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seizethecringeofproduction · 11 months

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Sins of the Condemned

When everything went white, there had been a sense of relief and hope. Relief and hope that maybe, in their next world, things wouldn't turn out so horrible.

Unfortunately for her and everyone else, they would soon learn the true consequence of what they had done. Just as all others had.

When she returned to consciousness, she found herself not in a void of blinding white light but rather in one of a pitch-black abyss, with a musty odor of mold and decay entering her nostrils and a feeling of warm, soggy dampness on her left cheek. Cringing in disgust and jolting herself up to her knees, she opened her eyes to find a sight that made the void look more appealing; it was not the island that the Titans Tower was built upon but rather a seemingly man-made hallway. The dampness came from the coarse, wet and moldy carpet which was either brown or had turned that way. Some spots were darker and more drenched than others. The walls were a dull green, with faded arrows in between vertical lines painted endlessly across, leading up to a plain white tiled ceiling that looked a sickening yellow in the flat lights that repeated throughout.

Speaking of which, in her ears, there was a light humming noise that she at first attributed to these lights. She could just barely comprehend it, but a gentle drumming wouldn't go away no matter how much she tried to focus on her surroundings; not that there was much else to focus on, this hall was seemingly endless both in front of and behind her, with turns and corridors being thrown about haphazardly without rhyme nor reason.

"Where am I...." looking down at her feet and body, she could at least confirm she was still herself. She was still Raven, or Rachel Roth, now fully blossomed as the 'White Raven', with her usually dark violet hooded cloak a bright white instead along with the rest of her tunic even including her heeled boots. Her face was now full rather than the emaciated state it had been before, and her jet-black hair still reached her shoulders. Everything else about her appearance was the same as before she had ended up in his place. Speaking of which, "What is this place?" was her next question muttered into this strange dimension.

She would receive no answer.

"I need to find Damian, Constantine, Clark, Diana...someone...anyone..." saying that as she realized she'd find none if she just stood there idly she started moving, taking her first steps forward into the endless hall. The wet and sloppy sounds her heels made upon contact with the carpet were disgusting, and she even rubbed her face in concern for what she may have been laying in, but she couldn't put too much thought into it. She had to, somehow, find a familiar face. If any were even there.

Everywhere she turned, everywhere she looked, there was only a seemingly endless expanse of the same thing. Halls and corridors. There was nothing at all to distinguish the few meters of carpet she had just walked through from the infinity in front of her. It was the same bland square room with the same four borderless archways inside with literally every step she took. All with the same molded carpet and torn, fading wallpaper, which made her nausea woefully increase.

"What is this place?" she gently asked herself with a sickened whisper, once again scanning her eyes across the landscape only to find that for as far as her eyes can see it was merely the same 'room' repeated over and over again from all sides, as though she was perpetually staring into some mirror that wasn't there. Aside from that faint droning hum, there was no sound beyond that of her footsteps and the flutter of her hooded cloak as she walked. Yet, despite not actually seeing any sign of life, in her mind she still felt like something was in this place. Somewhere.

Perhaps that faint noise was just getting to her.

Keeping her head towards the floor and cradling both hands to either of her shoulders in a self-embrace, she started hoarsely coughing as she continued her trek through these mysterious halls and corridors.

She kept thinking about whether or not she would encounter any life here, human or otherwise.

This entire structure looked man-made, though there was no actual reason to live in such a place. It was seemingly devoid of any amenities that a sapient being would require. There was no furniture, no plumbing, no electricity, nothing but plain and empty space. For eternity.

Yet just as she realized that she heard a faint noise from just ahead of her. It was different from the faint humming, it was much more clear and familiar. The sound of unmistakable static from what had to be an electronic device. Perking her head up she approached the direction of this noise, turning a corridor to her left and finding an inexplicably wider line with the repeating thinner ones on all sides. In the center of this rectangular atrium however lay a lone television set about 25 inches in screen size, all cased within a primitive wooden box—something straight out of the 1980s. Its screen was on, though unable to get any signal it instead just perpetually played static. There was no remote to be found. She thought that perhaps if she could find the remote and get a signal on this thing, she would be able to at least get some sense of where she was, and how to get out of there.

It was when she looked behind the television set that her heart sank though.

It was not plugged in.

The black cord extending from it ended but a few feet away from it, and was not connected to any outlet—there wasn't even any on the visible walls at all. Yet, somehow, the television remained on, playing its sound of repeating static out into the ether.

This realization filled Raven's heart and mind with a sensation of dread.

Soon her stunned head found itself turning back the way she had come when she thought she had heard a faint noise from many feet behind her. She found nothing, but it had been a sound different from both the static and the humming. It sounded like a loud thud from the halls just behind the entrance she had come from, and it was only giving her more apprehension; especially as when she turned around, she saw nothing but the expanse of those repeating corridors. Yet she knew what she had heard, and against better judgment, she called out to it.

"Who's there?" she said, trying her best to put her fear beside her and show her Titan bravery, "Show yourself now!"

She received no answer.

If it had been one of her friends, they would have simply come out of hiding and approached her.

If it was not them, however...

Or perhaps, it was nothing after all? She shouldn't jump to such conclusions, it could have very well just been a piece of the wall or ceiling falling off given the strong stench of mold in this place.

Calming herself with the latter explanation, she took a deep breath and slowly backed away. Eventually slowly turned herself back to the endless path ahead of her and continued down it once, giving it a few more moments of stand-off just to make sure nothing was pursuing her. The question of whether that was the sound of dilapidation or a living being would not entirely leave her, nor would the thought that just maybe she was being stalked.

When she reached the back entrance of this bizarre atrium, she did find herself re-entering the same repeating hallways that she had seen before or while inside her. To her further bewilderment, she instead found herself inside a massive, almost warehouse-sized room containing nothing but small columns painted the same as the repeating walls found throughout this entire place. So large was it that the walls did appear many miles away, and even so as they only led to more repetitive chambers they never truly looked entirely like exits at all.

This was when Raven stopped in her tracks.

When she had seen this place from the room she was previously in, she had seen that it was the same set of repeating halls that she had been in before. She was able to see the "preview" of it clearly from the atrium with the television set; there was no sign of these columns. There had been no indication that the place had changed or shifted, nor that it even could do such a thing. She had been looking in this place's direction, and yet she hadn't noticed this blatant change in geography until she was already within it. The fact she hadn't perceived this change was what scared her more than the change herself. She was used to the existence of illusory magic, though somehow that rationalization didn't work to calm her nerves this time.

Her eyes once more widened and body slightly shaking, she asked herself once more with a soft, startled whisper "What is this place?"

Against better judgment, she let her distrust of this unexplained shift control her movements as she instead turned back towards the atrium from which she had come in the hopes of returning to some familiar ground—the only other chamber in this building which had been unique at all; only she found no such familiarity. In other words, once she turned around and walked back through that square archway back into the room with the television, she found herself not within that room at all. It also had seemingly shifted itself into being a different place entirely.

Much to her shock, she now entered the room descending a smooth wedge-shaped ramp, the "arch" she passed through suddenly seeming about the width of a garage door the moment she had completely passed through it with no sound even implying it had transformed. To her bewilderment, the room was now about the same size as the previous one with all of the small columns though was far emptier in being entirely devoid of any noteworthy features at all.

At least, except for one.

Right ahead of her, some indiscernible few meters ahead, in direct alignment with her body, was a perfectly square hole in the wall leading out into what appeared to be a pitch-black abyss. Once more did her heart feel like it was sinking into her stomach, practically gulped as a shiver of fear ran down the length of her spine? She couldn't explain, not even to herself, what brought her so much fear and apprehension despite there not visibly being any danger. Perhaps it was the way this place now seemed to be shifting its geography with so much as a breeze in the wind to indicate any change had even happened at all, making her feel as though her own perception of reality was disturbed in some way; and of course, these movements of what seemed to be reality itself implied that there was some kind of presence within this place—and she did not want to find out any more of it.

After calming herself with a deep breath, Raven progressed toward the mysterious crevice in the wall. She lightly trembled as she did so, not sure of what she would find on the other side. As she slowly neared it, levitating herself just high enough to peer into it, she saw that on the other side was a small square-shaped room with indeed the same carpeting and wallpaper as the rest of this place thus far, except there were no lights besides a single ray coming from the room Raven was already in. There was also a long narrow hallway leading into another black abyss, the dimness of this other room's light completely masking whatever it led to.

Scanning her eyes across what she could see, she found nothing of any real note in this small room, another location completely devoid of any real detail.

However, she couldn't bring herself to enter it.

Much like the rest of this place, there was just no reason for any of it. This room had nothing to give her a reason to enter it—being that it was darker than the one she was already in, she had more reasons to avoid it.

At least until she heard something from behind her.

It was hoarse, bitter breathing accompanied by sour wheezing. A new horrid smell soon thereafter entered her nose, the unmistakable stench of disgusting bile and decaying flesh. Hot and rotten breath spewed onto the back of her neck, her eyes now widened more than ever as she trembled. She would typically have no fear about facing things like this, but her empathic powers were now kicking in—and she was not liking what they were picking up. The emotions she was reading could best be summed up as hatred pure and simple. Hatred, and evil. Even more than that of Darkseid or her father. In fact, a complete absence of any positive emotions. Merely contempt. Never before had she felt such disdain towards her in her entire life, nor had she ever thought that she was in such danger; not even when she was storming the tower of Darkseid himself did she feel so much dread coursing through her mind.

Swallowing her spit in a now truly frightened gulp as she began to tremble, Raven slowly turned her head and vision to the direction of what was behind her as it continued to exhale its foul breath onto her.

She knew that she wasn't ready for whatever it was that lurked behind her, though also that nothing would change that.

When she saw what stood a mere feet away from her, her entire body froze in horrified numbness. A tingling akin to that of sleep paralysis took over her as she locked up in terror. The figure before her eyes was a familiar one, with the "was'' being very much key. Once he had been a friend and a fellow titan known to her as Superboy, also known as Conner Kent. In life, he was youthful and cocky, though, a capable young man who not too long ago had offered glimmers of light in the otherwise dark and serious demeanors of heroes like Damian and Raven. Damian often found him an annoyance while Conner seemed to enjoy messing with the boy wonder's head. He had only experienced the wonders of the world for a mere 2 years and 6 months after busting out of his tube at LexCorp, and only had 6 months more of experiencing having a family at all before all he had was a man who saw him as a liability and two people who saw more value in having a family of their own in the absence of John and Martha.

Raven had not thought much of Lois' decision to sacrifice Conner to the Paradooms during the war. She had always cared much more for Damian than she did any of the other Titans, so much so that she didn't think at the time to point out to Lois that Doomsday had managed to kill a full Kryptonian nor that bringing a being with Clark's power set would be rather useful going into Apokolips. She didn't think to see it like that at all, she only concerned herself with whether or not Damian was alright. Only now, when the consequences of her inaction finally stood to face her in a bitter act of hate and defiance, did she at last feel guilt.

Conner was not the happy, smiling boy he once was in life. He was now an embittered, grotesque, and decaying monster. His skin was pale and in a perpetual state of rot and decay, with his body being host to horridly excessive growths of biomass all across, giving him a hunched-over posture and causing him to only barely resemble his original form at all. The largest grouping of tumors were centered around the back of his neck and his upper back in general, and each of them was merely an extension of his decomposing flesh. His left arm had now become thin and spindly, its fingers elongated like the branches of a tree though motioned like whips; all textured like the decomposing form of a corpse. His face, once vibrant and beaming with youth, was now miserable and sunken in, with much of it being inflamed and bleeding. Foul-smelling puss and other fluids pulsated from his pores and other orifices, even drooling disgustingly from the corners of his mouth. Speaking of which, his facial expression was no longer a smirk, but now his jaw lay open, letting out horrific sounds of both anger and agony as his soulless eyes looked upon the girl who he once viewed as a teammate and friend.

From what Raven's empathy could read, he no longer viewed her as such. As her heart raced as fast as it could go, she saw nothing of the Superboy she once knew. She saw only a being that wanted her to suffer as he was suffering. The sounds rattling her eardrums were a horrific, blood-curdling mix of animalistic roars and cries of abject agony. She couldn't tell if he was crying for relief, or her death. Perhaps it was both.

Still hoping that some humanity was to be found within him, some remnant of a soul, Raven reached a hand out to him. "Conner....it's me...Rachel...I'm...I'm sorry about what-" With a single crack of the tendrils that had once been his left hand, he wrapped her right arm and violently tossed her aside and to the ground. So vicious was this that he had managed to elicit a scream from the top of her lungs as she felt a piercing pain throughout her body. As she tried to stand herself up, she soon realized to her horror that with this one attack, he had managed to rip the entire arm clean off of her. Worse, he had devoured it. As she desperately tried to hold her cloak close to her bleeding remnant of a limb, she watched as he tossed her severed extremity into his maw and crunched it to pieces; her blood splattering onto the carpet beneath their feet.

The message was clear.

There would be no forgiveness.

All she could do was run, and run she did.

With all of the strength she could muster Raven forced herself back up to her feet and made a mad break for it, just barely evading the mutated Superboy as he let out a gurgling scream and pounced onto where she had just previously been. Raven only had a split second to decide what direction she was going to head in, and she chose the way from which she had come. So fast were her thoughts racing that she didn't even realize she hadn't returned to the column room but was rather racing down a narrow hall with senseless sudden turns and sporadic corridors - but she headed only straight ahead, her instincts taking over. She didn't even look back towards where her pursuer had been, she could hear his angered yet tortured screams from behind her.

Unfortunately, with all of her surroundings looking so indistinguishable from each other her ever more to an extent she felt as though it would soon burst from her chest.

Raven's perception of time was already long disrupted by the nature of this place and her skin running paler than usual with the loss of blood from her now severed arm it did not take long for her vision to begin blurring and her balance beginning to collapse even in the face of how hard her body was trying to pump out adrenaline to keep her running. There was no telling if this was truly instantaneous or if it was the product of fleeing from her pursuer for hours.

With a truly high-pitched scream, she fell, losing her balance after taking a sharp turn just as the beast that was once Superboy had nearly caught up with her. However, she did not know that the hall she turned into was actually a stairway and as a result, she violently tumbled down it. Her screams were repeatedly cut off by the loud thuds she made as she hit each step on the way down. When she finally reached the bottom and was left laying on a carpet being increasingly stained by her blood, left stunned after her fall and unable to see due to the incredible darkness of the chamber she had now found herself in, she could do little else besides let out soft and barely audible whimpers. She worried at this moment that her legs no longer worked, as for the first few seconds she couldn't move either of them. On top of it all, she could feel her blood seeping from her nose and into her mouth.

Using the arm she still had intact she tried to pull herself at least partially back up, only to find herself trapped in complete darkness. Only the vague shape of the impossibly long stairway she had fallen was visible behind her, and for once she was also in true complete silence besides that of her voice with not even the humming being audible to her ears once they finally stopped ringing.

Raven found the silence even more unnerving than the alternative.

At first, Raven wanted to just let her head fall back down onto the floor and drift into unconsciousness in the hope that perhaps she would at last wake up from this cruel nightmare and be in that promised new reality that the third flashpoint was supposed to have created. She wanted to simply give up, plain and simple, increasingly convincing herself that there was nothing else for her to do. After feeling such intense hatred and rage from what little remained of Conner, all of it directed at her mere presence, much of her will to continue living had once again left her.

Perhaps if she just gave up, it would at least be over soon.

The only thing to prevent her from surrendering was the breaking of the silence around her.

It was a faint, echoing noise from somewhere beyond the darkness. A scream. A scream from a voice that was very similar to her. Parking her head up and in the direction of it, she heard it a second time.

"D-Damian?" she said, recognizing the voice to be that of her beloved Damian, whom she last remembered sharing an embrace and kiss with moments before the light of the flashpoint had consumed both of them.

His scream was not of her name, but it was in the form of distress.

"Damian!" she yelled, suddenly motivation overtaking her as she first tried to crawl towards the echo of his voice, her heart once again racing as she feared the worst.

Eventually, she mustered the courage to stand onto her feet, forcefully snapping her legs back into place by both willpower and by slamming them against the floor with all the magic she could muster, screaming with all her might from the necessary pain from doing so. Once on her feet again, she would not allow herself to falter any further, the thought that her only beloved was in the same peril that she had been before proved more than enough motivation. The pain radiating through her body now served as a constant reminder of her determination and it was with a deep breath that Raven focused all of her magical energy, channeling it into her limbs, reinforcing them with a newfound strength.

Ignoring the throbbing ache from her severed arm and still stinging legs, she persevered one step at a time. Every stride sent shockwaves of agony through her and she could only move with a hardened limp, but she pushed through, refusing to succumb to the pain. Each step became a testament to her resilience, a declaration of her unyielding spirit.

How unfortunate that this was all in vain.

Journey deeper into the quite literal howling dark, she had no idea of where she was headed or what her surroundings even were. All she had to guide her were the memories of where Damian's echoing screams had come from. They had stopped being heard by the time she was limping towards them, her screaming of his name yielding no responses.

"Damian!" she continued to scream into the still air, "Damian! Don't die on me, Damian! Not again!"

Never a particularly religious person (in fact suggesting such would be incredibly ironic) Raven now found herself mentally praying that she would reunite with Damian the moment she found her way out of this void. She prayed, practically begged, that this nightmare would end shortly. Her pleas would go unanswered.

Though she was too distracted by Damian's potential peril to take any notice of it, it was apparent to her ears that her surroundings were different than they had been before her fall. No longer were her feet moving across moist carpets stained by hot warm mold, but rather they were clapping against what had to either be concrete or tiling. The sounds were too indistinguishable for a judgment to be confidently made, and the location was too dark for the same purpose as well.

Until it wasn't.

In yet another defiance of all she knew about the rules of reality, there was suddenly a light far ahead of her that she hadn't even caught a trace of before. Heading towards it as quickly as she could in her state, she found herself and her surroundings slowly illuminated by this literal bright end of the tunnel—and yes it could be confirmed that she was this entire time traversing an area of stone and concrete. Only at the very end of the tunnel could she barely make out that this second area resembled vaguely an underground parking lot, except with the ramps placed without any particular logic and an equally senseless placement of walls; there was also a curious absence of any vehicles, though the visible parking spaces were drawn in strange and obtuse angles and often intersected with each other anyway.

There was no time for Raven to check whether or not any figures were lurking in the shadows beyond the radius of light. She was too fixated on leaving this area as quickly as she could.

Her hope that this was some exit from this horrible building and out into the real world yet again was soon dashed however, once her body passed through the blinding light of the tunnel's end and her eyes also adjusted to what lay on the other side her optimistic smile turned yet again into a defeated and pessimistic frown. She found no salvation. She found only an extension of the labyrinth she had been sealed within, even if it was one far different from where she had just been.

"No..." she uttered beneath her breath, scanning her tired eyes across the new landscape presented to her, repeating that word over and over at a just barely audible volume, "No...no...no, no, no...."

Laid out before her, there was a more pleasant though no less unnerving location than the endless hallways halls from mere moments ago; it was also no less an endless expanse. She was standing at the edge of an all-white tiled platform with black creases down the middle of each tile. These titles themselves were repeated across both the floor and walls, only shifting to plain off-white plaster on the ceiling which itself often had random contours and crevices that much like the rest of this place seemed to be designed without any real rhyme or reason.

At her feet was the very last centimeter of dry tiles before she would have taken a dip into the waters of a rectangular pool of murky blueish-green water. Raven was standing in the center of the last dry step of a stairway leading directly into the waters, and from what she could tell this "pool" was hardly like that of any pool she'd ever been to. It was at first glance a cross-shaped intersection with dry "land" lining each side up to the side directly in front of Raven's eyes. There stood two rectangular tunnels immediately beside each other, turning into yet more black abysses once each turned into opposing directions.

"What the fuck is this place..." Raven uttered coldly as she scanned the area with her eyes, aside from some sporadic columns reaching to the ceiling there were no real details of note in this chamber.

Worse still, the walkway along the sides did not extend into the tunnels and stopped just short of them. The only way forward would be a trek through the water. This would not normally be a dangerous idea, and Raven would have simply gone and done it had she not looked down and taken note of just why the water was so murky. It didn't take long for her keen eye to notice that the waters were teaming with thick clouds of algae and bacteria practically swimming around the entire length of wherever the water touched. As she still had a very open wound just barely kept safe from the elements, she did not want to take such a risk. Beyond that, as soon as she became aware of what was floating about inside the water she smelled it as well and nearly gagged from the foul odor of death and decay entering her nostrils; she had to back away a few steps to not fall into the water.

Raven stood frozen on the edge of the dry platform, her mind racing to comprehend the twisted reality that confronted her. The stagnant pool before her held a sense of foreboding, its murky depths seeming to whisper tales of hidden dangers to her ears. The faint humming noise from the earlier halls returned to join these murmurs, though now was a louder and clearer sound. It no longer was a faint, droning humming. It was now the faint and distant sound of screaming; the screaming of what had to be millions, billions, or perhaps even trillions of voices crying out in agony from beyond where Raven could see. They came from all directions, from the ceiling, the walls, and even the floors. Raven could feel each of these people's abject terror and agony upon this revelation, all of it flooding into her and overwhelming her with pain and grief. The voices, initially muffled by the geography around her soon seemed so loud that they were sounding off from directly beside her as she fell to her knees with her remaining hand grabbing at her forehead. Not even on Apokolips or within the fiery depths of Hell had the feeling of this much torture been felt. As she was beginning to practically slip out of consciousness from her empathy being strained to its absolute limit she almost vomited, the putrid stench from the water having grown stronger as well; it suffocated her senses and caused her to nearly choke on her fluid as she struggled to retain her composure.

She desperately closed her eyes shut, intensely trying to block out the smell of death and the haunting chorus of suffering. A near-impossible task, one that she very nearly failed, until she remembered what drove her in this direction, to begin with.

"Damian..."

She once more thought back to the final moments after John Constantine had sent Flash off to create a new flashpoint and restart their universe. Herself sitting beside Damian, head resting on his shoulders as they looked on towards the horizon. A beautiful and striking sunset over what ruins remained of Titans Tower, a bit of beauty after a bitter two years of death and destruction. It was a moment that she wished could last forever, but alas it could not. As the light of the incoming flashpoint hurried forward to consume them, they shared one final embrace and kiss upon the lips before facing the howling unknown. She was glad she did not know that this would be what she would wake up to. How she yearned to see Damian's face just one last time if this truly was to be her eternity.

Remembering him though. His young, raven-haired face was the spitting image of a younger and handsome Bruce Wayne though with those emerald green eyes inherited from his mother. Staring right into her own with a very rare and very warm smile across his face. She now feared she could only dream of ever seeing that again, yet remembering it, and also remembering all of the times they had together, managed to have a calming effect on her.

It was during these memories that the sounds and smells around her seemed to peacefully fade, her attention focusing entirely inward and tuning it all out as she remembered only the background voices of the surviving League members behind her and the sound of the ocean around her. The breeze of the Flash ran off to the horizon before that fateful final kiss. She could almost still feel Damian's lips pressing onto hers.

Even in the real world, she almost cracked a smile from these memories. She quite nearly had finally put herself back on the path of further perseverance.

Until the memories started shifting.

They become more real.

Suddenly there no longer was an incoming wave of light, nor was there a tranquil sunset. Instead of the orange and yellow hues, there was only a sickening green and brown coating the entire sky accompanied by a thick and nauseating fog that brought with it the same stench of death that she found in the "real" world. An odor of bile and rot. She was also completely alone on the island, the sensation of Damian's lips touching her own now gone as he vanished without a trace. The ocean around the island, now looking pitch black against the polluted sky, ran completely still with nary a single wave hitting the shore.

"Damian?" she asked, looking around the landscape of the ruined tower and surrounding city for any sign of him and those who had been there before. Growing more panicked by the second as she cried out, "Damian, where are you?!"

It was then that finally, another voice spoke to her.

Yet, it was not a voice she had hoped to hear.

This "alien" voice was deep, graveling, and haunting. Shivers went down Raven's spine as the reverb vibrated around her as it echoed into her eardrums from a place she could not even perceive the following words "He is one with me now," it uttered in what just vaguely came off as sinister delight. "One of many corpses, left within this tomb."

Upon hearing that voice's cold and ghostly words, Raven tried to escape her fantasy and bring herself back to reality, yet she found herself frozen in place. She could not return her vision from what she was imagining back to where she had been before. All of her limbs and muscles had locked up, the tingling numbness of paralysis taking over as if another entity had taken control of her body. She tried with all her might to initiate her demonic abilities, though not even a glimmer of her dark side was allowed to fade into the stained white fabric of her cloak. All she could do was stand there, staring at the empty air where once Damian had sat, a prisoner in her own body and mind as the voice of true evil echoed from beyond existence itself.

She had to fight with all of her might just to be able to move her mouth to talk, and even then it wasn't clear if she did it on her own or if she was simply allowed to.

"Who...what are you?!" she exclaimed

"I, I am the resting place of all sins left behind. I am everything, yet I am nothing. I am everywhere, though nowhere. I am that which eternally lies.”

This entity's penultimate words struck a nerve with Raven, unlocking but one brief memory from before the moment on the island, and in a tired voice she inquired; "Is my father here?"

"He too is part of me now. As with all the other times who have reached their untimely conclusion. His self is now my own, and so is yours."

Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach upon the utterance of those words. Its words were horrifying and cryptic, though still clear enough that she understood what this thing was saying was nothing even remotely good. Right as she contemplated with this beast could mean, her eardrums were assaulted by the symphony of screaming now entering the hallucination as well, this time at full volume as though all the trillions of living beings crying in their sheer suffering were all right next to her; yet once more, in this vision, she was frozen and alone on that island. Not even able to shield her ears from the petrifying onslaught.

As she groaned and struggled against the noise and the numbness of her paralysis with all of the might she had left in her, Raven with her eyes closed tightly screamed loud as she could "No! You won't have me!"

"I already do."

On the outside lay Rachel Roth, once the superheroine Raven, daughter of Trigon and one of the most powerful Teen Titans. She rested now in a tunnel of rotten flesh and putrid biomass, pulsating and gurgling as though it were the massive insides of a living organism or a hive of the most horrific nightmares imaginable. The room she was in was now appearing as what it truly was all along, a monument of death itself. The walls of rotting flesh had various faces protruding out from them, each of them motionless and gazing out into the foul beyond ever expressionlessly. Some were entirely skeletonized, others were still fresh. All were long gone. Mere feet away from her lay flooded tunnels of black sludge, filled with the juices of death and thus forming a dark abyss that no being would want to find themselves within.

Raven herself lay spread out like an angel with her lone arm outstretched and cape spread open beneath her body, her back pressing against the floor of rotting fleshy mass as small tendrils began to wrap around and attach herself to every inch of her. Their texture was like that of a disgusting slime as they passed over her twitching, motionless form. As she was dragged ever slowly into the mass that this place was truly made of, she was observed by the powerless forms of the former allies she had hoped to see again.

Diana, Clark, Bruce, Damian, Kori, Victor, Dick, J'onn, Katar, Mera, and even Ace. All of them had been held directly above where she had been—though they were not themselves anymore and never would be again. Each of them very much resembled the mutated form that Conner had displayed earlier, though unlike him they were all half-absorbed into the landscape itself rather than roaming "freely". Diana, Mera, Victor, Katar, and Kori no longer had their cybernetics on them—though the replacement of grotesque, rotting, and fleshy growths with protruding tendrils were hardly a viable replacement. No longer truly the masters of their consciousness, control only being given back to them so they could witness Raven's fall. The only parts left of Diana, Victor, and Kori that even gave a resemblance of who they once had were only lone eyes of theirs; the rest of their forms had been reduced to a pulsating, twitching mass of decay.

They watched powerlessly as the tendrils which attached themselves to Raven split into thousands more, taking the form of small miniature hands taking hold of her, tearing her skin as they tightened their grip. Even when the entity finally allowed her to exit her illusion and return to reality, letting her bear witness to the true horrors she was now within, she was still paralyzed. She could only gaze in silent terror at her surroundings and at the unbearable, incomprehensible pain as she was consumed by a living floor of the decaying flesh of all those who had ever been "discarded". She wasn't even able to scream.

Only now was it understood by all of them that no reality is ever truly "reset". Only discarded.

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