The sterile lighting of the Watchtower's infirmary cast a cold, blue hue over the boy's unmoving form. His skin was devoid of color, a ghastly white that almost shimmered under the LED lights like the hide of some pale leviathan dredged from the deep. His hair had suffered the same transformation, bleached bone-white and fanned out around his head like a halo of death. He didn't move. He barely breathed. Kai looked less like someone who had survived and more like something that should have never existed.
Batman stood at the foot of the reinforced medical bed, arms folded tightly across his chest. His jaw was clenched. The readings on the monitors beside Kai flickered with streams of gibberish—data that refused to be interpreted, results that glitched and looped back like broken code.
"I've run every DNA trace we have," Batman said, voice low and tight. "Cross-referenced with every file on Earth, known alien genomes, magical constructs, even simulations of possible future mutations. Nothing. The readings aren't just inconclusive. They're impossible. He doesn't match anything."
Superman stood close, but not too close. The longer he looked at the boy, the harder it became to keep his gaze steady. The same way his eyes burned under magic, not because of its presence, but because of how unnatural it felt to him.
"It feels wrong," Superman said quietly. "Looking at him… it stings. Like standing in a furnace made of ice. I don't even know how to explain it."
The Flash leaned against the wall, uncharacteristically still. His usually jittery fingers hung limp at his sides.
"Okay, so… he's not an Alien. Not human. Not anything we've got files on. That means he's either a completely new species or something way more messed up. Maybe he's a Meta whose powers rewrote his DNA?" Flash offered, though even he didn't sound convinced.
Before anyone could answer, the sliding doors hissed open.
"It's none," came Wonder Woman's voice, rich with authority and something else—unease.
She strode into the room like a storm-given flesh, her lasso coiled at her hip. Her expression was troubled as her gaze fell upon Kai. She stepped closer to the bed, the metallic floor creaking under her armored boots.
"When he arrived, there was something around him. A wheel. Golden, ancient, enormous. It spun behind him like some divine executioner's blade," she said, eyes narrowing. "I felt it. The moment I laid eyes on it, I felt the weight of Olympus collapse onto my chest. Like Zeus himself had arrived, not as father and ruler, but as judgment."
No one spoke.
She continued, voice harder now. "That wasn't just power. That wasn't just magic. That was divinity."
Batman's jaw tightened. "He doesn't register on any divine spectrum. Not Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Shinto, or even the forgotten pantheons."
"Then we're dealing with something the gods themselves don't know," she said grimly.
A scream tore through the Watchtower.
Then—alarms.
The room turned crimson, the lights flashing in sync with the blaring klaxon.
"INTRUSION ALERT. LEVEL THREE BREACH. ARMORY SECTOR."
Superman took off in an instant, breaking through the ceiling like a meteor. The Flash vanished in a blur. Wonder Woman unsheathed her sword with a hiss of metal and stormed toward the door. Batman lingered only long enough to shoot a glance at Kai.
"Whatever you are," he muttered, "stay out of this."
Time was slowed, unbelievably so.
Kai opened his eyes.
The void was vast, colorless, suffocating. It swallowed everything. There was no horizon. No up or down. Only he was barefoot, bare-skinned, standing in an endless limbo.
"Hello?" he called out. His voice sounded strange. Hollow.
Then—
A tremor.
Distant, at first. Then another. Heavy, thunderous footsteps approached. The vibrations traveled through the groundless space like aftershocks of a god's wrath.
From the nothingness emerged a beast of nightmare.
Mahoraga.
The wheel behind it spun with sickening grace, every revolution distorting the air around it. Its hulking form was a symphony of hatred—scaled arms ending in razors, flesh burned with sigils of destruction, eyes that gleamed with void and rage.
Kai froze. Panic turned to ice in his chest.
"No. Not again. Please—don't—"
Mahoraga didn't speak.
It screamed.
The sound shattered the silence and shattered him. It wasn't a sound for mortal ears—it was a war cry for gods, a challenge issued to all of creation.
The wheel behind its back spun faster.
Mahoraga moved.
Kai ran, heart a thunderclap in his ears, tears streaming down his face as the landscape twisted and tore with every step of the divine beast.
Claws lashed through the void like scythes. One strike missed his spine by inches, carving a scar into the dream-flesh of reality.
"I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS! I DIDN'T CHOOSE THIS!"
The beast heard nothing. It cared for nothing.
Another strike. This one aimed straight for Kai's chest.
CLANG!
Golden chains erupted from the ether, serpentine and shining like the forge-bound works of Hephaestus. They coiled around Mahoraga's limbs, halting its blow just before it could rip Kai in two.
Mahoraga screamed again—not in fury, but in defiance.
The chains groaned, burning against the beast's flesh. It struggled, the wheel spinning violently now, trying to adapt, to overcome.
But the chains held.
And then, light.
Blinding. Holy. Agonizing.
Kai's mind broke under its brilliance—
He awoke screaming.
Monitors burst into static. Electricity crackled. The bed bent under the sudden force of his body jolting upright.
His eyes opened wide, golden, burning. Iris like miniature suns, flickering with celestial fire.
The pain hit next.
White-hot needles stabbed every nerve ending. His veins felt like conduits for molten lead. His bones ached as though they were being reforged.
"Wh-where am I…" he gasped, voice raw.
He looked around. Alone.
But not silent.
Something groaned beneath the floor. Something massive. The sound of torn steel echoed in the distance.
A monitor shorted out beside him.
He stumbled off the bed, his body heavy and trembling, muscles spasming as though they weren't quite sure how to be human anymore.
He remembered the void. The chase. The chains. That thing.
Mahoraga.
"Why are you in my head?" he whispered. "What the hell am I?"
Another explosion rocked the area, screams, curses, and the sound of metal crying out in a deathly cry.
A roar in his mind sounded, clawing at his sanity, making Kai stumble and crash.
Cracks of gold light pulsing beneath the skin, as though he were filled with liquid fire.
And somewhere deep inside him, behind ribs and sinew and soul—
The wheel began to spin again.