The chamber was a pocket of hell carved under the city. The air was thick with smoke and chanting, a low, ugly sound that vibrated in Barry's teeth. Torchlight danced over the hooded figures, their faces lost in shadow, all focused on the centerpiece: a pulsating cocoon of angry orange energy, suspended in the air. Inside, he could just make out the contorted outline of a person. Wally.
And standing before it, with his back to Barry, was the source of it all. The man in the stone mask. Alchemy.
Barry didn't announce himself with a shout. He just stopped running, letting the golden lightning wreathing his body become the only new light in the room. The chanting stuttered and died, heads turning within hoods.
Alchemy slowly turned around. The blank stone face regarded him. There was no surprise in his posture.
"Flash," Alchemy's voice echoed, flat and cold. "You're just in time for the awakening."
But Barry wasn't looking at the mask. He was looking through it. He let his senses expand, feeling the flow of the Speed Force in the room. It was all wrong. Twisted. And at the center of that wrongness wasn't just the Philosopher's Stone. It was the man wearing the mask. He felt… familiar. Like a reflection in a cracked mirror.
The memories from the show—knowledge he'd carried like a secret curse—clicked into place with terrible certainty.
"It's you," Barry said, his voice low, cutting through the silence. He took a step forward, his eyes locked on the stone face. "I was afraid of this. I thought… I thought it might be some ancient monster. A demon. But it's just us, isn't it?"
Alchemy went very still.
"Are you the true God of Speed?" Barry asked, the title tasting like ash in his mouth. "Or are you just a time remnant? A scrap left over from a bad day? A ghost that doesn't know it's dead?"
For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of the energy cocoon. Then, a dry, hollow laugh escaped from behind the mask.
"God… remnant… these are just words," Alchemy said, his voice dropping, losing its echo, becoming something more personal and far more dangerous. "What I am is inevitable. I am the future, Flash. Your future. That's all you need to know."
Barry nodded slowly, a grim acceptance settling over him. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach, but it was being smothered by a rising, fierce resolve. He looked away from Alchemy, letting his gaze sweep over the circle of hooded cultists. These people. They worshipped a lie. They were about to unleash a tragedy he knew all too well. They were helping to break Wally, to break Joe, to break Iris. To break him.
He wouldn't let them.
"I was afraid," Barry repeated, his voice now clear and hard as steel. "But not anymore."
Time didn't just slow. It stopped.
In the frozen, silent world of stopped time, Barry moved. He was a sculptor and the cultists were his marble. To a normal person, it would have been a single, blinding flash of gold. But in that expanded second, it was methodical, brutal work.
He didn't see people. He saw consequences. He saw the hands that would build Savitar's armor, the voices that would chant his name, the faith that would give him power. He moved through them like a reaper, a precise, vibrating touch to each neck. A tiny, controlled burst of speed force energy to disrupt the brainstem. Instant. Painless. They never even knew he was there.
It was over before the first body began to crumple.
In the real world, it happened in the space between two heartbeats. One moment, the cult stood in a circle. The next, they were a ring of collapsing cloth and lifeless forms, hitting the stone floor with a series of soft, simultaneous thuds.
The orange cocoon flickered.
Alchemy stood alone now, the circle of his followers gone. He hadn't even had time to react.
Barry reappeared exactly where he had been standing, the gold of his lightning seeming brighter, fiercer, against the sudden silence. His expression was grim, devoid of triumph. It was a job that had needed doing.
"You might be me," Barry said, his voice cutting through the quiet. "Or a piece of me. And that's the tragedy of it. But you chose this. You chose to be the villain. That's on you."
He took a step forward, pointing a finger at the cocoon. "And I know your rules. You can't kill me. Not the me of now. Because doing so would unravel you. You're a paradox, and you're trapped by it."
Another step. The distance between them closed.
"But here's what's not going to happen," Barry continued, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "You will not get close to the people I love. You will not use them as weapons against me. I saw that plan. I know that playbook. And I'm burning it."
He was right in front of Alchemy now, close enough to see his own distorted reflection in the polished stone mask.
"And I will never," Barry vowed, the words an oath, "never create a time remnant to fight you. I won't make another you. I won't create that much pain just to win. I'm going to stop you myself."
For the first time, Alchemy took a step back. The utter certainty in Barry's voice, the complete rejection of the predetermined path, was something he clearly hadn't anticipated.
"You can't change what's already written," Alchemy hissed, but the confidence was cracking. The facade of the unshakable prophet was crumbling.
"Watch me," Barry said.
Then he moved again, not towards Alchemy, but towards the cocoon. He reached out, his hands glowing with pure, golden Speed Force energy, and plunged them into the twisting, painful orange light. He didn't try to tear it apart. He didn't fight it. Instead, he poured his own power into it, a calming, steady current against the chaotic storm. He was not rejecting the speed; he was cleansing it.
The orange light fought back, sputtering and flaring, but the gold was relentless, washing over it, transforming it. The cocoon began to dissolve, not in an explosion, but in a gentle fade, the angry orange shifting to a calm, steady yellow.
Inside, Wally West gasped, his body slumping as the painful energy holding him up vanished. He collapsed, but Barry was there to catch him before he hit the ground.
Holding the unconscious Wally in his arms, Barry turned his head one last time to the stunned figure in the stone mask.
"This is my city," Barry said, his voice flat and final. "My family. My life. Come for them again, and I'll show you what this 'shadow' of a speedster can really do."
Then, in a crash of thunder that tore through the silent cavern, he was gone. He left behind only the bodies of the cult, the fading echo of his promise, and a time remnant who had just seen his entire future shatter.