In the pitch-black, cold, and eternally unchanging universe, a planet exuding an aura of deathly stillness floats silently.
The once vibrant blue planet teeming with life is now riddled with holes, and more than half of its life has perished in this war of information asymmetry.
The superheroes and supervillains that were once household names are now fewer than one in a hundred.
Earth has entered its final countdown to death, and it all started two years ago with that "S" that symbolized hope, when he personally destroyed the homeland he depended on for survival and vowed to protect.
Earth exists in name only.
London, along the River Thames.
A young girl dressed in a loose black robe sat quietly by the river, her feet immersed in the icy water.
"Daughter, you're still so cowardly..."
A deep voice echoed in Raven's mind, but before it could finish speaking, Raven rudely interrupted it.
"Shut up! I'd rather die than let you go, Father!"
Raven didn't give her father, Trigon, another chance to speak. She gripped the dagger in her hand and, without hesitation, stabbed herself in the neck!
However, nothing happened, not even the slightest pain. Raven opened its eyes in confusion.
A thin hand grasped her wrist; it wasn't warm, and even carried the chill of someone who had lost blood for a long time, but it was unusually firm.
Raven froze, the dagger that had once embodied all her resolve now feeling utterly foreign in her hand.
The blade was less than an inch from her neck; the chilling scent of death was almost touching her skin.
She looked up following that hand.
The person who arrived was Barry Allen, the Flash Barry.
But the scene before her eyes left her mind blank.
This was nothing like the hero she remembered, who always had a gentle smile and was surrounded by golden lightning when he ran.
His lower body... completely disappeared.
Below the waist, there was nothing there; the cut was covered by a layer of charred material, as if it had been forcibly burned and sealed off by some kind of energy.
He supported himself on the ground with his arms, dragging his mutilated body. Every inch he moved left a horrifying drag mark on the muddy ground.
He was wearing a tattered cloak, which Raven recognized as Superman's.
The bright red color had long since been blackened by smoke, and the fabric was covered with holes and burn marks.
The Flash's own suit was also dull and lifeless, with spiderweb-like cracks appearing on the lightning bolt symbol on his chest.
He himself was a broken symbol that had crawled out of Hell.
"Sorry, Raven, I'm late," Barry said, his breathing unsteady; the exertion of dragging his halfway through the journey was far greater than it appeared.
The Raven stared at him blankly, momentarily forgetting what it was supposed to do.
Her brain was unable to process the information at hand.
The Flash... is he still alive? Alive in this way?
"You..." Her throat was dry, and it took her a long time to squeeze out a single word, "How could this be..."
"There's always a price to pay for escaping death." Barry forced an extremely ugly smile. He released Raven's wrist and used his arms to push himself forward, getting even closer to her.
He didn't look at the dagger, but stared directly into the Raven's eyes.
"I know what you're thinking," Barry said. "To end it all, right? Once you're dead, Trigon will never be able to use you as a gateway to this universe. It'll be the end of it all."
His words were calm, without any dissuasion or accusation, just a statement.
This calm was more unsettling to the Raven than any harsh words.
Her hand gripping the dagger trembled slightly. "You know... then why did you stop me? Barry, look at this world! We've lost! We've lost everything!"
She finally lost control, growling, " Superman is dead! Wonder Woman is dead! Cyborg was torn to shreds! The entire Justice League is dead! All that's left are us, these wretched rats! What's the point of living? Just to be found by the next Parademons or Doomsday and eaten?!"
"I'm stopping you not because there's any hope for this world," Barry interrupted her, his answer taking Raven by surprise.
The Raven was stunned.
Barry looked around at the ruined city, the murky river, and the persistent dark red dust in the sky. "This world is finished. Raven, I know that better than you, ever since I couldn't stop Clark's plans."
He patted his mangled body. "Two years ago, when Darkseid's Omega Beams swept over, Wally shielded me, but he was too young. I wasn't fast enough; I only managed to push him away a fraction of an inch. The edge of the ray grazed me... I survived only because the Speed Force was frantically repairing me."
Barry lowered his head and looked at the cape that belonged to Superman.
"I brought him back, Clark... all that's left is this cloak, and there's nothing more I can do."
His words contained no pain, only a deep-seated numbness.
The Raven was completely stunned.
She thought she was enduring the ultimate despair, but compared to Barry, her pain seemed so insignificant.
A hero who prided himself on speed lost his legs.
A hero who was always saving lives watched helplessly as his last friend and family member died.
"Then why..." the Raven's voice was hoarse, "Why do you still live?"
"Because I don't intend to save this world." Barry raised his head, his once gentle blue eyes now burning with an almost fanatical obsession. "I want to reset it."
"Reset?" Raven was completely baffled.
"That's right." Barry propped himself up on his elbow, his other hand tracing patterns on the ground. "Time. Raven, our only remaining weapon."
"Time travel? You're insane! Barry! You know the consequences of altering the timeline! You've already experienced it once!" Raven immediately thought of " Flashpoint," the event that nearly destroyed everything.
"That time I was selfish, it was to save my mother." Barry's finger traced a complex diagram of a device on the ground. "But this time is different. This time, it's to erase all of this. Erase the Apokolips invasion, erase Darkseid, erase this apocalypse! Let everything... return to how it was meant to be."
The glint in his eyes sent a chill down Raven's spine.
That was not a light of hope, but a light of destruction that would burn itself out.
"I need speed, immense speed. Far exceeding the speed of light, far exceeding any limit I can reach. I need to be fast enough to tear through the spacetime barrier, to go back two years, before Superman and the others set off for Apokolips, to stop all of this from happening."
"That's impossible!" Raven retorted immediately. "Even you couldn't achieve that speed! Forcing your way to accelerate would mean you would completely merge with the Speed Force, becoming pure energy and disappearing forever!"
"So I built something." Barry pointed to a building that was half-collapsed in the distance. "Follow me."
As he spoke, he began to crawl on the ground with all his might, his tattered cloak leaving a tragic trail behind him.
The Raven hesitated for a moment, but ultimately sheathed its dagger and followed.
Stepping into the ruins of that building, she saw what Barry had described as "the thing."
It was a massive contraption pieced together from various scrap metal, relics of superheroes, and even Parademons armor.
Its main body is a huge, sloping conveyor belt, which looks like an extremely rudimentary and crude treadmill.
Raven recognized the treadmill's power source—it was Green Lantern Hal's energy lantern, now connected by countless wires and emitting a faint green light.
Hanging nearby is Aquaman's golden trident, which appears to serve as some kind of energy conductor.
The entire installation was filled with a crazy and desperate "creativity".
" The Cosmic Treadmill," Barry introduced, a hint of self-deprecation on his face.
"I pieced it together using everything I could find, based on some theories of the future. It can help me amplify speed, focus my energy on a single point, and theoretically... allow me to reach the speed needed to tear through time."
"Theoretically?" The Raven seized on that word.
"I tried thirty-seven times," Barry said calmly. "Each time, I was just a little short. With each acceleration, the Speed Force tore a part of my body away. The first time, it was my newly grown left leg; the third time, my right leg; the tenth time... you know."
He patted his empty lower body.
"In the end, I realized I was missing something: an 'anchor'."
Barry turned his head, his eyes, burning with obsession, fixed intently on the Raven.
" The Speed Force is a law of the physical universe, but the depths of time travel are chaos that transcends physics. Every time I rush in, I am torn apart by that chaos, my will is diluted, and my existence is erased."
I need a power that doesn't belong to this physical dimension to help me solidify my 'existence,' so that even in the storms of time, I can still remember who I am and what I'm meant to do."
"You need... magic." The Raven understood instantly.
"No." Barry shook his head. "What I need isn't magic, what I need is you, Raven."
"I?"
"Your bloodline, your origins. You are half human, half demon from another dimension. Your Soul Stone itself is a coordinate, a coordinate that does not entirely belong to this reality."
When I run, I need you to envelop me with your power, to be my 'anchor' outside of time. Your presence will prevent me from being completely lost when swept away by the torrent of time.
Barry reached out her hand—the hand that stopped her from committing suicide.
"This world is dead, Raven. But we can create a new one. A world where Clark is still flying in the sky, Diana is still protecting humanity, and we are all... still alive."
He looked at her and said, word by word.
"I can't do this alone. Help me, this is our last chance."
The Raven stood still, the enormous Cosmic Treadmill humming faintly before her, its energy lantern flickering resentfully.
She looked at the man before her, who was now only half a body, yet dared to try to reverse the fate of the entire universe.
His plan was insane, desperate, and had a negligible chance of success.
But his words cast a tiny pebble into the already lifeless lake of her heart.
It's not about saving this broken world, but about utterly destroying it, along with all the painful memories, and then starting anew from a completely new beginning.
This sounds... like an incredibly tempting revenge.
The Raven looked down at its empty hands; the dagger had fallen to the ground sometime earlier.
She looked up at Barry's outstretched hand and spoke in a hoarse voice.
"What if... we fail?"
"Then we'll disappear together at the end of time," Barry answered without the slightest hesitation. "That's better than dying here."
The Raven fell silent.
She looked at Barry's hand, stained with dust and dried blood, and then at the madness in his eyes, a madness that knew no bounds.
After a long while, she finally took a step forward.
"Okay, I'll help you. We don't have any other choice, do we?"