiet conviction.
The words had barely left his mouth when Hal Jordan—having flown from Earth the moment the green rings came back online—burst into the chamber.
He grabbed Kyle's arm. "Kyle, come talk to everyone. Your voice carries weight right now."
Without so much as a glance at the bewildered Guardians, Hal dragged Kyle toward the door.
"That man... How can he be so insufferably rude!" The bearded Guardian was fuming. Ganthet simply smiled. Hal Jordan had always been like that.
But a glance at the situation outside wiped the smile from his face.
Kyle followed Hal out of the inner sanctum and into the Green Lantern Corps garrison. Every surviving Green Lantern in the universe had gathered here. At their peak: 3,600 sectors, 7,200 active Lanterns, plus an equal number of reserves, along with honor guards, patrol units, and sentinels. Nearly twenty thousand Green Lanterns in all.
After disaster upon disaster, barely one in ten remained. Counting the wounded and the barely functional, the total had fallen below two thousand.
The crowd was restless. It took Kyle a while to piece together what was happening.
The majority of the Green Lanterns wanted to go on strike.
Not because of the casualty rate. Not because of the brutal conditions. They loved this universe. They loved their homes. They could endure hardship, fight enemies, lay down their lives—because they'd believed their service meant something. But that belief had shattered.
"We won't use the Green Lantern rings anymore. We'll maintain justice by our own means. It'll be harder—incomparably harder—but we refuse to keep accelerating the universe's destruction." A retired Lantern spoke up, his voice ringing across the assembly. He'd lost a leg in combat years ago and had used a ring construct as a prosthesis ever since. Today, he stood on a crutch, struggling to keep upright. His ring finger was bare.
More Lanterns rallied behind him—far more than stood against. Ignorance had been one thing, but this crisis had shaken them to their cores. The universe had come within a hair's breadth of annihilation, and the root cause was their own unchecked consumption of the Emotional Spectrum. Guilt spread like wildfire, and their conviction in the justice of their cause had cracked wide open.
In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power—Green Lantern's light!
Hal Jordan watched the scene with an ache that cut to the bone. He belted out the oath at full volume, trying to rekindle the courage of his comrades. But the rallying cry that had never once failed him fell flat. Even his closest friends didn't join in, answering with silence instead.
"Hal, we respect your courage. But can you really ignore what we now know and pick up that ring again? Don't you understand that every fraction of emotional power you squander brings the universe one step closer to oblivion? Kyle risked everything to save us this time. What about next time? Have you thought about that?"