Earth-7 - The Ruins of a World
The moment Arthur stepped through the portal, he felt it.
Death.
It pressed against him like a physical weight, a sensation that crawled across his skin and settled deep in his bones. It was not the simple absence of life that he had felt on other dead worlds, this was something far more profound, far more disturbing. It was as if the very concept of existence had been rejected here, as if the universe itself had decided that this place should never have been and had simply... moved on.
The sky was a bruised purple, streaked with the remnants of clouds that had long since dissipated, their shapes frozen in the final moments, the sun was red, distant star, its light weak and pale, as if even it had given up on this place.
Arthur floated above the surface of Earth-7, his shadow armor materializing around him in silent response to the danger he sensed. His violet eyes swept across the landscape below, cataloguing the devastation, searching for any sign of life.
There was none.
The cities that had once dotted the planet's surface were gone, crumbling ruins stretched as far as the eye could see, their forms twisted and broken, their surfaces covered in a fine layer of ash that seemed to have settled over everything. The architecture was barely recognizable, buildings that had once soared toward the sky now lay in tangled heaps, their materials fused together as if they had been melted and then frozen in the same moment.
The oceans were gone. Their basins were nothing more than dry, cracked depressions that stretched toward the horizon, their surfaces covered in a crust of salt and minerals that had been baked into the earth. The mountains had been reduced to rubble, their peaks shattered, their slopes covered in debris that had once been the foundations of civilizations.
Arthur descended slowly, his feet touching the ground with a soft crunch. The ash beneath him was deep, thick enough to swallow his boots, soft enough to muffle his footsteps. He knelt, his hand brushing against the surface, feeling the texture of what had once been a world. The ash was fine, almost like dust.
His voice was quiet, almost to himself. "This doesn't seem like the work of Mobius..."
He rose, his eyes scanning the ruins around him. The buildings that remained were twisted, their forms warped as if they had been caught in the grip of some unimaginable force. The streets were cracked, their surfaces covered in patterns that looked almost like the marks of claws, or something far worse. The damage was not random as if someone had gone through the planet with the intent of leaving nothing behind.
"It could be the work of Antares's successor..." he murmured. "But this feels a bit..."
He rose into the air again, floating above the ruined city, his senses reaching out across the planet. He searched for any sign of life, any flicker of consciousness, any whisper of existence. He searched for hours, his mind stretching across the void, his power reaching into the shadows.
He found nothing.
No survivors. No hidden pockets of life. No echoes of the beings who had once called this world home. The planet was a graveyard, its inhabitants long since erased, their memories scattered across the void like ash on the wind. There was no sense of lingering presence, no ghostly remnants of the billions who had once lived here. They were simply gone, as if they had never existed at all.
Arthur's jaw tightened. He rose higher, his eyes scanning the horizon, his mind working through the implications of what he had found. The scale of the destruction was staggering, not just in terms of the physical damage, but in the completeness of the erasure. This was not a world that had been conquered or destroyed. It was a world that had been unmade.
"There's something wrong with this place beyond the destruction," he said to himself, his voice echoing across the silence of the ruined city. "The laws of physics themselves feel... broken."
He could feel it in the way the gravity shifted, in the way the light bent, in the way the air itself seemed to resist his presence. This was not a natural death. This was something that has been done with purpose and with malice, with the intent of leaving nothing behind.
Then he felt it.
A presence.
No, multiple presences.
They emerged from the shadows of the ruined city like spectres rising from a forgotten grave. Their forms and bodies were wrong, as if they had been carved from the very darkness that had consumed this world.
Arthur's eyes widened. His hand moved to his spear, the weapon materializing in a crackle of violet lightning, its edge glowing with the promise of violence.
"Yep... This is not Mobius or the Dragon Monarch..." His voice carried a note of genuine surprise. "What the hell are these things.."
The creatures did not answer. They simply continued their slow advance, their forms seeming to multiply as they emerged from the shadows.
Arthur rose higher, his spear ready, his eyes blazing violet. He studied the creatures, trying to understand what he was facing. They were not alive in any sense that he understood.
"I don't know what you are," he said, his voice carrying across the ruins, "But I'm not here to fight. I'm looking for answers."
The creatures did not respond.
They simply continued their advance, Arthur's jaw tightened. "I see. You are not creatures of reason. You are creatures of instinct." He paused, his voice dropping to a dangerous murmur. "And instinct is so easy to exploit."
He drew his spear, the weapon crackling with violet lightning.
"If you want a fight," he said, "you'll get one."
The creatures surrounded Arthur in a tightening circle, their bodies wrong in ways that defied description. Their limbs moved with a fluid grace that was deeply unsettling, as if they were operating under a different set of physical laws.
Their faces, if they could be called faces were featureless except for the cold, hungry glow of their eyes. They did not speak with their mouths; their voices emerged from the darkness itself, resonating directly inside Arthur's mind.
One of them stepped forward. Its form was slightly larger than the others, its presence more commanding, its voice was a chorus of whispers, layered and overlapping, as if a thousand beings were speaking through a single throat.
"We are the Gentry."
Arthur's eyes narrowed. His spear crackled with violet lightning in his hand, its edge. He studied the creature before him, he had faced many beings, gods, monsters, cosmic entities, but this felt different. This felt much darker.
"The Gentry," he repeated, his voice flat, measured. "I assume it was you who destroyed this planet."
The creature's head tilted, a gesture that was almost curious, almost amused. Its voice was calm.
"Destroyed? No." The chorus of whispers grew louder, more intense. "We did not destroy this world, we corrected it. It was an imperfection, a stain on the fabric of existence. We removed it, as we have removed countless others."
Arthur's eyes swept across the ruins, across the broken sky, across the empty void where stars should have been. His voice carried a note of dawning realization.
"Now that I think about it... I don't sense any sort of life in this universe..."
His eyes returned to the Gentry, and his voice hardened.
"Who are you, really?" He paused. "You clearly serve someone. Is it Darkseid?"
The Gentry's eyes glowed brighter. Their forms seemed to shift, to expand, as if it were growing in response to the question. Thier voices were amused, almost pitying.
"We serve a higher entity, Monarch of Shadows. We are the end of all things that should not be. We exist to correct the errors of creation."
Arthur's expression didn't change, but his grip on his spear tightened.
"Correct errors?" His voice carried a note of dry skepticism. "That's a convenient way to describe genocide."
The Gentry's form rippled, as if it were laughing without making a sound. Its voice was patient, condescending.
"We do not expect you to understand, Monarch of Shadows. You are a product of the very imperfection we seek to correct. Your existence is an anomaly...a deviation from the natural order, it was wrong of you to come here."
"Then what are you really?" Arthur pressed. "I've faced countless beings, but your kind... this is a first for me.."
The Gentry's voice grew colder, more distant. "We are finally free to act, the right hand commands it."
Arthur's eyes flickered with violet light. He was still studying them. "The Right hand? you avoid the question. You have a master, I can sense it. There's a presence behind you, something far older than any of you."
The Gentry's mask seemed to shift, and for a moment, something ancient and terrible flickered in its eyes. Its voice, however, remained calm.
"We are the Gentry. We are beyond your understanding, beyond your power. You are an anomaly that must be contained. And containment is not a negotiation."
Arthur's lips curved. "Good. I was hoping you'd say that."
The shadows around him deepened, thickened, responding to his will. His spear crackled with energy.
"Thank you for the answers," he said. "You've told me more than you probably intended."
The Gentry surged forward, a wave of shadow and cold hungry evils.
Arthur's spear rose to meet them.
"So be it."
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