Drex opened the black hole dimension.
The moment he did, the countless black holes within that realm flared to life at once and devoured every soul the Soul Stone had created.
A black vortex stirred on the far side, full of impossible pressure.
The voice behind it let out a quiet sigh.
Then, as though realizing seduction would get it nowhere, it vanished along with the darkness.
Drex ignored it.
After the black hole dimension swallowed those souls, it actually grew a little stronger.
Just a little.
The problem was that the Soul Stone had created a lot of souls.
And they were all too clean.
Too pure.
Drex frowned.
"Wrong approach?"
He thought about it for a moment, then immediately thought of Marvel's better-known devil, Mephisto.
That bastard never brute-forced souls.
He lured people down slowly, patiently, until they rotted from the inside out.
Was that the trick?
In a way, it had to be.
Just like Mephisto tempted mortals into ruin, the hell dimensions wanted souls that were fallen, corrupt, filthy, jealous, hateful, desperate. Anything carrying heavy negative emotion was a feast for them.
That was why Mephisto had gone after the San Venganza contract in the first place.
The San Venganza Contract.
The name sounded almost holy.
It was anything but.
It was a devil's bargain that bound human souls and turned them into wraiths.
Once signed, the soul was no longer its own.
The ghost, and the power that came with it, belonged to the devil forever.
The people of San Venganza had been the perfect prey.
A small town full of the good, the faithful, the pure.
In other words, souls with almost no impurities.
And that was exactly what made them valuable.
A pure soul, once it fell, contained far more power than a soul that had always been rotten.
Mephisto understood that.
He had spent years making deals, whispering promises, and waiting for the inevitable collapse.
The faithful gave in.
The pure became corrupt.
And the devil took everything.
A thousand fallen souls might not have impressed a monster like Mephisto.
But the people of San Venganza were different.
They had been recognized by Heaven itself.
They were the kind of people a town could be named "holy" after.
The kind of souls guaranteed a place in paradise.
The kind of souls that made excellent material for saints.
And when those souls fell, the energy they carried was unbelievably rich.
A saint turned into a demon was a prize even hell would fight over.
Drex leaned back in thought.
His own dimension, however, had already been changed by his power.
It had gone from the Dark Dimension to the Black Hole Dimension.
At this point, any soul would do.
A soul with obsession.
A soul with energy.
That was enough.
The pure souls created by the Soul Stone were clean beyond belief, but they had no real will of their own and not much energy to work with.
So naturally, their value to the black hole dimension was limited.
He muttered to himself, "Heaven probably keeps telling people to be good because it needs the same thing in reverse. A light dimension wants good souls. If someone kills themselves, they've already tipped toward falling, so of course they're told they can't go to heaven. And even if they do, they're just feeding the place in the end."
That gave him another idea.
"Which means... I should become a god?"
He considered that for a moment.
Not a bad deal.
Other dimensional lords could only support a single subordinate.
But a god like him could walk the earth himself.
That was a lot more convenient.
So the question became: who should he back?
In the movie universe, it would be easy.
No one would care if he started a religion.
In the comics, though, it would attract Heaven's attention immediately.
Heaven was already tightly linked to Earth's dimension.
Even if Yahweh was missing, Michael the Archangel alone was trouble enough.
Still, Drex didn't think it was a problem.
If this were the DC side, then Heaven was first, Hell was second, and Apokolips was third.
Cause trouble there, and an archangel would descend from above and reduce you to dust before you finished blinking.
Drex made his decision.
He used the Soul Stone to lock down every soul on Earth, severing Heaven and Hell's claim over them.
Then, with the same stone, he reshaped Esdeath and the others' souls.
Now they were truly new lifeforms.
He studied the Soul Stone again.
There was still one concern.
Could this thing be trusted?
It had rebuilt their souls, yes, but only within this single universe.
Would it still work once it left?
He set that question aside.
For now, he needed to think about something more useful.
A spokesperson.
A vessel.
And maybe a few spectacular holy wars or salvation dramas to go with it.
Johnny Blaze was a stunt rider living off his motorcycle.
As an amateur in the world of bikes, he had pulled off a lot of impossible jumps.
Enough to make the so-called elite in the industry practically worship him.
That fame had bought him money, status, and a private workshop.
He no longer performed at the amusement park.
Now he was invited out to shows all the time.
Of course, fame always came with trouble.
Once people knew your name, they came for your record.
They came to take your throne.
They came to step on you and rise higher.
Most of them, of course, ended up face-first on the ground instead.
That only made Blaze look more legendary.
The crowds loved it.
They loved anyone willing to gamble with the edge of death.
Part awe, part curiosity.
Mostly curiosity.
How long could the legend last?
Today, the rumor was that Johnny Blaze was going to jump fifty cars.
So naturally, half the crowd had come expecting to watch someone die.
They waited around, craning their necks, wondering where all the cars were.
Then Johnny rolled in on his motorcycle, and the announcer's voice boomed over the loudspeakers.
Not cars today.
Helicopters.
Six UH-60 Black Hawks were descending onto the field, their rotors already spinning, chewing the air into six visible death spirals above the grass.
If Blaze missed the jump, the result was obvious.
The crowd got louder.
They were practically frothing at the mouth now, hurling popcorn and sloshing beer everywhere, turning the place into a mess.
Not because they were cheering him on.
Because they wanted to see whether the man who had already become half dead by contract could finally finish the job.
What was death supposed to do to a man who wasn't even on death's radar anymore?
Johnny Blaze knew it too.
No matter how reckless the stunt, he always survived.
So today, he was going to fulfill his father's dream.
He was going to jump the helicopters.
All six of them.
But this time was different.
Drex watched the movie-star stuntman take off on his bike and casually gave him a shove from behind.
Just one push.
That was enough.
The king of bad-movie fame went flying straight into a Black Hawk.
The motorcycle struck the rotor blades.
Metal shrieked.
Flesh tore.
The sound was awful, a wet, grinding snap of blades ripping through body and machine alike.
Then the bike detonated.
The impact triggered a chain reaction.
Within seconds, the whole stunt site became a rolling series of explosions.
Flames tore through the air.
One helicopter after another buckled and burst.
The pilot probably never saw it coming.
...
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