Maze stopped the moment she crossed through the gate.
The training dimension stretched before her in ruin. Cracked ground spread toward distant mountains that had been split apart so many times that their broken peaks floated in the air. Black storms rolled across the sky, tangled with golden flashes that turned the clouds inside out whenever lightning struck.
Her eyes stayed on John.
He stood near the center of the wasteland, shirtless and covered in ash, sweat, and faint glowing marks beneath his skin. Golden Living Lightning moved around his right arm in thick arcs, violent and bright enough to scar the darkness around him. Something darker wrapped around his left side.
Black-gold lightning crawled over his fingers.
It did not move like ordinary infernal power. Hell’s energy usually felt heavy, hungry, and cold, like chains tightening around a throat. This felt different. Divine power pulsed at its core, yet something ancient and merciless surrounded it.
Maze had felt something close to that presence once before.
It reminded her of Lucifer during the first days after his banishment, when Heaven’s light had still clung to him while Hell tried to claim everything else.
John turned toward her, and the new lightning followed the movement of his arm like a living thing.
“So, you finally decided to stop running, huh?”
Maze crossed her arms, pretending the pressure rolling off him had not made every instinct in her body wake up at once. “What’s that power?”
John looked down at his hand as the black-gold current wrapped around his knuckles.
“Still figuring that out,” he said. “Right now, it’s Living Lightning mixed with infernal authority, plus several terrible ideas that nearly got me killed.”
Maze stared at him. “That is the dumbest answer you could have given me.”
“It is also the honest one.”
“You forced divine power and Hell’s power together?”
“I stopped forcing them,” John replied as he flexed his fingers. “They kept rejecting each other because they wanted different things. Living Lightning judges and Hell punishes. I gave them a reason to work together.”
Maze took a careful step forward while her eyes remained on the current moving around him. “And what reason convinced them?”
John’s expression hardened slightly.
“Judgment decides what someone deserves,” he said. “Hell makes sure they cannot escape the consequence.”
The words settled heavily between them.
The black-gold lightning pulsed once, and the entire dimension answered. Loose stones rose from the ground. The ruined sky twisted above them. Even the distant storms seemed to pull away from him.
Maze felt the power press against her senses, studying her in a way she did not like. It knew she was a demon and every cruel thing she had done. Her hand moved toward the blade at her thigh before she caught herself. John noticed the movement, though he did not comment on it.
Instead, he slowly lowered his arm.
The pressure around her eased.
“It won’t hurt you,” he said.
Maze narrowed her eyes. “How can you be sure?”
John looked directly at her. “Because I'll never hurt you, Maze. And this power responds to my will."
“How considerate of you,” Maze said while keeping her arms crossed. “You make a horrifying new power, then immediately reassure me that I am not on the list of people it plans to punish.”
John’s mouth curved into a small smile as he let the energy fade from his hand. “You make it sound like I have a list.”
Maze glanced at the floating mountains and the burning scars that stretched across the ruined landscape. “You absolutely have a list.”
“I have responsibilities.”
“You've a problem.”
“That too,” John admitted while walking toward her through the cracked ground. “I'm trying to work on both.”
Maze watched him approach, pretending she was not paying attention to the ash across his skin or the heat still rolling from his body. His shoulders remained tense beneath the exhaustion, and faint marks of power moved across his chest whenever the new lightning reacted to his thoughts.
“You're doing all of this without a shirt because you want attention,” she said, forcing her expression into something unimpressed. 'I want to lick you up like a fucking lolly.'
John looked down at himself, then back at her with exaggerated consideration. “The explosions keep destroying them, Maze. I promise the lack of clothing is strictly a workplace accident.”
"If you say so," She said with a shrug. “So, you wanna test it on some souls?” she asked while looking back at him. “I know several hundred condemned idiots who would be perfect for experiments.”
He thought for a moment, deciding whom to fuck up.
"Regular souls won't do. I know the perfect soul to test this power on."
...
[The Endless Extinction Hell Loop]
Zod awoke aboard his command ship to reports that renewed everything he had fought for.
Earth had been located. The Codex was within reach. The World Engine was ready for deployment, and the path to rebuilding Krypton seemed clear at last. His officers moved through the ship with the certainty of soldiers who believed their mission would succeed, while Zod stood before the image of Earth and felt hope return after years of carrying only loss.
Then he launched the invasion.
Every cycle began with the same promise. He reached Earth, deployed his forces, and moved toward the final confrontation with Kal-El and Kara Zor-El. At first, Zod believed the repeated failures came from poor strategy. He changed attack routes, altered battle plans, assigned different soldiers to hunt Kara, and tried separating Kal-El from the World Engine before the fight could turn against him.
The details changed.
The ending never did.
Sometimes Kara killed him before he could secure the Codex. She fought to protect her new home from being destroyed, and each time she killed him, Zod woke aboard his ship again with the same reports waiting for him.
Sometimes Kal-El defeated him after destroying the World Engine.
"You always have a choice," Kal said.
"I exist only to protect Krypton... And every action I take, no matter how violent or how cruel, is for the greater good of my people." Zod expressed his profound loss to Kal-El. "Look at this. We could have built a new Krypton in this squalor, but you chose the humans over us... And now I have no people. My soul. That is what you have taken from me."
Zod then tried to attack civilians, only to be killed by Superman.
Zod would watch Earth survive while Krypton remained nothing more than ash and memory, then the cycle would return him to the beginning before he could even accept the loss.
Other times, John Mason appeared during the invasion and ended everything with green magic. "Well, what the fuck, die! Avada Kedavra."
Zod would prepare an army, a strategy, and a full assault on Earth, only for John to strike once and erase every advantage he had spent the cycle building.
Harley Quinn became the most humiliating part of the loop.
Sometimes she stood over his bed and smashed his head with her mallet, just when he woke up from a loop. Other times, she found him in the middle of the battlefield while Kryptonian soldiers fought around them. She laughed every time she saw him.
“Oh, great,” Harley said once as she raised the mallet. “It’s Captain Destiny Speech again.”
Then she beat him down while mocking every promise he had made about restoring Krypton.
The cruelest cycles were the ones where Zod succeeded.
Sometimes the World Engine transformed Earth, John, Kal-El, and Kara were defeated, and the Codex seemed close enough to claim. Yet when Zod finally tried to extract it from Kara and sometimes Kal-El, the extraction failed, leaving him with a conquered world and no way to rebuild his people.
Other times, the Codex was recovered and Krypton returned.
New cities rose. Kryptonian children were born. Zod watched them take their first breaths and believed his sacrifice had finally meant something.
Then millions were born deformed, weak, or unable to survive beyond their first moments.
In other cycles, Krypton survived without flaw.
Then civil war destroyed it.
The new generation Kryptonians refused to live beneath Zod’s rule. He answered with soldiers, control, and fear because he knew no other way to preserve order. Every victory created more resistance until the rebuilt world collapsed beneath the weight of his own command.
Eventually, Zod stopped searching for the perfect strategy.
Every path led to extinction.
Each time he woke aboard the command ship, he still felt hope for a few seconds.
Then the nightmare began again.
Suddenly, one day, everything froze except for Zod. He wondered if this was the end of his endless nightmares. The world around him changed, and he found himself standing on a ruined planet. At a single glance, he knew what that planet was.
"Krypton," A familiar voice came from behind him. "It was a beautiful planet. I've seen your memories. Sadly, you fuckers destroyed it. Thought, Brainiac also played a role in accelerating its destruction."
Zod used his superspeed to turn and punch that person.
Before his fist could connect, his body up to his neck froze. His eyes widened when he saw John standing before him. A flicker of the devil's face appeared on John's face.
"What in the hell are you?" Zod asked. "And what do you mean by Brainiac also played a role in Krypton's destruction?"