---
Superman's hand pressed against the rubble. His fingers left deep marks in the concrete. He pushed himself up and the broken pieces slid off his shoulders like water off stone.
His face was a mess. Blood and dust covered everything. One eye was swollen shut. His cape was a torn flag hanging from his shoulders. He breathed in. One breath. Two. The air rattled past his broken ribs.
Bruce landed right in front of him. The Vibranium suit hummed with stored energy. Every hit from Azazel that the suit had absorbed was now waiting to be used. The display inside Bruce's helmet showed Clark's condition: internal bleeding, a collapsed lung, three cracked ribs, body temperature three degrees too low.
He was still the strongest thing on the planet.
"Superman." Bruce's voice was quiet through the helmet speakers. "This time, you don't have to control your strength. You don't have to be afraid of hurting someone. That demon's body has to be destroyed. I know you're holding back. I know a demon at this level can't actually hurt you."
Clark looked at him. Blood dripped from his chin onto the broken ground.
"I feel it every time," Clark said. His voice was rough. "When I hit something. The way it gives way. The way it breaks. In every fight, I'm measuring everything. How much force before a bone snaps. Before a heart stops. Before I become the thing they're all afraid of."
"Clark. There's no heart in that body anymore. No bone that doesn't belong to hell. Let go."
Clark straightened up. His spine aligned. His shoulders rolled back. The ground beneath his boots cracked, then cracked even deeper. The air around him started to shimmer. Heat haze. Pressure shifting. The faint smell of ozone in the air.
He nodded.
---
The possessed Vought heroes were scattered across the plaza like broken toys. A-Train's demon had already fled its first host and taken over a security guard. Black Noir's demon had done the same thing. The Deep's host lay unconscious, but two more guards were standing nearby with solid black eyes and weapons raised.
Clark moved.
The first demon never even saw him coming. The host body dropped to the ground, the black smoke forced out before the nerves could register the impact. Clark was already at the second. Then the third. The sixth. The sound didn't catch up until he finally stopped. A chain of sonic booms rolled across the plaza like delayed thunder.
The demons swirled in the air above him, formless smoke, screaming.
Clark raised his eyes toward the sky. The sun was hidden behind the smoke but he could still feel it. Every cell in his body reached for it. Heat built up behind his eyes. Not the controlled beam he normally used in battle. Something wider. Deeper. The full furnace of a Kryptonian who had spent thirty years holding back and was finally, finally told to stop.
The heat vision exploded outward. The sky went white. The smoke burned. The demons screamed and kept screaming until there was nothing left to scream with.
Clark closed his eyes. The plaza was quiet. The hosts lay on the ground, unconscious, still breathing.
"Six down," Barry said from somewhere behind him. His voice was full of awe.
---
Azazel stood in the center of the crater. His smile was completely gone.
Diana came from the left. Hawkgirl from above. Neither one spoke. They didn't need to. Diana's sword caught the hellfire light and threw it back in silver arcs. Hawkgirl's mace hummed with Nth metal, the special frequency that disrupted magic, that burned possession, that had made demons flee for thousands of years.
Diana struck first. The blade went straight through Azazel's shoulder. Hawkgirl's mace hit his spine at the exact same moment. The demon screamed—not rage, not defiance. Pure shock.
He hit the ground. The crater deepened another four feet. Black smoke poured out from his wounds.
"No." He scrambled backward, clawing at the rubble. "This cannot happen."
Diana stepped forward. Her sword dripped with black smoke.
"Who are you two?" Azazel's voice cracked. The layered demonic chorus was falling apart. "How could you have this kind of power?"
"I am Diana of Themyscira. This sword was forged by Hephaestus in the heart of a dying star.."
"And the Kryptonian!" Azazel's black eyes found Clark, who was coming down slowly to stand beside Diana. "How could a Kryptonian have this much power? I never heard Kryptonians were so strong!"
Azazel's gaze darted between them. Diana. Hawkgirl. Superman. Then his eyes found Bruce, standing at the edge of the crater, the Vibranium suit gleaming.
"It's all because of that Winchester." The demon's voice dropped to a hiss. "All of it. The binding. The blade. The strategy. He is the one who brought you together. He is the one who made you believe. I will kill him."
He exploded upward.
Bruce saw him coming. The display in his helmet showed the path, calculated the impact, suggested ways to dodge. He had zero point three seconds. He didn't try to avoid it.
Azazel's fists closed around his throat and drove him straight into the ground.
The Vibranium absorbed the impact. The chest plate held. The demon's hands scrambled for a grip, found nothing, and started hammering down. Punch. Punch. Punch. Each blow would have shattered a building. The suit's damage counter ticked up. One percent. One percent. One percent.
"What is this metal?" Azazel screamed.
Bruce didn't answer. The demon grabbed his ankle and launched into the sky. The city spun around them. The display tracked their altitude. Eight hundred feet. Twelve hundred. The demon swung him like a kite, smashing him through the upper floors of a shattered skyscraper, then dragged him back down into the crater. The impact barely registered. One percent.
Azazel dropped him. The Vibranium clanged against the rubble.
Bruce stood up.
"This is not possible." Azazel's voice was ragged. The chorus was gone now. Just one voice. Angry. Tired. Scared.
Bruce was out of options. He could take the hits. The suit could take the hits. But he couldn't end the fight by himself. Clark was still holding back—Bruce could see it, the way his fists clenched and unclenched, the way he hovered instead of striking. Diana was fast but the demon was faster. Hawkgirl's mace could hurt him but couldn't hold him.
The incantation. It was all he had left.
"Mystic. The binding."
"Reciting now, Master Bruce."
The Latin poured out from the suit's external speakers. The words were older than hell itself. The demon's body locked up. Every muscle froze. The black smoke pouring from his eyes stopped moving mid-swirl.
Diana moved.
Her fist drove straight through Azazel's stomach. The flesh tore open. Black smoke erupted from the wound. The demon screamed but couldn't move. The binding held him completely still while she tore through him.
The wound began to close. Black smoke knitted the tissue back together, faster than flesh should heal, faster than normal healing, the demonic essence refusing to let the vessel die.
"It's healing," Diana said.
"Hold him."
Her lasso snapped around Azazel's chest. The golden rope blazed with divine light. The demon thrashed against the binding, against the lasso, against the hole in his stomach. The lasso burned wherever it touched him. Truth was poison to demons. And this demon had been lying for centuries.
Hawkgirl came down. Her mace rose up, the Nth metal catching the hellfire light.
"Hawkgirl, don't kill him!" Bruce shouted. "I have a way to capture his demon state."
The mace stopped just an inch from Azazel's skull. Her arm trembled from holding back.
"What way?"
Bruce was already on his knees. The demon blade was reversed in his grip. He carved into the rubble. Seven circles. Seven names. The Men of Letters had called it the Cage. The last monk who drew it had died while drawing it.
"Keep him in the lasso. When the sigil is ready, throw him into the center circle."
"And then?"
"Then we finish it."
---
Teleportation
Castiel stepped out first. His trenchcoat was perfectly clean. His expression was calm. His eyes found Azazel in the lasso and his hand immediately went to his angel blade.
Dean came next. He saw the crater. The hellfire. The thing in Homelander's body twisting in the golden rope
. He Vibranium suit, down on his knees, carving symbols into the ground.
Sam was right behind him.
"What took you so long?" Bruce didn't look up from his carving.
Dean stared at the suit. The black plating. The arc reactor glow. The way it moved like skin. "Cousin, is that you? Is that armor? That armor is—"
His voice caught in his throat. Thirty years of wanting to see the thing that killed his mother dead. And there it was. Tied up in divine rope with a hole in its stomach.
"It's freaking cool," he finished. Quietly.
"Did you bring the Colt?"
Dean pulled the revolver from his jacket. The grip was worn smooth from John Winchester's hands. The barrel was ancient and cold. Five bullets left. Five things that could kill anything.
"Give me one bullet."
Dean tossed it over. Bruce caught it. His hand closed around the carved metal. He could feel the weight of it through the gauntlet.
The sigil was complete. Seven circles glowed with captured hellfire. The names of things older than hell flickered in the carved grooves.
"John." Bruce looked up at Green Lantern, who was hovering overhead. "Can you make that gun strong force to put this bullet in his body?"
John Stewart's ring flickered. His charge was low. His face was tired. But he nodded.
"Green light. Enhance the rounds. Make them punch through anything."
The ring flared. The Colt absorbed the light, the barrel glowing emerald green. John's jaw was tight from the effort of holding the enhancement steady.
"Done. But I can't hold this forever."
"You won't need to."
Bruce stood up. He looked at his cousins.
"Dean. Sam." His voice was quiet. The words were no longer just strategy. "He killed your mother. Mary Winchester. 1983. He pinned her to the ceiling and burned her alive. He did the same thing to Jessica. He has hunted your bloodline for thirty years."
Dean's face had gone pale. Sam's hands were shaking.
"It's your chance. To end it. Take the shot."
Dean looked at the demon. At the black eyes in Homelander's face. At the thing his father had hunted his entire life.
He raised the enhanced Colt by green lantern power.
" Ahhh. ..nooo! "
The scream was the loudest sound in the history of the plaza.
. Five kilometers. Six. Every window still intact rattled. Car alarms went off in Queens. Birds lifted from the trees in Central Park.
Azazel's chest opened up. The bullet went through flesh, through smoke, through centuries of pure evil.
The demon screamed.
---
Bruce saw it.
Not the demon. Not the death. Something behind the death.
Black hands. Vast. So huge they couldn't be measured. They came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. They reached through the smoke and closed around Azazel's essence. The demon screamed one last time—a sound that was not rage or fear but pure, absolute recognition of what had come for him.
The hands pulled.
Azazel was gone.
The black eyes faded away. The smoke vanished. The sigil went dark. Homelander's body crumpled onto the rubble.
And the thing that had taken him—the emptiness after the last star burned out, the silence between universes, the wall behind the door—turned its attention to Bruce.
It had no eyes. It had no face. It looked at him anyway.
Bruce jumped back. The Vibranium boots scraped against the concrete. His heart stopped for a full second. The display flickered. Mystic was saying something but he couldn't hear it.
The cold was not physical. It was older than cold. It was the complete absence of warmth, of light, of existence. It saw him. It knew him. It would remember him.
Then it was gone.
"What happened? Cousin?"
Dean was beside him. Sam was behind him. Clark was landing, Diana was putting away her sword, Hawkgirl was lowering her mace.
Bruce couldn't speak. His hands were shaking inside the gauntlets.
Only Castiel met his eyes. The angel's expression was impossible to read, but his gaze flicked toward the empty air where the hands had been. He had seen it too. Or felt it. Or recognized it.
Bruce looked away.
---
Castiel drew his angel blade. The remaining demons—the ones Clark had forced out, the ones still swirling at the edges of the crater—screamed as the silver edge sliced through them. One by one. Smoke turned into nothing. No drama. No mercy.
The plaza was quiet. The hellfire cracks were closing. The sky was gray and ordinary.
Dean was still holding the Colt. His knuckles were white.
"It's done," Sam said.
Dean looked at the body. Homelander. Blonde hair matted with blood. The star-spangled suit torn and burned. The face slack and empty.
" Okay, burn the bodies"