Mercy? The Covenant doesn't know what that is. Their whole operation is built on back-up plans and escape routes, not kindness. When their Dominion falls apart, they adapt. When a Dreadnought crashes, they crunch new data. But when Rex made his ultimatum public, they dropped the pretenses and activated Paradox Protocol.
Let's be clear: this wasn't a doomsday weapon or an orbital laser. It was a trial by fire, a cosmic test you can't walk away from unchanged—if you can walk at all.
The sky over Gotham shattered like a broken mirror, and through those cracked clouds emerged a massive structure. Black metal, circuits glowing as if alive, not even trying to disguise itself as a ship. It resembled a cage dropped by angry gods. The Paradox wasn't out to kill Rex right away. That would be too easy. They aimed to burn him out, to force him to morph until he either imploded or became a cosmic pitbull.
But the Covenant missed an important point: you don't control when a devil breaks.
Down on the street, Rex stood still, Rebellion resting over his shoulder like a feather. Evelyn was by his side, looking like she'd already rehearsed this battle in her mind three times.
"They're going to throw you off the cliff," she said, calm as can be.
He just smiled. "Good. Let's see who bounces."
The first pulse hit hard. No gentleness here. Gravitational shockwaves slammed the city, turning entire neighborhoods into impossible shapes. Zero-point fields tore apart everything made of atoms. This wasn't just destruction; it was disassembly.
[V.E.R.G.I.L.] panicked in his ear: [WARNING: PARADOX FIELD INITIATED. D.A.N.T.E. STABILITY COMPROMISED.]
Rex's body began to glitch, his D.A.N.T.E. armor struggling to hold him together. It felt like being pulled in multiple directions at once. Evelyn shouted through the chaos, "Anchor yourself, Rex! Don't let them tear you apart!"
He wasn't losing to some oversized motherboard. Not today.
Then the enforcers arrived. They weren't soldiers; they were walking math problems, algorithmic muscle designed to scramble your DNA on contact. No guns, just paradox blasts that forced his cells to battle themselves. It would break anyone else into quantum dust.
On paper? It should have worked. But against Rex? Not a chance.
He faced them head-on, Rebellion spinning like a blender set to destroy. Each hit sent shockwaves through him, paradox energy clawing at his insides, but he kept swinging. He couldn't stop. He wouldn't stop. Every time they tried to tear him apart, he stitched himself back tighter.
Not as a monster. Not as a man. As Rex.
The second pulse hit cold, like a surgeon's scalpel. It didn't touch flesh— it reached for the core of his being. It aimed to erase the "Rex" part of him, to rewrite him as nothing but empty code.
But you can't erase Rex. You can chain him up, but you'll break your own hands trying.
He dropped to his knees, blood streaming from his eyes, skin flickering between demon armor and raw static. His mind teetered on the brink. Devil or man? For a brief moment, even he didn't know.
Then he heard a whisper, not from the outside, but deep within. "You're neither. You're unchained."
Paradox Protocol didn't kill him. It unlocked him.
No grand explosions. Just a shift. His armor rippled, mutated—six wings tore from his back, jagged obsidian lined with shattered light. Nothing angelic about them. One eye glowed gold, the other blazed like a supernova. He wasn't wearing armor anymore. He was the weapon.
Gravity twisted. Air warped. [D.A.N.T.E. SERAPH-NULL ASCENSION — ACTIVATED.] The Covenant wanted him in pieces. The joke was on them—he rebuilt himself into something new. Not an angel, not a devil. Just Rex.
Evelyn watched from below, amazed as he transformed the Covenant's torture chamber into his own forge. She could barely breathe. "Stubborn bastard," she muttered, filled with awe.
The enforcers tried again, shifting forms, looking for any way to gain the upper hand. But you can't out-mutate defiance. Rex moved—not faster, not stronger, just sharper. Each beat of his wings cracked the air, every strike with Rebellion tore through their code like it was nothing. He was no longer fighting to survive. He was fighting to erase the entire concept of being leashed.
In the command center, the Covenant leaders were going mad.
"He's stabilizing! That's impossible!"
A woman in grey shook her head. "No. That's just Rex."
The last pulse activated just as Rex crashed into the Paradox core—he didn't care about it shattered. The Covenant's final trick? A singularity bomb meant to erase him completely, making him just a bad memory. Most would have run. Not Rex. He stood there, calm, absorbed the hit, and did the impossible. He didn't reflect it back. He didn't throw it away. No—he absorbed it.
The Seraph-Null wings curled around him, eerie and beautiful, swallowing that catastrophic energy and transforming it into something fierce—pure, stubborn defiance. He didn't detonate the bomb; he commandeered it.
The Paradox structure collapsed in on itself, dragged into a cosmic sinkhole. The sky looked like it had been smashed with a hammer. But at least it was finally free. Rex stood there, wings folding in, skin still buzzing with whatever Seraph-Null had turned him into. He looked wrecked—blood, burns, the work. But he was still standing.
Evelyn rushed over, panting, likely questioning her life choices. Her hands skimmed over his new battle scars. "You're insane," she gasped.
He smiled, blood on his teeth: "Takes one to know one, doc."
Meanwhile, the League watched the news feeds, silent. Diana's lips almost curled into a smile. "Didn't ascend. Just refused to fall." Bruce remained poker-faced as usual. Clark seemed lost in his own thoughts. "What do you do when someone who refuses chains becomes the center of a world built on them?"
Bruce replied, deadpan: "They start breaking."
Cut to the safehouse. Rex settled on a creaky cot while Evelyn patched him up, her hands trembling slightly. The Seraph-Null power simmered under his skin—it felt more like a battle scar than a curse now.
"They'll be back," she murmured.
"They always are."
"You're not done changing."
He shook his head, smiling slightly. "Not for them. Not for Heaven. Not for Hell."
She wiped a streak of blood off his cheek. "For yourself, then."
"Damn right."
Somewhere among the Covenant's smoldering ruins, a lone figure watched the chaos unfold. "You've become what we feared, Rex." But in truth, fear never stopped defiance.
And on Gotham's rooftops, Rex stood beneath the shattered sky. His wings flickered out—black light and torn halos. Not a symbol. Not anyone's weapon. Just a stubborn "screw you" to fate. And whether they liked it or not, the world was finally listening.