Twilight was coming.
Not to a single world.
Not to a single universe.
To the entire Multiverse.
Countless cosmic gods across countless realities would fall before this disaster. Entire universes would perish. Cosmic hierarchies would collapse.
This was Ragnarok on a multiversal scale.
In truth, it had already begun.
During the few breaths that had passed since Abraxas erged, one of Eternity's countless manifestations might have already been destroyed.
And when an aspect of Eternity died, the universe it sustained died with it.
Its cosmic order shattered.
Its stars collapsed.
Its planets broke apart.
Everything descended into endless destruction.
In a sense, Abraxas and Galactus had always been destined to be enemies.
That wasn't a taphor.
It was a fundantal law of existence.
Galactus served a vital purpose beyond maintaining balance.
He was Abraxas's prison.
The cosmic lock that kept the embodint of destruction trapped within Eternity's womb, preventing his birth.
But once a Galactus died...
The seal weakened.
And once Abraxas was released, every Galactus throughout the Multiverse beca prey.
Every version.
Every tiline.
Every reality.
To Abraxas, they were nothing more than targets.
The death of each Galactus further increased his power.
Which ant one thing.
Abraxas had already been born because sowhere in the Multiverse, a Galactus had died.
Not just any Galactus, either.
An important one.
A powerful one.
Its death had released an imnse amount of dormant destructive energy.
Even Eternity had been unable to stop it.
Before Eternity could react, destruction had already consud it.
Abraxas was born.
And once born, he began hunting.
Universe after universe.
Galactus after Galactus.
Growing stronger with every kill.
"So sooner or later..."
Drex Valen stared at the green-skinned cosmic horror.
"He's going to reach my universe too."
Could fate stop throwing monsters like this at him?
Abraxas wasn't rely multiversal.
He was sothing even worse.
At Drex's current level, there was no realistic way to stop him.
Using the accelerated perception granted by his black-hole-enhanced senses, Drex had already examined billions of possible futures.
Normally, that level of foresight was enough to predict almost anything.
Not this.
Abraxas existed on a scale beyond conventional causality.
Even Drex's powers couldn't observe futures involving his arrival.
Every tiline beca uncertain.
Would Abraxas reach his universe in three years?
Ten?
A century?
Or would he arrive tomorrow?
As a conceptual entity that transcended ti itself, Abraxas wasn't bound by temporal progression.
Predicting him through chronology was nearly impossible.
While Drex's mind raced through possibilities, the sky above the Baxter Building suddenly darkened.
Not with clouds.
With sothing far worse.
New York disappeared beneath an ocean of black.
The heavens looked as though they had been drowned in ink.
Purple-black radiance flickered within the darkness.
Strange stars pulsed in the void overhead, their unnatural light appearing and vanishing like distant eyes.
An imnse force leaked from the darkness and spread across Earth.
Space itself began to buckle.
Twist.
Warp.
Collapse.
Buildings distorted.
Streets folded in impossible directions.
Entire city blocks shifted out of alignnt before being swallowed by expanding regions of darkness.
The transformation happened so quickly that most people never understood what was happening.
One mont they were alive.
The next, their bodies were consud by an incomprehensible force.
Flesh blackened.
Forms eroded.
Only twisted silhouettes remained.
Then even those vanished into the darkness.
When they erged again, they were no longer human.
Monstrous shapes crawled through the void, assimilated into the endless black.
Inside the Baxter Building, things weren't much better.
The Fantastic Four and the gathered heroes had already paid a terrible price.
Fantastic Woman looked especially miserable.
Her body lay completely limp.
She had clearly pushed her stretching powers far beyond their limits.
The strain had left her temporarily incapable of movent.
Deep wounds covered her body.
Only the incredible vitality granted by cosmic radiation kept her alive.
An ordinary person would have died long ago.
Even so, she looked frighteningly weak.
Pitifully fragile.
And then...
Everyone vanished.
Reduced to dust.
Erased as though they had never existed.
Drex floated alone in the sky.
Across from him stood Abraxas.
The cosmic destroyer noticed him imdiately.
Their eyes t.
The parallel universe trembled.
Drex abandoned all restraint.
The bindings imposed by his biofield disappeared completely.
Instantly, his true mass was unleashed.
It exceeded the total mass of the universe itself.
Exceeded what the universe could physically contain.
Reality shattered.
The entire universe broke apart around him.
Abraxas rely laughed.
A blur of green appeared before Drex.
Then ca a punch.
Drex took the hit head-on.
His Kryptonian durability.
The gravitational defenses of Black Hole Superman.
The terrifying adaptation and regeneration of Doomsday Superman.
None of it mattered.
His body exploded apart.
Torn into fragnts by a single strike.
Completely unable to resist, he crashed through reality and fell into his own universe.
Abraxas followed.
Drex only had enough ti to shield several of his collectible girls before the destroyer arrived again.
Another punch.
Half his body ceased to exist.
Abraxas was absurd.
Strength.
Speed.
Durability.
All of them effectively maxed out.
He rivaled Galactus at full power.
He rivaled Eternity itself.
And every Galactus he killed only made him stronger.
Doomsday Superman.
Black Hole Superman.
The Phoenix Force.
The Dragon Force.
Four Infinity Stones.
The combined power of all those abilities had only allowed Drex to survive two punches.
Two.
That was the limit.
Staying to fight was suicide.
Without hesitation, Drex tore open a black hole and escaped.
Abraxas sensed that he had entered another universe.
But he didn't pursue.
Not imdiately.
Drex wasn't his priority.
Galactus was.
There was a Galactus sowhere in this universe.
And Abraxas intended to kill him.
"Damn it..."
Drex erged in an unfamiliar reality, his battered body rapidly regenerating.
"Of all the cosmic disasters, it had to be the Abraxas event."
He had no idea which universe he'd landed in.
Only one fact mattered.
If he couldn't reach true multiversal power soon, he would never defeat Abraxas.
Doomsday's evolutionary adaptation was powerful.
But bridging the gap between universal and multiversal existence was another matter entirely.
Maybe being killed hundreds of millions of tis would eventually allow him to evolve enough.
Maybe.
But Doomsday had been killed before.
There was no guarantee Abraxas wouldn't discover a permanent thod after only a few attempts.
Drex had no intention of gambling his existence on that possibility.
Running was the smarter choice.
The problem was that escape solved nothing.
No matter which parallel universe he fled to, Abraxas would eventually arrive.
Which left only one viable solution.
The Ultimate Nullifier.
He needed to reach the main universe.
And he needed to find it before Abraxas found him.
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