Sigurd looked at Diana approaching him and Hippolyta. He knew he could only explain Hippolyta about her other-self's origin later. For now, he addressed them both.
"Go and solve the problem that was created here. Once you're done, come to this address if you wish to learn more," he said looking toward Bruce then spoke again. "I will stay a few more hours."
Just as the distant wail of sirens and the rumble of emergency vehicles converged on the destroyed area, Sigurd flicked his wrist. The world blurred, and they reappeared in the sterile, luxurious penthouse high above the city.
Sigurd gestured toward Hippolyta and Diana. "You two should talk." He pointed to a side room. "In there."
Hippolyta and Diana walked into the adjoining room. Hippolyta studied the younger woman—her face so familiar, yet the life behind her eyes entirely different. She sensed Sigurd had a purpose in bringing them together.
Diana looked at Hippolyta, this queen from another world, and began to speak. She spoke of Themyscira, of her mother, of her role as a protector in a world of men and gods. The conversation was cautious, two legends from different streams of reality slowly recognizing the same current.
In the main hall, Sigurd and Lucifer remained.
"I was planning to leave this place immediately," Sigurd said, his voice low. "But you brought my wife here, so now I stay a few days."
Lucifer shrugged, swirling a glass of amber liquor. "I thought you might need the support. The situation felt… volatile. Perhaps I overestimated."
Sigurd stared at him, speechless for a moment. "How did that logic even form? You knew the danger, and you brought my pregnant wife into the heart of it?"
Lucifer's smile was razor-thin. "You worry too much. Even if this universe crumbles, we'll be safe and sound. Probably."
Sigurd's eyes narrowed, a thought striking him. "Was that creature sent here by your Father?"
Lucifer nodded, his playful demeanor fading. "I don't know why. I was only told to be alert during your fight. A warning, but no explanation."
Sigurd replayed the battle in his mind—the creature's unnatural composition, its resonant, familiar malice. He had kept a fragment of its essence, a dark, shimmering shard now sealed within his own dimensional pocket.
"I felt nothing beyond its alien origin to this reality," Sigurd mused. "Nothing explicitly infernal."
"Be cautious," Lucifer warned him seriously. "That darkness… I feel a connection to it. Distant, but familial. I don't know how."
Across the city, in the stark confines of a maximum-security holding facility, Bruce Wayne stood before Lex Luthor's cell.
"You nearly destroyed the world," Batman's voice was a gravelly whisper. "From now on, every move you make will be watched."
He turned and left. Lex said nothing, but a faint, unnerving smile played on his lips.
As Batman walked down the sterile corridor, a sliver of shadow—no thicker than a strand of hair—detached from a dark corner and slithered across the floor. It flowed under the cell door and, unseen, seeped into the sole of Lex Luthor's standard-issue shoe.
Lex was escorted to his permanent cell. The heavy door clanged shut. For a moment, there was silence.
Then, a scream tore through the block—raw, agonized, and utterly inhuman. Guards came running.
Inside the cell, Lex Luthor was convulsing on the floor. The skin across his back rippled, then split. Two grotesque, claw-tipped hands of pure obsidian matter forced their way out, followed by the malformed, shadow-crowned head of something that was no longer Lex. It was a parasitic rebirth, a second-stage horror emerging from its host.
Superman, not yet far from the facility, heard the cry. His X-ray vision pierced the walls, and his blood went cold. "Batman! It's happening again! Something is coming out of Luthor—it's the same energy signature!"
Bruce's voice was tight over the comm. "Contain it. I'm alerting the others."
In the penthouse, Sigurd's head snapped up. He felt it—a spike of the same vile, resonant darkness, weaker but unmistakably kin to the creature he had just unmade.
"The problem is not solved," Sigurd said, already rising.
"I'll hold the fort," Lucifer replied, his eyes following Sigurd with unspoken concern. "You should be careful."
Sigurd vanished.
He reappeared inside the prison cell, the air cracking with the sudden displacement of space. The guards were frozen in terror; the thing that was half-Lex, half-monster was halfway through its gruesome emergence.
"Control the perimeter," Sigurd's voice echoed in the minds of both Superman and Batman. "I am removing the source."
He didn't wait. In a flash of light, he and the twitching, hybrid form of Lex Luthor were gone.
In the featureless Void, a place between realities, Sigurd manifested. With a wave, he erected the Mirror Dimension around them—a sterile, infinite arena. He tossed the transforming body onto the non-ground.
The Lex-creature writhed, the black substance consuming more of him. Then, the shadowy head swiveled, and a voice that was not Lex's, smooth and ancient with malice, poured forth from its maw.
"What a surprise," it cooed. "You were dead. Yet the old fools scraped you back together. Now I understand the familiarity… the taste of my subordinate's energy on you."
Sigurd's stance tightened. "Who are you? You are not here in flesh—you're puppeting a shadow."
The creature's laugh was the sound of breaking glass. "Oh… they kept your memories buried. Good. You'll remember me when the time is right. For now, just know I'm glad you survived. It will make the game more interesting. Be ready. This time, it won't be so easy."
Before Sigurd could demand answers, the dark energy contracted. It ripped itself free from Lex's body in a stream of liquid shadow, leaving the man collapsed, groaning, his body already healing from the violent exorcism—the dark energy had, perversely, repaired the damage it caused during its exit.
The shadow-mass hovered for a moment, then shot toward Sigurd not as an attack, but as a probe.
Sigurd raised a hand to seal it away, but then he felt it—a deep, instinctual pull within his own core. His unique talent, the ability to absorb and integrate cosmic energies, flared to life on its own. It latched onto the tendril of darkness, and began drawing it in.
"What the hell?" Sigurd gritted his teeth, trying to halt the process. The energy was cold, intelligent, and hungry, yet his own power consumed it eagerly, like a starved man offered a feast. It wasn't resisting; it was welcoming.
As the last of the shadow was absorbed, leaving only a shivering, human Lex Luthor in the void, Sigurd staggered. A cold fire settled in his veins, and a single, terrifying whisper echoed in the depths of his soul, a fragment of the entity's message now etched into his being:
We are not so different, you and I.
He looked at his hands, then at the now-harmless Lex. The dark energy was gone, but it was inside him. Not corrupting, not controlling… but integrated.
"What in the Nine Realms is this?" he whispered to the empty Void. "Even they know me. What did the One Above All not tell me? Or… what do they themselves not know?"