It lowered its head straight into Dante's ear.
"If it's just linking up with my little buddy, it shouldn't be a problem."
"But right now, I can only sense her physical signal. I can vaguely feel her soul, sure, but that's just a sensation."
"Even if we're soul-bonded, if there's too much interference, I still can't make contact."
Dante nodded. That was clear enough.
Signal jammed.
Then Dante glanced back at his team… and remembered something.
Right! Damn it! I've got a Batman behind me!
Even if his own IQ had hit its ceiling, Batman's hadn't.
"Star Team! Gather up!" Dante nodded at Bruce. "Bruce Wayne, I need your help."
Bruce looked mildly surprised. Why him?
Wasn't the situation already obvious?
Either wait for the witch to finish chanting and face the final boss, or find a way to interrupt her summoning.
"Dante, you clearly already thought of a plan. Why ask me?"
"Uh, I need someone to help make decisions—and also share the blame."
"Then why me? Don't you have teammates?" Bruce pointed to the Goddess of Death standing next to Dante. "Or do you just not trust your team?"
"No, Bruce." Dante clasped his hands solemnly. "To me, you're just as trustworthy as any of my teammates."
Those words hit Batman harder than expected.
This… this was what being trusted felt like?
It was completely different from his relationship with Gordon.
Gordon didn't trust him—he trusted Batman.
But Dante…
This guy was clearly a serial schemer, very Nick Fury-coded, but somehow, he had that rare charisma. The kind that made people instinctively want to believe in him.
And more importantly—
He said "Bruce Wayne, I need your help," not "Batman, I need your help."
That hit different.
"Time's ticking. Tell me what you need."
Bruce's face didn't change a bit. Gotham's number one poker-faced CEO had mastered this cold mask, perfect for deflecting 80% of all unnecessary social interaction.
Unfortunately for him, Dante was a social terrorist. Immune to all masks.
Dante casually slung an arm over Bruce's shoulder like they were frat bros, a total mismatch to the high-stakes situation.
"Here's the deal…"
He laid out the entire problem. How Devil Dinosaur could spiritually reach Moon Girl in the darkhold and potentially stop the spell from within. But the Aether Particle was blocking the connection—no signal, no soul GPS.
Bruce frowned as he listened, then glanced toward Agatha's side.
Just a few glances, and the gears already started turning in that billionaire brain.
"Dante, I need you to answer a few questions."
"Fire away. Just don't ask for my bank PIN or my porn preferences."
"…I don't fully understand the Aether Particle. But is its power infinite?"
"Of course not. If it were, we'd already be powdered corpses by now."
"Then look. When the witch casts her spell, the Aether Particle isn't just protecting her—it's also flowing into the darkhold. That means it's being consumed to power the ritual. Reality warping on this scale needs distortion fuel."
Bruce used his Will Green Light to project a simplified holographic model of Agatha's casting.
"In other words, as the spell progresses, the Aether Particle's defense gets weaker. If we keep hammering it, we'll speed up that process."
"I figured you'd say we should save our strength and hit her at the last second—when the Aether Particle's nearly drained and the spell's about to succeed." Dante shrugged. "That's a bit risky."
"If it were just me, I'd do exactly that. No other choice." Bruce remained stoic. "But we've got three gods and three Lanterns now. We don't need to take extreme measures."
Devil Dinosaur nodded emphatically.
"Exactly. If the Aether Particle fluctuates enough, I can lock onto her soul coordinates!)"
Dante let out a deep breath.
This made things a lot easier.
Piercing the Aether's reality layer was one thing. Making it wobble? Way easier.
"Perfect. Alright, everyone, listen up! Focus fire, single point! Devil Dinosaur, stay out of combat. Keep scanning for Moon Girl's soul!"
At Dante's command, the team launched their assault.
"Hehehe… such futility. The Aether Particle's reality shield can't be broken by mortal hands."
Agatha sneered.
All attacks—lightning, magic, Nightsword slashes, Will Green Light blasts—were disintegrated before they could even graze her.
But compared to Hela's first few test shots, the disintegration zone was a little closer to Agatha than before…
---
"So what you're saying is… Storybrooke Town is now a reality-warped zone?"
Level 9 FBI Agent Maria Hill stood at the perimeter, eyes narrowing.
"I was affected by the distortion too, so I don't know which parts were changed," said Captain Carter. "But according to Star Team members with divine resistance, the distortion happened when their Captain entered and reality erased his presence temporarily."
"Captain?" Maria frowned. "Since when did the Star Team have a Captain? I thought it was always Hela? Even though she refused the title…"
"That's the distortion. We've forgotten the true Captain."
"Wait—are you telling me someone in the FBI has the authority to command three Asgardian gods?" Maria latched onto the key detail. "That sounds… wildly unrealistic."
"It does. But everyone who's resistant confirms it." Carter pointed toward Storybrooke. "Once this ends, we'll recover the erased reality."
"God, I hope it's worth it."
Maria sighed, then raised her comm.
"Keep a tight watch! Anything strange in Storybrooke, report it immediately! Treat this mission with top-tier clearance!"
Carter stepped back, letting Hill handle logistics.
She, Pietro, and Bruce Banner had already contacted the Bureau once the distortion began. But monitoring an entire town, even a small one, was impossible for just the three of them.
So they called in the cavalry.
Nick Fury and Professor X had dispatched Maria Hill, plus dozens of agents and sensors. Emma Frost had also been sent as psychic backup.
"To be honest, I deal with memory modification all the time," Emma muttered as Carter approached. "But warping reality? That's hard to wrap my head around."
"You can use your telepathy to see if your own memory was altered," Carter said. "You're a leader of mutants. You should have remembered the Star Team's Captain."
"I'm getting the sense…" Emma said slowly, "that this sort of distortion might not stay limited to one town."
"You're wondering if it could spread. To a whole country… maybe the entire planet?"
"Emma, I don't know." Carter shook her head. "All we can do is fight with everything we have to keep our reality intact."
---
"What are you fighting for now? For your broken little reality? Or just to avoid dying in this dump?"
Agatha mocked them as wave after wave of attacks fell uselessly before her.
But the Star Team ignored her, hammering away with coordinated, if ineffective, attacks.
At this point, Agatha's mind had been consumed by the darkhold. Rational thought was long gone—she'd given in to pure madness.
She conjured a black magic blade, sliced open her own flesh, and let the blood pour into the floating darkhold before her.
Because, as everyone knew, cursed artifacts get stronger after a good blood chug.
The darkhold was no exception.
Construction speed on the dimensional gateway suddenly surged by 30%.
And then—
That same surge pushed things too far.
The once-perfect Aether barrier finally fluctuated.
Devil Dinosaur howled. "I've got the coordinates!"
He immediately shut his eyes, focusing all his soul-link effort on punching the data through the thinning veil of distorted reality.
Aether Particle couldn't block this, soul bonds went deeper than that.
Dante rushed over.
"Did she reply?!"
"Roar~ (Don't worry. I'm linked up now. But without an Inhuman bloodline to boost the signal, this is gonna take a while.)"
Dante instantly got it.
Before, they had a hardwired cable.
Now, they were stuck using Bluetooth.
"Dante! Still nothing?!" Bruce called out while firing another Will Green Light beam. "That witch just blood-fed the darkhold! The ritual's accelerating—we're outta time!"
"Chill, Batman! They're on a weak signal, it's still loading!"
"I appreciate that, now everyone knows I'm Batman."
Bruce gritted his teeth and launched another explosive light blast.
Right in that moment.
Agatha's expression snapped.
The darkhold tore itself from her control!
"Impossible! I specifically swapped a regular person's soul into it to avoid this kind of backlash!"
Then came a BOOM.
Bruce's last blast pierced the Aether barrier.
He blinked. "Devil Dinosaur pulled it off… right before the spell finished!"
But he didn't get to finish his sentence.
Because he saw what came next.
Agatha went completely insane.
In a flash, she sacrificed every last bit of her flesh and organs, unleashing a torrent of black magic to seize control of the darkhold.
But this wasn't a file download.
Once a ritual is interrupted, it can't resume.
"Great Chthon!"
"With my blood and body, I offer you a vessel!"
"Descend!"
Dante frowned.
Sure, he'd stopped her from fusing the reality warp and bringing Chthon directly through Wanda.
Big win.
But now?
Agatha was turning herself into the summoning beacon.
"The distortion is receding."
With Agatha's life burning out, the Aether-fueled false reality began collapsing.
In just three seconds, everyone returned to the real world.
But the woman in front of them was drenched in blood, the darkhold in her hands.
Her expression had changed completely.
She took two deep breaths, then frowned.
"The air on Earth really has gone downhill."
"But no matter. I am a god born of Earth's life force. I will never abandon my homeland."
Her gaze locked onto Wanda.
And then, came the surprise.
Not because Wanda was powerful or beautiful…
But because she held Chaos Magic, and an unawakened X-gene.
"Wanda Maximoff. Gypsy witch. Daughter of Natalya Maximoff… Your mutant father never knew his wife was the Scarlet Witch before you. She was the most talented of them all. So gifted, she could block even my sight."
Chthon—no longer Agatha—stepped forward, grinning.
"It wasn't until you and your twin were captured by that tasteless idiot, the High Evolutionary, that I found you. So I did you a favor, gave you Chaos Magic and sent you back to Earth…"
Dante stepped forward and blocked Wanda without hesitation.
"Cut the crap, Chthon. We both know you just want to hijack Earth and level up. Don't act like you're some long-lost relative trying to reconnect."
He flipped him off.
"When your grandnephew was beating your demonic ass across dimensions, you weren't exactly this high and mighty."
"Dante… I've seen you in other timelines. You have power even I don't understand."
"But…"
"You're not worthy to stand before me."
A storm of Chaos Magic and Black Magic fused with divine power surged toward Dante.
Hela started to move, but Dante held out a hand to stop her.
He didn't flinch, didn't blink.
Even if the sky was collapsing, he stood firm.
The translucent Red Lantern Furnace ignited in his palm.
"Butcher, were you bored waiting?"
A voice echoed from the furnace, laced with Rage Light.
"Dante of Earth."
"Your heart burns with crimson fire."
"And I… am hungry."
(To be continued.)
***
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