Nightcore Angel

[forestofbabel]

A lot of Danny Phantom fic writers like to give Danny a panic attack when he’s confronted with a man made portal that kinda looks the like portal to the ghost zone he died in. Which, is all fair and good, I just wanted to share my 2 cents of PTSD that’s similar in nature to Danny’s

I was in an elevator accident. Immediately after the accident I kept having to use elevators because I was in a wheelchair for a while. Danny, likewise, went through the portal to the ghost zone a lot after his accident.

It’s a trigger that fades with time. I had to power through. It made me squeamish but not hyperventilate. I breathed through it.

The sight of the non working portal, where it’s just the machine and no green vortex is more like the elevator shaft. Which is also related to my elevator accident.

The shaft is the image that would freak me out more. But just seeing one wouldn’t send me into a full blown panic attack. I might get the start of one: my heart would race, my lungs might feel tight, a sudden spike of fear. But just like with everything else, I breathed through it. Even in the early days when it was still fresh.

When Danny sees a non functioning portal (or a zeta tube if it’s a dc crossover) his reaction wouldn’t likely be as extreme as many authors write it, in my opinion. He’s had time to desensitize thanks to the portal in his parents basement. He’s learned to calm himself.

The first time I ever had a real sustained panic attack about my accident was watching a tv show and an event took place that was visually similar to what I went through.

I’d like to propose to authors that by having someone injured by a faulty portal device (even if it’s just a minor shock, small electrical burn, and everyone’s fine) that that is what sends Danny into a full blown panic attack.

He can still experience PTSD seeing the bare portal. I still close my eyes when images are too similar to elevator shafts in movies. I still have to breathe through it sometimes. But I’m fine. (I was even able to go on the Guardians of the Galaxy Ride at Disney that used to be the Hotel of Horror a couple of years ago without freaking out. Although it was a lot scarier than it had been before my accident)

Danny’s going to feel wrong footed around portals, and get tense in ways that might be noticeable, but save the panic attack for a triggering event and it’ll make it so much more angsty that he was able to manage himself before but can’t now.

You can apply this to many characters. I just happen to be reading dp x dc fics rn and it comes up a lot and it’s so particularly like my own lived experience I felt like sharing

[labyrinthofsphinx]

“It’s a jolly holiday with Mary. No wonder that’s it’s Mary that we love!”

Murdermedia in Disney? More likely than you think! Cheers!

[ravensuperr]

The One Rule We Never Broke

The first sign was not a sound, but a silence.

Across countless planes—heavens, hells, afterlives, in-between places—the constant background hum of existence stuttered. For a heartbeat, the machinery of judgment, reincarnation, punishment, and rest paused.

And then the screaming began.

Heaven, Hell, and the One Rule

In one Hell, the screaming of the damned was as normal as fire and brimstone.

It stopped.

Lucifer Morningstar froze with a glass of hellfire halfway to his lips. Around him, the Seven Sins went rigid, their bickering dying all at once. Their attention turned—not toward any rebellion, not toward Heaven—but downward, toward something deeper than their own Pit.

Above, in the Silver City, angelic choirs fractured mid-hymn. Wings stilled. Swords half-drawn, they looked outward, past the realm of pure light, into the far reaches where even angels rarely gazed.

A single, unified dread rippled through beings older than mortal language:

No. Not again.

They remembered the last time something this old moved. They remembered the cost of putting it back to sleep.

They remembered the one rule they had not broken.

The Infinite Realms Break Open

In the Infinite Realms, there was no single sky, no single ground. It was layers of afterlives and memory, rivers of ectoplasm carrying the echoes of every death in every world.

Deep in a dead current at the bottom of it all hung the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

Its chains were made of concepts: slumber, denial, containment. Its wards were written in languages from universes that never reached stars. Around it floated seals set by beings so old that gods had learned from their mistakes.

No one was supposed to reach it.

No one was supposed to touch it.

The skeleton key slid into a lock that was never meant to turn.

The sarcophagus groaned as if the whole structure of death itself resented the motion. One by one, the conceptual chains snapped, their breaking echoing across thousands of ghost realms.

Inside, something vast and furious opened its eyes.

The first flex of Pariah Dark’s power was not a roar but a pressure wave. Ghost cities burst like soap bubbles. Old battlefields crumbled. Domains that had persisted for entire cycles of creation shattered under the sheer wake-up stretch of a king who had slept too long.

He rose.

The Infinite Realms shook.

Ghosts dropped everything and ran.

“Run! For your lives!” a woman’s voice screamed, amplified by terror and the currents of the Realm. Her warning rode along every ectoplasmic stream, bleeding into every psychic fault line it could find. “Run to any dimension you can reach—just run! He’s awake— If you don’t run, you’ll die permanently!”

The dead had always believed themselves past the worst. Now, they are refugees.

Watchtower – J’onn J’onzz

On the Watchtower, J’onn J’onzz sat in calm meditation, his awareness gently brushing the minds of Earth below.

Then the calm became a storm.

A tidal wave of terror slammed into his mind—billions of voices, not human, not living, shrieking in every language and none. He staggered, catching himself on a medical console.

Under the screaming, one voice cut clear as a knife.

Run for your lives. Run to any dimension you can reach—just run! He will kill, torture, pillage, and enslave you if you do not escape!

“Who are you?” J’onn sent back, straining to hold his mental footing. “Who is ‘he’?”

He didn’t get words.

He got an image:

A massive sarcophagus, chains snapping.

A Ghost wearing heavy armor, crowned in green fire, arises from his prison. A name surfaced from the depths of collective fear like a corpse out of dark water:

Pariah Dark.

J’onn’s eyes snapped open.

He slammed his hand onto the comms panel. “All systems,” he said, voice iron-hard despite the shaking in his mind. “Prepare for catastrophic psychic spillover. The afterlife is in collapse.”

Xavier’s School

At Xavier’s School, telepaths fell like puppets with cut strings.

Jean Grey hit the floor, clutching her head. Emma Frost cursed as diamond skin spider-webbed with hairline fractures from raw psychic impact. Charles Xavier’s chair rolled back violently as his mind was dragged toward an ocean of howling dead.

They felt people running.

They felt whole populations tearing themselves free of resting places, graves, planes of peace or torment, all surging toward any anchor they could find.

In Jean’s mind, something older than the universe recoiled.

Host, the Phoenix whispered, and for once, even it sounded small. Let me in. Fully. I am not enough as I am. I may not be enough even then—but without me, you will be ash in his shadow.

“His?” Jean choked, gasping. “Whose?”

Images blasted through her: A group of powerful ancient ghosts, incomprehensible silhouettes surrounding. These ancient ghosts combine their powers to defeat Pariah. He falls to the ground, seemingly defeated. One ghost takes away the Ring of Rage, another takes the Crown of Fire, depriving Pariah of most of his power. The Ghost King, Phoenix breathed. Pariah Dark. He was locked away because killing him would have broken too much. The afterlives themselves use him as a load-bearing horror. He was a danger and a necessity. And now his prison has been opened.

The dead were not merely running. They were abandoning a support beam of reality.

Peter Parker’s Migraine and the First Ghosts

At the Daily Bugle, Peter Parker’s world narrowed to amber and pain.

His Spider-Sense wasn’t just buzzing. It was a wailing siren wired directly into his skull, screaming that the foundations of everything were coming undone.

He grabbed his head with both hands.

“Parker!” J. Jonah Jameson’s voice blasted across the office. “You having a stroke on my time? What’s wrong with you, kid? You look like you swallowed a ghost.”

“Something’s… wrong,” Peter managed through clenched teeth. “Something really wrong. I don’t know how to explain it, but—”

The office door opened.

A familiar man in an old, worn coat stepped in, blinking at the lights. His hair was thinner, his face more lined, but Peter knew him.

He had known him his whole life.

“Peter,” the man said softly. “It’s good to see you again, son. God, I’ve missed you.” His eyes swept the office, filling with sorrow. “I just wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.”

Peter’s hands fell away from his head.

“Uncle Ben?” he whispered.

Ben’s smile was sad and gentle. “Yeah, kiddo.” He reached out and put a steady hand on Peter’s shoulder. The touch was solid. Warm. Impossible.

“All of us,” he said quietly, “where we were—it’s not safe. Feels like the floor dropped out from under us. So we’re running. Anywhere we can.”

“Running from what?” Peter asked, but he already knew the answer wasn’t going to be simple.

Ben’s eyes darkened. “Not what from whom,” he corrected.

Around them, more impossible figures bled through thin places in the air. Co-workers gasped and shouted as dead relatives, long-buried lovers, and lost friends appeared, eyes wide with fear.

“What—Mom?!” a receptionist sobbed.

Jameson took one look at the growing chaos, went pale for a split second, then barked, “Parker, get pictures!”

Peter didn’t move this wasn’t a story; it was an evacuation.

Wayne Enterprises

On the top floor of Wayne Enterprises, the temperature dropped like a stone.

Bruce Wayne was halfway through a sentence about quarterly earnings when he saw his breath fog. Tim Drake paused in his quiet correction of the numbers, looking up as the lights dimmed.

Damian Wayne, in an immaculate suit that did nothing to hide his impatience, sat near the window, watching everything and caring about nothing—until the world shifted.

They appeared near the glass.

Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Martha’s pearls caught the light. Thomas stood straight, eyes sweeping the office, Gotham’s skyline, and finally settling on his son.

“Bruce,” Martha whispered.

Bruce’s carefully cultivated idiot-billionaire mask shattered. The room narrowed down to her face, Thomas’s shoulders, the warmth in their eyes.

Tim’s attention jerked toward the doorway.

“Mom?” he croaked.

Jack and Janet Drake stood there, as solid and confused as the day they died. Jack lifted a trembling hand. “Timmy?”

All around the room, executives stared as their own dead appeared—spouses, children, parents, siblings—each with the same wild mixture of fear and relief.

Damian’s gaze darted between them all. Logic slammed into disbelief. His brain did what it always did: looked for the trap.

“This is a hallucination,” he snapped, standing quickly. “Some mass gas exposure. Fear Toxin. Shared delusion. Crane is experimenting, or some other rogue.” He glared up at the vents. “Everyone, breathe shallowly. We need to evacuate.”

“This is not Fear Gas, Damian.”

The voice was firm, calm, used to being obeyed.

Thomas Wayne stepped forward, his attention moving from Bruce to Damian, weighing, assessing, and finally softening. He said quietly. “My grandson.”

Damian went rigid. “You… know me,” he said, and for a moment the boy in him pushed past the soldier.

“Of course,” Thomas replied. “We’ve watched, as much as we could. And we’re here, all of us, because we are running.”

“Running from what?” Bruce forced out, voice hoarse.

Martha’s eyes shimmered. “From where we were,” she said softly. “From a king who woke when he should have slept forever. From a tyrant whose stirrings are tearing apart the place between life and death.”

Thomas looked around the conference room at the dozens of newly arrived dead, all wearing the same brittle terror.

“If we stayed,” he said, “we would have died properly. No afterlife. No second chances. Nothing.”

Damian swallowed.

“Ah....permanent death,” he repeated.

Thomas met his gaze and nodded once. “Yes.”

The boy who had faced assassins and demons felt, for a moment, very, very small.

The Fortress of Solitude: Frostbite’s Warning

In the arctic calm of the Fortress of Solitude, Kryptonian technology hummed with quiet purpose. Superman hovered a few inches above the crystal floor, reviewing odd readings from the outer edges of reality.

The readings spiked.

The Fortress didn’t shake so much as shiver. The air crackled with a strange, cold energy. A jagged tear opened in the center of the main hall, swirling with green-blue light.

Figures stumbled through.

They were tall and furred, white as the snow outside, walking upright with a warrior’s bearing. Not myths—people. Yeti-like ghosts, armor clinking, weapons sheathed, faces drawn tight with fear. At their head strode a massive figure with a prosthetic arm of intricately carved ice and glowing teal veins.

Superman landed in front of them, palms open. “You’re safe,” he said, voice as steady as he could make it. “My name is Superman. You’re in the Fortress of Solitude. What are you fleeing from? Apokolips? A trans-dimensional invader?”

The leader bowed his head slightly.

“Kal-El of Krypton,” he said. “I am Frostbite, chief of the Far Frozen.” He glanced back at his people—children clutching crystalline artifacts, elders huddled together. “We apologize for intruding. But we had no choice.”

“Why?” Superman asked. “What’s happening?”

Frostbite drew in a slow, steadying breath.

“We come from The Infinite Realms,” he said. “Your people might call them ‘the afterlife.’ But they are more than one place—they are the connective tissue. The glue that holds all your worlds’ deaths in balance. Every hell, every heaven, every world, every power, every timeline —all flow into it.”

He looked Superman in the eyes.

“And the Tyrant of that place has awakened from his Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.”

Superman felt the words land like a weight.

“And the name of this Tyrant,” he repeated carefully.

“His name is Pariah Dark,” Frostbite said, each syllable heavy. “The Ghost King. Long ago, he was sealed by the Ancients, stripped of his ring and crown, locked away not because they could kill him, because killing him would break the multiverses.”

Frostbite gestured helplessly.

“Now he stirs. With the first flex of his power, realms crumble. His ancient armies answer his call. Our homes are destroyed. If we stay, we will not simply die—we will cease.”

Superman’s jaw set.

“You have sanctuary,” he said immediately. “All of you. I’ll contact the Justice League. If the Infinite Realms are the glue holding everything together, this concerns all of us.”

Frostbite bowed, relief flickering over his features—but not hope.

“Then may your sun watch over you, Kal-El,” he said. “Because if the Tyrant cannot be put back to sleep…”

He glanced toward the flickering portal, where more ghosts desperately pushed through.

“This may be truly the end of reality as we know it.”

Diana, Pandora, and the Fallen Amazons

In Gateway City, the museum was quiet but for the murmur of tourists.

Diana Prince adjusted a placard beneath a piece of Greek pottery, smiling faintly at a child’s awe. Then the air thickened.

It pressed down on her shoulders like the heaviest armor she had ever worn. Not divine presence. Older. Sadder. The weight of stories remembered and stories deliberately forgotten.

She turned.

A woman stood among the displays.

Her beauty was ancient and unearthly, framed by simple garments that failed to blunt the sheer myth of her. Sorrow pooled in her eyes like an ocean.

“Pandora,” Diana said.

Behind Pandora, the gallery was filled with women.

Amazon warriors in archaic armor, shields, and spears at the ready, faces taut with a mix of pride and bone-deep fear. Sister Diana had mourned. Names etched into her heart and the stones of Themyscira. A curator gasped and dropped a box of pamphlets. Another simply fainted.

“Diana,” Pandora said, inclining her head.

Diana’s hand twitched toward where her lasso would hang in uniform. She let it fall.

“Pandora. My sisters,” she said. “How are you here? What has happened?”

“We are fleeing,” Pandora answered simply. “The realm that once held us in death is no longer safe. The Tyrant King has awoken from his Slumber. The one your mother spoke of only in warnings.”

Diana’s mouth went dry.

“Pariah Dark,” she murmured.

As a child, she had heard the old stories: of a king who had tried to unmake the boundary between living and dead, to rule both. Of a coalition of beings older than gods who had bound him when they could not kill him.

“He was sealed by the Ancients,” Diana said. “Locked away. His crown and ring taken. His sarcophagus hidden where none could reach it.”

“The seal is broken,” Pandora said. “The Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep has been opened. Whether by arrogance or ignorance, the result is the same.”

One fallen Amazon stepped forward, saluting Diana with a fist to her chest. “The Infinite Realms is cracking,” she said. “Spirits from a thousand cultures are abandoning their rest. If the glue that binds the afterlives fails, all heavens, all hells, all reincarnation cycles may fall with it.”

Diana straightened, resolve hardening like tempered steel.

“Then we will fight,” she said. “For the living and the dead.”

Pandora looked at her with weary compassion.

“This is not a war that can be won by swords alone, Diana,” she said quietly. “This is the terror of a Tyrant who could not be killed… only stored.”

Coast City, Oa, and the Lore of the Ghost King

Over Coast City, Hal Jordan’s ring screamed in a tone he had never heard.

WARNING: REALITY STABILITY COMPROMISED. SOURCE: INFINITE REALMS. SEVERITY: EXISTENTIAL.

He rocketed toward the anomaly blazing across his ring’s display.

A vortex churned in the upper atmosphere, green-black-white energy writhing like a wound.

Two figures stepped out onto nothing.

Hal’s heart stopped.

“Hal,” said Martin Jordan, wearing his old bomber jacket, that familiar proud smile sitting uneasy on a face touched by fear.

“Dad?” Hal whispered.

Beside Martin stood a purple-skinned alien in a Green Lantern uniform.

Hal knew the face of the alien whose ring was chosen, Hal Abin Sur.

“It is good to see you again, Hal Jordan,” Abin Sur said. “Yes, even previous dead Lanterns of every core, and I, too, have fled.”

Hal’s ring threw up frantic readouts: ectoplasmic signatures, afterlife energy, cross-reality bleed.

“You… you’re both dead,” Hal said. “How are you—”

“The place we were is coming apart,” Martin said quietly. “Where we were supposed to stay. We’re running because staying means being erased. No heaven, no elseworld. Just… gone.”

On Oa, the Guardians gathered in a forgotten chamber, the central battery pulsing with sickly green overtones.

Ganthet lifted his small hands, projecting images to every Corps that would listen.

“The Infinite Realms,” he said, “are a convergence of the dead from a multitude of realities. Long ago, a being rose there who called himself Pariah Dark.”

The projection showed a towering armored ghost, crowned, bearing a blazing ring.

“The title of Ghost King is not passed by blood,” another Guardian said. “It is taken in combat. Power is both a test and a reward. The Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire amplify the King’s dominion, making all but the oldest Ancients bow.”

Images flashed: wars between realms of the dead, borders dissolving, the living plane buckling.

“Pariah Dark’s reign nearly tore the wall between living and dead to shreds,” Ganthet continued. “Attempts to destroy him almost shattered the underlying structure of reality.”

“So they didn’t,” said another Guardian bitterly. “They sealed him instead.”

The projection changed: a group of half-silhouetted beings, each embodying a concept older than any Corps—binding, balance, memory, finality. They forged the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep around Pariah, chaining him with the energies of every emotional spectrum.

“They took his crown and ring. They hid them. They buried the sarcophagus in a depth no one could reach. And with Heaven, Hell, and all powers that touched death, they made an accord: this prison would never be opened.”

The Guardians bowed their heads.

“Someone,” Ganthet said, “has broken that accord.”

Apocalypse and the Burden No One Wanted

Deep underground, in a chamber older than many civilizations, En Sabah Nur watched reality ripple across ancient devices.

His Horsemen shifted uneasily at the sight of spirits flooding through unseen cracks.

“What is it, my lord?” one asked.

Apocalypse’s eyes glowed cold blue.

“A throne, long-abandoned, has been reclaimed,” he said. “Not by choice, but by necessity.”

He tilted his head, listening to echoes only he could hear.

“The Infinite Realms are the confluence of every death,” he went on. “Every god, every demon, every cosmic farce of judgment empties its refuse into the same ocean. That ocean always had a monarch. A hand on the gate.”

He smiled humorlessly.

“Pariah Dark was that hand. A tyrant, yes. But a structural pillar as well. The Ancients locked him away because killing him would have toppled the building. So they left him as a cursed cornerstone. A necessary horror.”

His gaze sharpened.

“And someone, somewhere, has pulled at that cornerstone. Now the building shakes.”

Strange, Darkseid, Ra’s, and Constantine

In the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Eye of Agamotto snapped open on its own. Doctor Stephen Strange grabbed the table as a vision slammed into him. A group of ancient figures encircled a raging king of ghosts. They tore a crown and ring off him, wrapped him in chains of shared power, and forged a sarcophagus from the fear of every soul that had ever died. He saw them approach Heaven, Hell, cosmic abstracts, asking—not for help, but for commitment.

This will never be opened.

Strange tore free from the vision, panting.

“There was an accord,” he said aloud. “A pillar left in place because pulling it would bring the whole house down. And someone has just yanked on it.”

On Apokolips, Darkseid watched ghostly distortions ripple across his burning sky.

“The Ancients,” he mused. “So proud. So careful. They had the power to bind but not the will to rule.”

His fists tightened.

“They could not stomach destroying their cornerstone, so they buried him. And left a key.” He snorted. “Cowards.”

In the mountains of Nanda Parbat, Ra’s al Ghul studied a churning scrying pool.

Portals: opening. Ghosts: fleeing. Across countless worlds.

“Even with all their preparations, they were afraid,” he told the silent League of Assassins around him. “Fear breeds contingency—and they were no exception.”

He gestured.

The image shifted to runic gateways and ancient mechanisms igniting all over creation.

“They wove failsafes that would activate if the Tyrant ever woke,” he said. “Not to stop him—no, they had no faith in that—but to warn the living that the end had begun.”

In a dingy London flat, John Constantine finally punched through the magical static enough to get Zatanna on the line.

“John!” she shouted over a background chorus of wailing spirits. “The Veil is in shreds, the House of Mystery is just gone, and I have dead people flooding into every circle I’ve got—what's happening?”

John lit a cigarette with hands that wouldn’t stay quite steady.

“What's happening,” he said, “is that someone, somewhere, decided the one line we all agreed on was optional.”

“John—”

“The Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep,” he said flatly. “It’s open. And Pariah Dark is awake.”

Silence. Then a sharp inhale.

“That’s not possible,” Zatanna whispered. “Nobody’s that stupid. Every god, every demon, every sorcerer agreed—”

“And yet, here we are,” John cut in. He looked out at a London sky laced with thin green cracks. “We couldn’t kill him. So they locked him away and used him as a twisted bit of scaffolding to hold up the system. Now the scaffolding’s moving on its own.”

He dragged on the cigarette, ash trembling.

“And every ghost that can run,” he said softly, “is running.”

The multiverse did what it always did in the face of the incomprehensible.

It held its breath.

A Tyrant King, too necessary to destroy and too dangerous to wake, had shrugged off his chains. The glue holding together life, death, and everything between had started to crack.

Heaven and Hell, angels and demons, sorcerers and soldiers, telepaths and scientists—all felt it.

And none of them were wrong to be afraid.

Author’s note: I came up with this story prompt because I’ve been reading a lot of crossover fanfiction. Whenever the Ghost King gets mentioned, John Constantine obviously freaks out because that being is what holds all of reality and the multiverse together. Most of the time, though, fics kind of gloss over that.

So I started thinking: what can I do to make it feel more epic, to really give it that weight of, “Oh no, this is bad—this is really, really bad”? That’s how I ended up with this idea.

If there’s any fandom you think would fit, feel free to add your own words and scenes—just let me know. I’d love for this to be a kind of collab chain where we keep adding all the other fandoms we want to throw into the mix. We’re talking multiversal here, so the sky’s the limit.

[halfghostwriter]

Of course, there would also be a signal for if Pariah Dark was sealed once again. Unlikely, yes, but the ancients had managed it once before. They had to have held hope they could manage it again.

However, when the signal of safety spreads throughout the multiverse only a handful of the billions of previously retreating ghosts believed it. After all, in most worlds, it had barely been a day since the signal of his release.

The worlds whose doors lay closest to Pariah’s keep within the Infinite Realms felt the largest impact within the shortest amount of time. Large-scale natural disasters took place within mere moments before the signal of safety hit them. The furthest worlds saw the arrival of the dead over the course of a few days with little else. The only world closest to Pariah that didn’t experience disaster was the host world of Danny Phantom, as that was the eye of Pariah’s storm. And even then, nearby ghosts fled into it to escape the disasters in the adjacent worlds.

The signal of safety did not reassure the masses as it had been originally intended. After all, no one believed Pariah Dark could be sealed away so quickly. It had taken the Ancients a year of fighting to simply seal him away, and many of said Ancients had retreated alongside the dead. If Pariah Dark had truly been sealed once more, in such a short period of time, then something must have defeated him. Something far, far more powerful than the Ancients as they are now.

[ravensuperr]

Oh my GOD, yes – this is exactly what I’m talking about. This is the kind of lore-building I want to see more of, whether it’s in the comments or in reblogs. I really want this chain to keep going.

Because honestly? As a fanbase, I don’t think we treat Danny fighting the Ghost King as seriously as we should.

Fandom (rightfully) treats Dark Danny/Dan Phantom as a huge deal – he’s terrifying, he’s important, he’s iconic. But I feel like we don’t give Pariah Dark that same level of weight, even though canon literally tells us how bad he is.

In Reign Storm (I hope I’m remembering the title right), we’re flat-out told there is a Ghost King, and he was so dangerous that:

It took a group of Ancient, insanely powerful ghosts to band together.

They had to strip him of his crown and ring.

They forged the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

They set up a guardian to protect the Skeleton Key.

They didn’t just beat a powerful ghost. They had to restructure the rules of the afterlife to contain him.

And then Vlad opens the sarcophagus… and never really gets any comeuppance for it. We don’t even know if anyone in the Infinite Realms realizes it was Vlad who did it, aside from the Fright Knight. That’s wild.

On top of that, what Danny does in that episode is insanely brave when you think about the timeline. Canon never spells out exactly how many months it’s been since he got his powers, but it’s not long – maybe a few months, maybe close to a year if you’re being generous in fanon.

By ghost standards, that makes him basically a newborn:

Half-alive, half-dead, a weird anomaly.

No centuries of experience.

No ancient backing, no formal standing.

And he’s the one who steps up.

He’s the one who’s willing to face the Ghost King’s army. He’s the one who challenges Pariah directly. He’s the one who intends to put him back to sleep – and actually does it.

Yes, his rogues and other ghosts help. Yes, Sam and Tucker help. Yes, Vlad uses the key at the very end so the sarcophagus will seal again. But the person doing the heavy lifting in that fight – the one Pariah accepts a challenge from – is a fourteen-year-old kid who has barely been dead for any time at all.

And I feel like that doesn’t get talked about enough.

Look at who didn’t step up:

Skulker didn’t fight the Ghost King.

Ember didn’t fight the Ghost King.

Walker didn’t fight the Ghost King.

Nocturne, Undergrowth, Clockwork – none of the Ancients we know of came forward to challenge him again.

Every one of them ran or stayed back. Danny is the one who stands his ground and says, “I’ve got this.” And he’s 14.

That’s such a huge, selfless act that it should have massive ripple effects:

How his rogues look at him afterward.

How the Infinite Realms see him.

How Ancients and other high-tier ghosts talk about him.

Even if they “thank” him in their own weird ways, even if they never tell him the full implications (like, “hey, kid, you basically just did a Ghost King–level thing”), it should matter.

What Danny did was not normal. It was abnormal in the most important way – and that’s part of what makes him so special.

[deedevotee]

Some months later, when things are just starting to calm down, Danny is bantering with a ghost (one of his typical rogues, who is still scared because the baby (hc that he's had his powers between 6-9months) fought AND defeated He who shall not be named) when he lets it slip that Vlad opened the sarcophagus of forever sleep. (All the ghosts in the vicinity go eerily still and hone in on Danny, who's still ranting). He talks about how he read that the crown a ring granted power, and for those selfish reasons, and his typical greed, he opened it to get the crown and ring.

When Pariah stepped out, Vlad had the bright idea to hide it in the human realm, particularly, this city. Meaning that everyone here would have been killed, and the destruction of this universe, would have started from the destruction of their entire city. (Someone else is recording this, a human with the new Fenton Phones). After ranting, Danny turns to the ghost and tells them thanks for listening. He asks them to go home after safely having their fun and flies back home.

....

The thing about no media block, is that everyone is able to see his rant. They are able to hear him properly for the first time, ever. It doesn't take long for people to start converging on his universe, because people in his Universe want Vlad. People in the IR want Vlad. Higher beings from his universe and the multiverse want Vlad. He has committed the greatest Taboo ever. (At this point, slightly following Canon, but Canon is a concept not truth¿ Thus he fought Dan, then fought Pariah Dark, and is about to send Vlad off to space).

About a week later from his rant, Phantom is o patrol when he sees a gaggle of spandex cloaked and weirdly dressed people. He's going to investigate when they come to him themselves.

Danny: who are you people and what are you doing here?

...

Pick it up from here. I'm working on 2 hours kf sleep and trying to go back to bed.

[ravensuperr]

Oh my God, this is so good. Like, this is really, really good, man. I think you might be changing my idea of what I wanted Part 2 to be like, particularly. But oh my God, this is such a good idea, oh my God.

I do wish I could see more reblogs—this isn’t against you—but I’d love to see more reblogs of ideas like: what if, outside of the DC Universe and outside the Marvel Universe, other fandoms as well tie into their little remarks? Because Vlad did something majorly stupid, and yes, Danny cleaned up his mess, but there should be a lot more people wanting Vlad’s head. And I’m pretty sure most of those people who want Vlad are going to fight each other, and they’re probably going to make a tournament out of it, like, “Okay, who has the right to fight for or have Vlad’s head?”

Is it too morbid? I don’t know, but it was an idea that popped into my head, so yeah.

And oh my God, I hope you get to go to sleep, because you definitely 100% need your beauty sleep

[ravensuperr]

The One Rule We Never Broke

The first sign was not a sound, but a silence.

Across countless planes—heavens, hells, afterlives, in-between places—the constant background hum of existence stuttered. For a heartbeat, the machinery of judgment, reincarnation, punishment, and rest paused.

And then the screaming began.

Heaven, Hell, and the One Rule

In one Hell, the screaming of the damned was as normal as fire and brimstone.

It stopped.

Lucifer Morningstar froze with a glass of hellfire halfway to his lips. Around him, the Seven Sins went rigid, their bickering dying all at once. Their attention turned—not toward any rebellion, not toward Heaven—but downward, toward something deeper than their own Pit.

Above, in the Silver City, angelic choirs fractured mid-hymn. Wings stilled. Swords half-drawn, they looked outward, past the realm of pure light, into the far reaches where even angels rarely gazed.

A single, unified dread rippled through beings older than mortal language:

No. Not again.

They remembered the last time something this old moved. They remembered the cost of putting it back to sleep.

They remembered the one rule they had not broken.

The Infinite Realms Break Open

In the Infinite Realms, there was no single sky, no single ground. It was layers of afterlives and memory, rivers of ectoplasm carrying the echoes of every death in every world.

Deep in a dead current at the bottom of it all hung the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

Its chains were made of concepts: slumber, denial, containment. Its wards were written in languages from universes that never reached stars. Around it floated seals set by beings so old that gods had learned from their mistakes.

No one was supposed to reach it.

No one was supposed to touch it.

The skeleton key slid into a lock that was never meant to turn.

The sarcophagus groaned as if the whole structure of death itself resented the motion. One by one, the conceptual chains snapped, their breaking echoing across thousands of ghost realms.

Inside, something vast and furious opened its eyes.

The first flex of Pariah Dark’s power was not a roar but a pressure wave. Ghost cities burst like soap bubbles. Old battlefields crumbled. Domains that had persisted for entire cycles of creation shattered under the sheer wake-up stretch of a king who had slept too long.

He rose.

The Infinite Realms shook.

Ghosts dropped everything and ran.

“Run! For your lives!” a woman’s voice screamed, amplified by terror and the currents of the Realm. Her warning rode along every ectoplasmic stream, bleeding into every psychic fault line it could find. “Run to any dimension you can reach—just run! He’s awake— If you don’t run, you’ll die permanently!”

The dead had always believed themselves past the worst. Now, they are refugees.

Watchtower – J’onn J’onzz

On the Watchtower, J’onn J’onzz sat in calm meditation, his awareness gently brushing the minds of Earth below.

Then the calm became a storm.

A tidal wave of terror slammed into his mind—billions of voices, not human, not living, shrieking in every language and none. He staggered, catching himself on a medical console.

Under the screaming, one voice cut clear as a knife.

Run for your lives. Run to any dimension you can reach—just run! He will kill, torture, pillage, and enslave you if you do not escape!

“Who are you?” J’onn sent back, straining to hold his mental footing. “Who is ‘he’?”

He didn’t get words.

He got an image:

A massive sarcophagus, chains snapping.

A Ghost wearing heavy armor, crowned in green fire, arises from his prison. A name surfaced from the depths of collective fear like a corpse out of dark water:

Pariah Dark.

J’onn’s eyes snapped open.

He slammed his hand onto the comms panel. “All systems,” he said, voice iron-hard despite the shaking in his mind. “Prepare for catastrophic psychic spillover. The afterlife is in collapse.”

Xavier’s School

At Xavier’s School, telepaths fell like puppets with cut strings.

Jean Grey hit the floor, clutching her head. Emma Frost cursed as diamond skin spider-webbed with hairline fractures from raw psychic impact. Charles Xavier’s chair rolled back violently as his mind was dragged toward an ocean of howling dead.

They felt people running.

They felt whole populations tearing themselves free of resting places, graves, planes of peace or torment, all surging toward any anchor they could find.

In Jean’s mind, something older than the universe recoiled.

Host, the Phoenix whispered, and for once, even it sounded small. Let me in. Fully. I am not enough as I am. I may not be enough even then—but without me, you will be ash in his shadow.

“His?” Jean choked, gasping. “Whose?”

Images blasted through her: A group of powerful ancient ghosts, incomprehensible silhouettes surrounding. These ancient ghosts combine their powers to defeat Pariah. He falls to the ground, seemingly defeated. One ghost takes away the Ring of Rage, another takes the Crown of Fire, depriving Pariah of most of his power. The Ghost King, Phoenix breathed. Pariah Dark. He was locked away because killing him would have broken too much. The afterlives themselves use him as a load-bearing horror. He was a danger and a necessity. And now his prison has been opened.

The dead were not merely running. They were abandoning a support beam of reality.

Peter Parker’s Migraine and the First Ghosts

At the Daily Bugle, Peter Parker’s world narrowed to amber and pain.

His Spider-Sense wasn’t just buzzing. It was a wailing siren wired directly into his skull, screaming that the foundations of everything were coming undone.

He grabbed his head with both hands.

“Parker!” J. Jonah Jameson’s voice blasted across the office. “You having a stroke on my time? What’s wrong with you, kid? You look like you swallowed a ghost.”

“Something’s… wrong,” Peter managed through clenched teeth. “Something really wrong. I don’t know how to explain it, but—”

The office door opened.

A familiar man in an old, worn coat stepped in, blinking at the lights. His hair was thinner, his face more lined, but Peter knew him.

He had known him his whole life.

“Peter,” the man said softly. “It’s good to see you again, son. God, I’ve missed you.” His eyes swept the office, filling with sorrow. “I just wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.”

Peter’s hands fell away from his head.

“Uncle Ben?” he whispered.

Ben’s smile was sad and gentle. “Yeah, kiddo.” He reached out and put a steady hand on Peter’s shoulder. The touch was solid. Warm. Impossible.

“All of us,” he said quietly, “where we were—it’s not safe. Feels like the floor dropped out from under us. So we’re running. Anywhere we can.”

“Running from what?” Peter asked, but he already knew the answer wasn’t going to be simple.

Ben’s eyes darkened. “Not what from whom,” he corrected.

Around them, more impossible figures bled through thin places in the air. Co-workers gasped and shouted as dead relatives, long-buried lovers, and lost friends appeared, eyes wide with fear.

“What—Mom?!” a receptionist sobbed.

Jameson took one look at the growing chaos, went pale for a split second, then barked, “Parker, get pictures!”

Peter didn’t move this wasn’t a story; it was an evacuation.

Wayne Enterprises

On the top floor of Wayne Enterprises, the temperature dropped like a stone.

Bruce Wayne was halfway through a sentence about quarterly earnings when he saw his breath fog. Tim Drake paused in his quiet correction of the numbers, looking up as the lights dimmed.

Damian Wayne, in an immaculate suit that did nothing to hide his impatience, sat near the window, watching everything and caring about nothing—until the world shifted.

They appeared near the glass.

Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Martha’s pearls caught the light. Thomas stood straight, eyes sweeping the office, Gotham’s skyline, and finally settling on his son.

“Bruce,” Martha whispered.

Bruce’s carefully cultivated idiot-billionaire mask shattered. The room narrowed down to her face, Thomas’s shoulders, the warmth in their eyes.

Tim’s attention jerked toward the doorway.

“Mom?” he croaked.

Jack and Janet Drake stood there, as solid and confused as the day they died. Jack lifted a trembling hand. “Timmy?”

All around the room, executives stared as their own dead appeared—spouses, children, parents, siblings—each with the same wild mixture of fear and relief.

Damian’s gaze darted between them all. Logic slammed into disbelief. His brain did what it always did: looked for the trap.

“This is a hallucination,” he snapped, standing quickly. “Some mass gas exposure. Fear Toxin. Shared delusion. Crane is experimenting, or some other rogue.” He glared up at the vents. “Everyone, breathe shallowly. We need to evacuate.”

“This is not Fear Gas, Damian.”

The voice was firm, calm, used to being obeyed.

Thomas Wayne stepped forward, his attention moving from Bruce to Damian, weighing, assessing, and finally softening. He said quietly. “My grandson.”

Damian went rigid. “You… know me,” he said, and for a moment the boy in him pushed past the soldier.

“Of course,” Thomas replied. “We’ve watched, as much as we could. And we’re here, all of us, because we are running.”

“Running from what?” Bruce forced out, voice hoarse.

Martha’s eyes shimmered. “From where we were,” she said softly. “From a king who woke when he should have slept forever. From a tyrant whose stirrings are tearing apart the place between life and death.”

Thomas looked around the conference room at the dozens of newly arrived dead, all wearing the same brittle terror.

“If we stayed,” he said, “we would have died properly. No afterlife. No second chances. Nothing.”

Damian swallowed.

“Ah....permanent death,” he repeated.

Thomas met his gaze and nodded once. “Yes.”

The boy who had faced assassins and demons felt, for a moment, very, very small.

The Fortress of Solitude: Frostbite’s Warning

In the arctic calm of the Fortress of Solitude, Kryptonian technology hummed with quiet purpose. Superman hovered a few inches above the crystal floor, reviewing odd readings from the outer edges of reality.

The readings spiked.

The Fortress didn’t shake so much as shiver. The air crackled with a strange, cold energy. A jagged tear opened in the center of the main hall, swirling with green-blue light.

Figures stumbled through.

They were tall and furred, white as the snow outside, walking upright with a warrior’s bearing. Not myths—people. Yeti-like ghosts, armor clinking, weapons sheathed, faces drawn tight with fear. At their head strode a massive figure with a prosthetic arm of intricately carved ice and glowing teal veins.

Superman landed in front of them, palms open. “You’re safe,” he said, voice as steady as he could make it. “My name is Superman. You’re in the Fortress of Solitude. What are you fleeing from? Apokolips? A trans-dimensional invader?”

The leader bowed his head slightly.

“Kal-El of Krypton,” he said. “I am Frostbite, chief of the Far Frozen.” He glanced back at his people—children clutching crystalline artifacts, elders huddled together. “We apologize for intruding. But we had no choice.”

“Why?” Superman asked. “What’s happening?”

Frostbite drew in a slow, steadying breath.

“We come from The Infinite Realms,” he said. “Your people might call them ‘the afterlife.’ But they are more than one place—they are the connective tissue. The glue that holds all your worlds’ deaths in balance. Every hell, every heaven, every world, every power, every timeline —all flow into it.”

He looked Superman in the eyes.

“And the Tyrant of that place has awakened from his Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.”

Superman felt the words land like a weight.

“And the name of this Tyrant,” he repeated carefully.

“His name is Pariah Dark,” Frostbite said, each syllable heavy. “The Ghost King. Long ago, he was sealed by the Ancients, stripped of his ring and crown, locked away not because they could kill him, because killing him would break the multiverses.”

Frostbite gestured helplessly.

“Now he stirs. With the first flex of his power, realms crumble. His ancient armies answer his call. Our homes are destroyed. If we stay, we will not simply die—we will cease.”

Superman’s jaw set.

“You have sanctuary,” he said immediately. “All of you. I’ll contact the Justice League. If the Infinite Realms are the glue holding everything together, this concerns all of us.”

Frostbite bowed, relief flickering over his features—but not hope.

“Then may your sun watch over you, Kal-El,” he said. “Because if the Tyrant cannot be put back to sleep…”

He glanced toward the flickering portal, where more ghosts desperately pushed through.

“This may be truly the end of reality as we know it.”

Diana, Pandora, and the Fallen Amazons

In Gateway City, the museum was quiet but for the murmur of tourists.

Diana Prince adjusted a placard beneath a piece of Greek pottery, smiling faintly at a child’s awe. Then the air thickened.

It pressed down on her shoulders like the heaviest armor she had ever worn. Not divine presence. Older. Sadder. The weight of stories remembered and stories deliberately forgotten.

She turned.

A woman stood among the displays.

Her beauty was ancient and unearthly, framed by simple garments that failed to blunt the sheer myth of her. Sorrow pooled in her eyes like an ocean.

“Pandora,” Diana said.

Behind Pandora, the gallery was filled with women.

Amazon warriors in archaic armor, shields, and spears at the ready, faces taut with a mix of pride and bone-deep fear. Sister Diana had mourned. Names etched into her heart and the stones of Themyscira. A curator gasped and dropped a box of pamphlets. Another simply fainted.

“Diana,” Pandora said, inclining her head.

Diana’s hand twitched toward where her lasso would hang in uniform. She let it fall.

“Pandora. My sisters,” she said. “How are you here? What has happened?”

“We are fleeing,” Pandora answered simply. “The realm that once held us in death is no longer safe. The Tyrant King has awoken from his Slumber. The one your mother spoke of only in warnings.”

Diana’s mouth went dry.

“Pariah Dark,” she murmured.

As a child, she had heard the old stories: of a king who had tried to unmake the boundary between living and dead, to rule both. Of a coalition of beings older than gods who had bound him when they could not kill him.

“He was sealed by the Ancients,” Diana said. “Locked away. His crown and ring taken. His sarcophagus hidden where none could reach it.”

“The seal is broken,” Pandora said. “The Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep has been opened. Whether by arrogance or ignorance, the result is the same.”

One fallen Amazon stepped forward, saluting Diana with a fist to her chest. “The Infinite Realms is cracking,” she said. “Spirits from a thousand cultures are abandoning their rest. If the glue that binds the afterlives fails, all heavens, all hells, all reincarnation cycles may fall with it.”

Diana straightened, resolve hardening like tempered steel.

“Then we will fight,” she said. “For the living and the dead.”

Pandora looked at her with weary compassion.

“This is not a war that can be won by swords alone, Diana,” she said quietly. “This is the terror of a Tyrant who could not be killed… only stored.”

Coast City, Oa, and the Lore of the Ghost King

Over Coast City, Hal Jordan’s ring screamed in a tone he had never heard.

WARNING: REALITY STABILITY COMPROMISED. SOURCE: INFINITE REALMS. SEVERITY: EXISTENTIAL.

He rocketed toward the anomaly blazing across his ring’s display.

A vortex churned in the upper atmosphere, green-black-white energy writhing like a wound.

Two figures stepped out onto nothing.

Hal’s heart stopped.

“Hal,” said Martin Jordan, wearing his old bomber jacket, that familiar proud smile sitting uneasy on a face touched by fear.

“Dad?” Hal whispered.

Beside Martin stood a purple-skinned alien in a Green Lantern uniform.

Hal knew the face of the alien whose ring was chosen, Hal Abin Sur.

“It is good to see you again, Hal Jordan,” Abin Sur said. “Yes, even previous dead Lanterns of every core, and I, too, have fled.”

Hal’s ring threw up frantic readouts: ectoplasmic signatures, afterlife energy, cross-reality bleed.

“You… you’re both dead,” Hal said. “How are you—”

“The place we were is coming apart,” Martin said quietly. “Where we were supposed to stay. We’re running because staying means being erased. No heaven, no elseworld. Just… gone.”

On Oa, the Guardians gathered in a forgotten chamber, the central battery pulsing with sickly green overtones.

Ganthet lifted his small hands, projecting images to every Corps that would listen.

“The Infinite Realms,” he said, “are a convergence of the dead from a multitude of realities. Long ago, a being rose there who called himself Pariah Dark.”

The projection showed a towering armored ghost, crowned, bearing a blazing ring.

“The title of Ghost King is not passed by blood,” another Guardian said. “It is taken in combat. Power is both a test and a reward. The Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire amplify the King’s dominion, making all but the oldest Ancients bow.”

Images flashed: wars between realms of the dead, borders dissolving, the living plane buckling.

“Pariah Dark’s reign nearly tore the wall between living and dead to shreds,” Ganthet continued. “Attempts to destroy him almost shattered the underlying structure of reality.”

“So they didn’t,” said another Guardian bitterly. “They sealed him instead.”

The projection changed: a group of half-silhouetted beings, each embodying a concept older than any Corps—binding, balance, memory, finality. They forged the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep around Pariah, chaining him with the energies of every emotional spectrum.

“They took his crown and ring. They hid them. They buried the sarcophagus in a depth no one could reach. And with Heaven, Hell, and all powers that touched death, they made an accord: this prison would never be opened.”

The Guardians bowed their heads.

“Someone,” Ganthet said, “has broken that accord.”

Apocalypse and the Burden No One Wanted

Deep underground, in a chamber older than many civilizations, En Sabah Nur watched reality ripple across ancient devices.

His Horsemen shifted uneasily at the sight of spirits flooding through unseen cracks.

“What is it, my lord?” one asked.

Apocalypse’s eyes glowed cold blue.

“A throne, long-abandoned, has been reclaimed,” he said. “Not by choice, but by necessity.”

He tilted his head, listening to echoes only he could hear.

“The Infinite Realms are the confluence of every death,” he went on. “Every god, every demon, every cosmic farce of judgment empties its refuse into the same ocean. That ocean always had a monarch. A hand on the gate.”

He smiled humorlessly.

“Pariah Dark was that hand. A tyrant, yes. But a structural pillar as well. The Ancients locked him away because killing him would have toppled the building. So they left him as a cursed cornerstone. A necessary horror.”

His gaze sharpened.

“And someone, somewhere, has pulled at that cornerstone. Now the building shakes.”

Strange, Darkseid, Ra’s, and Constantine

In the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Eye of Agamotto snapped open on its own. Doctor Stephen Strange grabbed the table as a vision slammed into him. A group of ancient figures encircled a raging king of ghosts. They tore a crown and ring off him, wrapped him in chains of shared power, and forged a sarcophagus from the fear of every soul that had ever died. He saw them approach Heaven, Hell, cosmic abstracts, asking—not for help, but for commitment.

This will never be opened.

Strange tore free from the vision, panting.

“There was an accord,” he said aloud. “A pillar left in place because pulling it would bring the whole house down. And someone has just yanked on it.”

On Apokolips, Darkseid watched ghostly distortions ripple across his burning sky.

“The Ancients,” he mused. “So proud. So careful. They had the power to bind but not the will to rule.”

His fists tightened.

“They could not stomach destroying their cornerstone, so they buried him. And left a key.” He snorted. “Cowards.”

In the mountains of Nanda Parbat, Ra’s al Ghul studied a churning scrying pool.

Portals: opening. Ghosts: fleeing. Across countless worlds.

“Even with all their preparations, they were afraid,” he told the silent League of Assassins around him. “Fear breeds contingency—and they were no exception.”

He gestured.

The image shifted to runic gateways and ancient mechanisms igniting all over creation.

“They wove failsafes that would activate if the Tyrant ever woke,” he said. “Not to stop him—no, they had no faith in that—but to warn the living that the end had begun.”

In a dingy London flat, John Constantine finally punched through the magical static enough to get Zatanna on the line.

“John!” she shouted over a background chorus of wailing spirits. “The Veil is in shreds, the House of Mystery is just gone, and I have dead people flooding into every circle I’ve got—what's happening?”

John lit a cigarette with hands that wouldn’t stay quite steady.

“What's happening,” he said, “is that someone, somewhere, decided the one line we all agreed on was optional.”

“John—”

“The Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep,” he said flatly. “It’s open. And Pariah Dark is awake.”

Silence. Then a sharp inhale.

“That’s not possible,” Zatanna whispered. “Nobody’s that stupid. Every god, every demon, every sorcerer agreed—”

“And yet, here we are,” John cut in. He looked out at a London sky laced with thin green cracks. “We couldn’t kill him. So they locked him away and used him as a twisted bit of scaffolding to hold up the system. Now the scaffolding’s moving on its own.”

He dragged on the cigarette, ash trembling.

“And every ghost that can run,” he said softly, “is running.”

The multiverse did what it always did in the face of the incomprehensible.

It held its breath.

A Tyrant King, too necessary to destroy and too dangerous to wake, had shrugged off his chains. The glue holding together life, death, and everything between had started to crack.

Heaven and Hell, angels and demons, sorcerers and soldiers, telepaths and scientists—all felt it.

And none of them were wrong to be afraid.

Author’s note: I came up with this story prompt because I’ve been reading a lot of crossover fanfiction. Whenever the Ghost King gets mentioned, John Constantine obviously freaks out because that being is what holds all of reality and the multiverse together. Most of the time, though, fics kind of gloss over that.

So I started thinking: what can I do to make it feel more epic, to really give it that weight of, “Oh no, this is bad—this is really, really bad”? That’s how I ended up with this idea.

If there’s any fandom you think would fit, feel free to add your own words and scenes—just let me know. I’d love for this to be a kind of collab chain where we keep adding all the other fandoms we want to throw into the mix. We’re talking multiversal here, so the sky’s the limit.

[halfghostwriter]

Of course, there would also be a signal for if Pariah Dark was sealed once again. Unlikely, yes, but the ancients had managed it once before. They had to have held hope they could manage it again.

However, when the signal of safety spreads throughout the multiverse only a handful of the billions of previously retreating ghosts believed it. After all, in most worlds, it had barely been a day since the signal of his release.

The worlds whose doors lay closest to Pariah’s keep within the Infinite Realms felt the largest impact within the shortest amount of time. Large-scale natural disasters took place within mere moments before the signal of safety hit them. The furthest worlds saw the arrival of the dead over the course of a few days with little else. The only world closest to Pariah that didn’t experience disaster was the host world of Danny Phantom, as that was the eye of Pariah’s storm. And even then, nearby ghosts fled into it to escape the disasters in the adjacent worlds.

The signal of safety did not reassure the masses as it had been originally intended. After all, no one believed Pariah Dark could be sealed away so quickly. It had taken the Ancients a year of fighting to simply seal him away, and many of said Ancients had retreated alongside the dead. If Pariah Dark had truly been sealed once more, in such a short period of time, then something must have defeated him. Something far, far more powerful than the Ancients as they are now.

[ravensuperr]

Oh my GOD, yes – this is exactly what I’m talking about. This is the kind of lore-building I want to see more of, whether it’s in the comments or in reblogs. I really want this chain to keep going.

Because honestly? As a fanbase, I don’t think we treat Danny fighting the Ghost King as seriously as we should.

Fandom (rightfully) treats Dark Danny/Dan Phantom as a huge deal – he’s terrifying, he’s important, he’s iconic. But I feel like we don’t give Pariah Dark that same level of weight, even though canon literally tells us how bad he is.

In Reign Storm (I hope I’m remembering the title right), we’re flat-out told there is a Ghost King, and he was so dangerous that:

It took a group of Ancient, insanely powerful ghosts to band together.

They had to strip him of his crown and ring.

They forged the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

They set up a guardian to protect the Skeleton Key.

They didn’t just beat a powerful ghost. They had to restructure the rules of the afterlife to contain him.

And then Vlad opens the sarcophagus… and never really gets any comeuppance for it. We don’t even know if anyone in the Infinite Realms realizes it was Vlad who did it, aside from the Fright Knight. That’s wild.

On top of that, what Danny does in that episode is insanely brave when you think about the timeline. Canon never spells out exactly how many months it’s been since he got his powers, but it’s not long – maybe a few months, maybe close to a year if you’re being generous in fanon.

By ghost standards, that makes him basically a newborn:

Half-alive, half-dead, a weird anomaly.

No centuries of experience.

No ancient backing, no formal standing.

And he’s the one who steps up.

He’s the one who’s willing to face the Ghost King’s army. He’s the one who challenges Pariah directly. He’s the one who intends to put him back to sleep – and actually does it.

Yes, his rogues and other ghosts help. Yes, Sam and Tucker help. Yes, Vlad uses the key at the very end so the sarcophagus will seal again. But the person doing the heavy lifting in that fight – the one Pariah accepts a challenge from – is a fourteen-year-old kid who has barely been dead for any time at all.

And I feel like that doesn’t get talked about enough.

Look at who didn’t step up:

Skulker didn’t fight the Ghost King.

Ember didn’t fight the Ghost King.

Walker didn’t fight the Ghost King.

Nocturne, Undergrowth, Clockwork – none of the Ancients we know of came forward to challenge him again.

Every one of them ran or stayed back. Danny is the one who stands his ground and says, “I’ve got this.” And he’s 14.

That’s such a huge, selfless act that it should have massive ripple effects:

How his rogues look at him afterward.

How the Infinite Realms see him.

How Ancients and other high-tier ghosts talk about him.

Even if they “thank” him in their own weird ways, even if they never tell him the full implications (like, “hey, kid, you basically just did a Ghost King–level thing”), it should matter.

What Danny did was not normal. It was abnormal in the most important way – and that’s part of what makes him so special.

[ravensuperr]

The One Rule We Never Broke

The first sign was not a sound, but a silence.

Across countless planes—heavens, hells, afterlives, in-between places—the constant background hum of existence stuttered. For a heartbeat, the machinery of judgment, reincarnation, punishment, and rest paused.

And then the screaming began.

Heaven, Hell, and the One Rule

In one Hell, the screaming of the damned was as normal as fire and brimstone.

It stopped.

Lucifer Morningstar froze with a glass of hellfire halfway to his lips. Around him, the Seven Sins went rigid, their bickering dying all at once. Their attention turned—not toward any rebellion, not toward Heaven—but downward, toward something deeper than their own Pit.

Above, in the Silver City, angelic choirs fractured mid-hymn. Wings stilled. Swords half-drawn, they looked outward, past the realm of pure light, into the far reaches where even angels rarely gazed.

A single, unified dread rippled through beings older than mortal language:

No. Not again.

They remembered the last time something this old moved. They remembered the cost of putting it back to sleep.

They remembered the one rule they had not broken.

The Infinite Realms Break Open

In the Infinite Realms, there was no single sky, no single ground. It was layers of afterlives and memory, rivers of ectoplasm carrying the echoes of every death in every world.

Deep in a dead current at the bottom of it all hung the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.

Its chains were made of concepts: slumber, denial, containment. Its wards were written in languages from universes that never reached stars. Around it floated seals set by beings so old that gods had learned from their mistakes.

No one was supposed to reach it.

No one was supposed to touch it.

The skeleton key slid into a lock that was never meant to turn.

The sarcophagus groaned as if the whole structure of death itself resented the motion. One by one, the conceptual chains snapped, their breaking echoing across thousands of ghost realms.

Inside, something vast and furious opened its eyes.

The first flex of Pariah Dark’s power was not a roar but a pressure wave. Ghost cities burst like soap bubbles. Old battlefields crumbled. Domains that had persisted for entire cycles of creation shattered under the sheer wake-up stretch of a king who had slept too long.

He rose.

The Infinite Realms shook.

Ghosts dropped everything and ran.

“Run! For your lives!” a woman’s voice screamed, amplified by terror and the currents of the Realm. Her warning rode along every ectoplasmic stream, bleeding into every psychic fault line it could find. “Run to any dimension you can reach—just run! He’s awake— If you don’t run, you’ll die permanently!”

The dead had always believed themselves past the worst. Now, they are refugees.

Watchtower – J’onn J’onzz

On the Watchtower, J’onn J’onzz sat in calm meditation, his awareness gently brushing the minds of Earth below.

Then the calm became a storm.

A tidal wave of terror slammed into his mind—billions of voices, not human, not living, shrieking in every language and none. He staggered, catching himself on a medical console.

Under the screaming, one voice cut clear as a knife.

Run for your lives. Run to any dimension you can reach—just run! He will kill, torture, pillage, and enslave you if you do not escape!

“Who are you?” J’onn sent back, straining to hold his mental footing. “Who is ‘he’?”

He didn’t get words.

He got an image:

A massive sarcophagus, chains snapping.

A Ghost wearing heavy armor, crowned in green fire, arises from his prison. A name surfaced from the depths of collective fear like a corpse out of dark water:

Pariah Dark.

J’onn’s eyes snapped open.

He slammed his hand onto the comms panel. “All systems,” he said, voice iron-hard despite the shaking in his mind. “Prepare for catastrophic psychic spillover. The afterlife is in collapse.”

Xavier’s School

At Xavier’s School, telepaths fell like puppets with cut strings.

Jean Grey hit the floor, clutching her head. Emma Frost cursed as diamond skin spider-webbed with hairline fractures from raw psychic impact. Charles Xavier’s chair rolled back violently as his mind was dragged toward an ocean of howling dead.

They felt people running.

They felt whole populations tearing themselves free of resting places, graves, planes of peace or torment, all surging toward any anchor they could find.

In Jean’s mind, something older than the universe recoiled.

Host, the Phoenix whispered, and for once, even it sounded small. Let me in. Fully. I am not enough as I am. I may not be enough even then—but without me, you will be ash in his shadow.

“His?” Jean choked, gasping. “Whose?”

Images blasted through her: A group of powerful ancient ghosts, incomprehensible silhouettes surrounding. These ancient ghosts combine their powers to defeat Pariah. He falls to the ground, seemingly defeated. One ghost takes away the Ring of Rage, another takes the Crown of Fire, depriving Pariah of most of his power. The Ghost King, Phoenix breathed. Pariah Dark. He was locked away because killing him would have broken too much. The afterlives themselves use him as a load-bearing horror. He was a danger and a necessity. And now his prison has been opened.

The dead were not merely running. They were abandoning a support beam of reality.

Peter Parker’s Migraine and the First Ghosts

At the Daily Bugle, Peter Parker’s world narrowed to amber and pain.

His Spider-Sense wasn’t just buzzing. It was a wailing siren wired directly into his skull, screaming that the foundations of everything were coming undone.

He grabbed his head with both hands.

“Parker!” J. Jonah Jameson’s voice blasted across the office. “You having a stroke on my time? What’s wrong with you, kid? You look like you swallowed a ghost.”

“Something’s… wrong,” Peter managed through clenched teeth. “Something really wrong. I don’t know how to explain it, but—”

The office door opened.

A familiar man in an old, worn coat stepped in, blinking at the lights. His hair was thinner, his face more lined, but Peter knew him.

He had known him his whole life.

“Peter,” the man said softly. “It’s good to see you again, son. God, I’ve missed you.” His eyes swept the office, filling with sorrow. “I just wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.”

Peter’s hands fell away from his head.

“Uncle Ben?” he whispered.

Ben’s smile was sad and gentle. “Yeah, kiddo.” He reached out and put a steady hand on Peter’s shoulder. The touch was solid. Warm. Impossible.

“All of us,” he said quietly, “where we were—it’s not safe. Feels like the floor dropped out from under us. So we’re running. Anywhere we can.”

“Running from what?” Peter asked, but he already knew the answer wasn’t going to be simple.

Ben’s eyes darkened. “Not what from whom,” he corrected.

Around them, more impossible figures bled through thin places in the air. Co-workers gasped and shouted as dead relatives, long-buried lovers, and lost friends appeared, eyes wide with fear.

“What—Mom?!” a receptionist sobbed.

Jameson took one look at the growing chaos, went pale for a split second, then barked, “Parker, get pictures!”

Peter didn’t move this wasn’t a story; it was an evacuation.

Wayne Enterprises

On the top floor of Wayne Enterprises, the temperature dropped like a stone.

Bruce Wayne was halfway through a sentence about quarterly earnings when he saw his breath fog. Tim Drake paused in his quiet correction of the numbers, looking up as the lights dimmed.

Damian Wayne, in an immaculate suit that did nothing to hide his impatience, sat near the window, watching everything and caring about nothing—until the world shifted.

They appeared near the glass.

Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Martha’s pearls caught the light. Thomas stood straight, eyes sweeping the office, Gotham’s skyline, and finally settling on his son.

“Bruce,” Martha whispered.

Bruce’s carefully cultivated idiot-billionaire mask shattered. The room narrowed down to her face, Thomas’s shoulders, the warmth in their eyes.

Tim’s attention jerked toward the doorway.

“Mom?” he croaked.

Jack and Janet Drake stood there, as solid and confused as the day they died. Jack lifted a trembling hand. “Timmy?”

All around the room, executives stared as their own dead appeared—spouses, children, parents, siblings—each with the same wild mixture of fear and relief.

Damian’s gaze darted between them all. Logic slammed into disbelief. His brain did what it always did: looked for the trap.

“This is a hallucination,” he snapped, standing quickly. “Some mass gas exposure. Fear Toxin. Shared delusion. Crane is experimenting, or some other rogue.” He glared up at the vents. “Everyone, breathe shallowly. We need to evacuate.”

“This is not Fear Gas, Damian.”

The voice was firm, calm, used to being obeyed.

Thomas Wayne stepped forward, his attention moving from Bruce to Damian, weighing, assessing, and finally softening. He said quietly. “My grandson.”

Damian went rigid. “You… know me,” he said, and for a moment the boy in him pushed past the soldier.

“Of course,” Thomas replied. “We’ve watched, as much as we could. And we’re here, all of us, because we are running.”

“Running from what?” Bruce forced out, voice hoarse.

Martha’s eyes shimmered. “From where we were,” she said softly. “From a king who woke when he should have slept forever. From a tyrant whose stirrings are tearing apart the place between life and death.”

Thomas looked around the conference room at the dozens of newly arrived dead, all wearing the same brittle terror.

“If we stayed,” he said, “we would have died properly. No afterlife. No second chances. Nothing.”

Damian swallowed.

“Ah....permanent death,” he repeated.

Thomas met his gaze and nodded once. “Yes.”

The boy who had faced assassins and demons felt, for a moment, very, very small.

The Fortress of Solitude: Frostbite’s Warning

In the arctic calm of the Fortress of Solitude, Kryptonian technology hummed with quiet purpose. Superman hovered a few inches above the crystal floor, reviewing odd readings from the outer edges of reality.

The readings spiked.

The Fortress didn’t shake so much as shiver. The air crackled with a strange, cold energy. A jagged tear opened in the center of the main hall, swirling with green-blue light.

Figures stumbled through.

They were tall and furred, white as the snow outside, walking upright with a warrior’s bearing. Not myths—people. Yeti-like ghosts, armor clinking, weapons sheathed, faces drawn tight with fear. At their head strode a massive figure with a prosthetic arm of intricately carved ice and glowing teal veins.

Superman landed in front of them, palms open. “You’re safe,” he said, voice as steady as he could make it. “My name is Superman. You’re in the Fortress of Solitude. What are you fleeing from? Apokolips? A trans-dimensional invader?”

The leader bowed his head slightly.

“Kal-El of Krypton,” he said. “I am Frostbite, chief of the Far Frozen.” He glanced back at his people—children clutching crystalline artifacts, elders huddled together. “We apologize for intruding. But we had no choice.”

“Why?” Superman asked. “What’s happening?”

Frostbite drew in a slow, steadying breath.

“We come from The Infinite Realms,” he said. “Your people might call them ‘the afterlife.’ But they are more than one place—they are the connective tissue. The glue that holds all your worlds’ deaths in balance. Every hell, every heaven, every world, every power, every timeline —all flow into it.”

He looked Superman in the eyes.

“And the Tyrant of that place has awakened from his Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.”

Superman felt the words land like a weight.

“And the name of this Tyrant,” he repeated carefully.

“His name is Pariah Dark,” Frostbite said, each syllable heavy. “The Ghost King. Long ago, he was sealed by the Ancients, stripped of his ring and crown, locked away not because they could kill him, because killing him would break the multiverses.”

Frostbite gestured helplessly.

“Now he stirs. With the first flex of his power, realms crumble. His ancient armies answer his call. Our homes are destroyed. If we stay, we will not simply die—we will cease.”

Superman’s jaw set.

“You have sanctuary,” he said immediately. “All of you. I’ll contact the Justice League. If the Infinite Realms are the glue holding everything together, this concerns all of us.”

Frostbite bowed, relief flickering over his features—but not hope.

“Then may your sun watch over you, Kal-El,” he said. “Because if the Tyrant cannot be put back to sleep…”

He glanced toward the flickering portal, where more ghosts desperately pushed through.

“This may be truly the end of reality as we know it.”

Diana, Pandora, and the Fallen Amazons

In Gateway City, the museum was quiet but for the murmur of tourists.

Diana Prince adjusted a placard beneath a piece of Greek pottery, smiling faintly at a child’s awe. Then the air thickened.

It pressed down on her shoulders like the heaviest armor she had ever worn. Not divine presence. Older. Sadder. The weight of stories remembered and stories deliberately forgotten.

She turned.

A woman stood among the displays.

Her beauty was ancient and unearthly, framed by simple garments that failed to blunt the sheer myth of her. Sorrow pooled in her eyes like an ocean.

“Pandora,” Diana said.

Behind Pandora, the gallery was filled with women.

Amazon warriors in archaic armor, shields, and spears at the ready, faces taut with a mix of pride and bone-deep fear. Sister Diana had mourned. Names etched into her heart and the stones of Themyscira. A curator gasped and dropped a box of pamphlets. Another simply fainted.

“Diana,” Pandora said, inclining her head.

Diana’s hand twitched toward where her lasso would hang in uniform. She let it fall.

“Pandora. My sisters,” she said. “How are you here? What has happened?”

“We are fleeing,” Pandora answered simply. “The realm that once held us in death is no longer safe. The Tyrant King has awoken from his Slumber. The one your mother spoke of only in warnings.”

Diana’s mouth went dry.

“Pariah Dark,” she murmured.

As a child, she had heard the old stories: of a king who had tried to unmake the boundary between living and dead, to rule both. Of a coalition of beings older than gods who had bound him when they could not kill him.

“He was sealed by the Ancients,” Diana said. “Locked away. His crown and ring taken. His sarcophagus hidden where none could reach it.”

“The seal is broken,” Pandora said. “The Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep has been opened. Whether by arrogance or ignorance, the result is the same.”

One fallen Amazon stepped forward, saluting Diana with a fist to her chest. “The Infinite Realms is cracking,” she said. “Spirits from a thousand cultures are abandoning their rest. If the glue that binds the afterlives fails, all heavens, all hells, all reincarnation cycles may fall with it.”

Diana straightened, resolve hardening like tempered steel.

“Then we will fight,” she said. “For the living and the dead.”

Pandora looked at her with weary compassion.

“This is not a war that can be won by swords alone, Diana,” she said quietly. “This is the terror of a Tyrant who could not be killed… only stored.”

Coast City, Oa, and the Lore of the Ghost King

Over Coast City, Hal Jordan’s ring screamed in a tone he had never heard.

WARNING: REALITY STABILITY COMPROMISED. SOURCE: INFINITE REALMS. SEVERITY: EXISTENTIAL.

He rocketed toward the anomaly blazing across his ring’s display.

A vortex churned in the upper atmosphere, green-black-white energy writhing like a wound.

Two figures stepped out onto nothing.

Hal’s heart stopped.

“Hal,” said Martin Jordan, wearing his old bomber jacket, that familiar proud smile sitting uneasy on a face touched by fear.

“Dad?” Hal whispered.

Beside Martin stood a purple-skinned alien in a Green Lantern uniform.

Hal knew the face of the alien whose ring was chosen, Hal Abin Sur.

“It is good to see you again, Hal Jordan,” Abin Sur said. “Yes, even previous dead Lanterns of every core, and I, too, have fled.”

Hal’s ring threw up frantic readouts: ectoplasmic signatures, afterlife energy, cross-reality bleed.

“You… you’re both dead,” Hal said. “How are you—”

“The place we were is coming apart,” Martin said quietly. “Where we were supposed to stay. We’re running because staying means being erased. No heaven, no elseworld. Just… gone.”

On Oa, the Guardians gathered in a forgotten chamber, the central battery pulsing with sickly green overtones.

Ganthet lifted his small hands, projecting images to every Corps that would listen.

“The Infinite Realms,” he said, “are a convergence of the dead from a multitude of realities. Long ago, a being rose there who called himself Pariah Dark.”

The projection showed a towering armored ghost, crowned, bearing a blazing ring.

“The title of Ghost King is not passed by blood,” another Guardian said. “It is taken in combat. Power is both a test and a reward. The Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire amplify the King’s dominion, making all but the oldest Ancients bow.”

Images flashed: wars between realms of the dead, borders dissolving, the living plane buckling.

“Pariah Dark’s reign nearly tore the wall between living and dead to shreds,” Ganthet continued. “Attempts to destroy him almost shattered the underlying structure of reality.”

“So they didn’t,” said another Guardian bitterly. “They sealed him instead.”

The projection changed: a group of half-silhouetted beings, each embodying a concept older than any Corps—binding, balance, memory, finality. They forged the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep around Pariah, chaining him with the energies of every emotional spectrum.

“They took his crown and ring. They hid them. They buried the sarcophagus in a depth no one could reach. And with Heaven, Hell, and all powers that touched death, they made an accord: this prison would never be opened.”

The Guardians bowed their heads.

“Someone,” Ganthet said, “has broken that accord.”

Apocalypse and the Burden No One Wanted

Deep underground, in a chamber older than many civilizations, En Sabah Nur watched reality ripple across ancient devices.

His Horsemen shifted uneasily at the sight of spirits flooding through unseen cracks.

“What is it, my lord?” one asked.

Apocalypse’s eyes glowed cold blue.

“A throne, long-abandoned, has been reclaimed,” he said. “Not by choice, but by necessity.”

He tilted his head, listening to echoes only he could hear.

“The Infinite Realms are the confluence of every death,” he went on. “Every god, every demon, every cosmic farce of judgment empties its refuse into the same ocean. That ocean always had a monarch. A hand on the gate.”

He smiled humorlessly.

“Pariah Dark was that hand. A tyrant, yes. But a structural pillar as well. The Ancients locked him away because killing him would have toppled the building. So they left him as a cursed cornerstone. A necessary horror.”

His gaze sharpened.

“And someone, somewhere, has pulled at that cornerstone. Now the building shakes.”

Strange, Darkseid, Ra’s, and Constantine

In the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Eye of Agamotto snapped open on its own. Doctor Stephen Strange grabbed the table as a vision slammed into him. A group of ancient figures encircled a raging king of ghosts. They tore a crown and ring off him, wrapped him in chains of shared power, and forged a sarcophagus from the fear of every soul that had ever died. He saw them approach Heaven, Hell, cosmic abstracts, asking—not for help, but for commitment.

This will never be opened.

Strange tore free from the vision, panting.

“There was an accord,” he said aloud. “A pillar left in place because pulling it would bring the whole house down. And someone has just yanked on it.”

On Apokolips, Darkseid watched ghostly distortions ripple across his burning sky.

“The Ancients,” he mused. “So proud. So careful. They had the power to bind but not the will to rule.”

His fists tightened.

“They could not stomach destroying their cornerstone, so they buried him. And left a key.” He snorted. “Cowards.”

In the mountains of Nanda Parbat, Ra’s al Ghul studied a churning scrying pool.

Portals: opening. Ghosts: fleeing. Across countless worlds.

“Even with all their preparations, they were afraid,” he told the silent League of Assassins around him. “Fear breeds contingency—and they were no exception.”

He gestured.

The image shifted to runic gateways and ancient mechanisms igniting all over creation.

“They wove failsafes that would activate if the Tyrant ever woke,” he said. “Not to stop him—no, they had no faith in that—but to warn the living that the end had begun.”

In a dingy London flat, John Constantine finally punched through the magical static enough to get Zatanna on the line.

“John!” she shouted over a background chorus of wailing spirits. “The Veil is in shreds, the House of Mystery is just gone, and I have dead people flooding into every circle I’ve got—what's happening?”

John lit a cigarette with hands that wouldn’t stay quite steady.

“What's happening,” he said, “is that someone, somewhere, decided the one line we all agreed on was optional.”

“John—”

“The Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep,” he said flatly. “It’s open. And Pariah Dark is awake.”

Silence. Then a sharp inhale.

“That’s not possible,” Zatanna whispered. “Nobody’s that stupid. Every god, every demon, every sorcerer agreed—”

“And yet, here we are,” John cut in. He looked out at a London sky laced with thin green cracks. “We couldn’t kill him. So they locked him away and used him as a twisted bit of scaffolding to hold up the system. Now the scaffolding’s moving on its own.”

He dragged on the cigarette, ash trembling.

“And every ghost that can run,” he said softly, “is running.”

The multiverse did what it always did in the face of the incomprehensible.

It held its breath.

A Tyrant King, too necessary to destroy and too dangerous to wake, had shrugged off his chains. The glue holding together life, death, and everything between had started to crack.

Heaven and Hell, angels and demons, sorcerers and soldiers, telepaths and scientists—all felt it.

And none of them were wrong to be afraid.

Author’s note: I came up with this story prompt because I’ve been reading a lot of crossover fanfiction. Whenever the Ghost King gets mentioned, John Constantine obviously freaks out because that being is what holds all of reality and the multiverse together. Most of the time, though, fics kind of gloss over that.

So I started thinking: what can I do to make it feel more epic, to really give it that weight of, “Oh no, this is bad—this is really, really bad”? That’s how I ended up with this idea.

If there’s any fandom you think would fit, feel free to add your own words and scenes—just let me know. I’d love for this to be a kind of collab chain where we keep adding all the other fandoms we want to throw into the mix. We’re talking multiversal here, so the sky’s the limit.

[dark-door]

What songs do you think describe Radiojoy?

[madrid-stone]

First Steps

Is it just me, or do the pictures come out blurry?

Anywho, here's Emily trying to use her legs to dance instead of her wings. Good thing she's got a great teacher.

[dark-door]

Found this on reddit 😁

[fakeannafromthebox]

'Why', Part 1.

[pqt-tumble]

Christmas angel Emily complete!

Do not repost. DO NOT USE FOR AI! Reblogs encouraged. All other uses please ask.

[elsa-fogen]

Too young?

Turns out, one of the olldest overlords and the newer overlord are closer in actual age than it seems

AU Masterpost

[guilty-chaos-t]

I recently discovered this ship, I found it curious and this came to mind.

I keep adding things to this fanart, So I'd better just upload it

[nejjdiart]

Red-nosed (rain)deer

[angkis]

[ravensuperr]

The More Things Change

The air in Lucifer’s room at the Hazbin Hotel was thick with a tension that had nothing to do with Pentagram City’s usual chaos. A shimmering, golden ward pulsed around the chamber—an angelic privacy spell so potent it hummed like a heartbeat. It was a precaution carved from paranoia and old wounds; Lucifer would not tolerate another moment of Vox’s eyes on him. Not after everything.

Emily sat on a plush velvet chaise, her right wing stiff and half-furled. The once-pristine feathers were now a mess of charred quills and scarred flesh where raw, Lucifer-powered energy had torn through it. It was permanently damaged. Beside her lay the prosthetic golden wing, its metallic filigree a stark contrast to the softness of her remaining one. It still moved awkwardly, still felt too light, but at least she could fly again.

A few days had passed since Vox’s meltdown, since the weapon named after Lilith had nearly leveled Pentagram City, since Lucifer had been forced to serve as its unwilling battery.

“I’m still sorry about that,” Lucifer murmured, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. His gaze was fixed on the floor as if the memory itself were a weight. “The weapon… powered by me, named after my wife. To use my own light to shatter Heaven’s gates…” He let out a mirthless exhale. “It’s poetic in the worst possible way.”

Emily flexed her good wing experimentally. “It wasn’t your fault. You were a prisoner; all of us were. Vox… he lost his mind, firing that thing across Pentagram City like a toddler with a god-killing flashlight.” She glanced at her injured wing. “This is just… a consequence. I’ll adapt.”

Lucifer finally met her eyes. His look wasn’t pitying, but deeply, painfully understanding. “It still shouldn’t have happened.” He straightened, shifting into the kind of casual regal posture only he could manage. “So. How is Heaven handling… recent revelations?”

Emily’s lips curled into a hopeful smile. “Better. Sera’s listening now. Really listening. She’s trying. Heaven isn’t the place it was when you fell.”

Lucifer leaned back in his grand, wing-backed chair, steepling his fingers. “I’ll admit, it’s good to hear. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.” He watched her for a moment, his gaze sharp and discerning, and saw the question in her eyes before she could even form it. “Are you trying to ask me what it’s like? To fall from Heaven? To end up down here?”

Emily’s breath hitched. She gave a small, almost shy nod. “Heaven… it has its story. The official one. But I don’t know yours.”

Lucifer’s expression grew distant, lost in an eon of memory. “It was… a fall. In every sense of the word. The longest, most violent drop you could imagine. But I wasn’t alone. I had Lilith.” He looked at Emily, a flicker of ancient love and pain in his eyes. “She couldn’t have survived it. Not the impact, not the raw, chaotic energy of a new realm being born around us. So I took the brunt of it. I broke the fall for her. I was her shield.”

He stood and began to pace slowly. “Hell, in the beginning, was nothing but fire, rock, and screaming souls. A blank canvas of damnation. We ruled it together. We built it. I discovered the other rings, the native Hellborns, the other Sins. I handled the bureaucracy, the cosmic structure. I made the deals that kept the Sins in their places. Lilith… she was better with the people. The Sinners, when they started arriving in the Pride Ring… I found I couldn’t stomach them. Their cruelty, their pettiness, the endless echoes of their worst moments from life. It was a weakness of mine.”

Emily listened, rapt. “So Lilith…?”

“She became my executioner, in a way,” Lucifer confessed, his voice low. “Not with a sword, but with presence. The Sinners respect her as their Queen. They fear and revere her in a way they never could me. And that was fine by me. I saw their worst, but I also saw their ingenuity, their art, their technology… it’s impressive, what damned souls can create. But they’re in Hell for a reason, you know?” He paused. “She handles the overlords, the social hierarchy of Pentagram City. I handle the Hellborns, the other six rings. To the Hellborn, my name has weight. They say ‘Oh, my Lucifer!’ To the Sinners, it’s ‘Oh my Lilith!’ It’s a balance that worked. For a long time.”

Emily absorbed this, a new understanding of the royal family dawning on her. “So Charlie… she’s a Hellborn. Has she seen the other rings?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Lucifer said with a faint, proud smile. “She’s a better tour guide for it than I am these days. It’s been a while since I’ve had a reason to leave the Pride Ring.” His expression darkened slightly. “The Exterminations, on the other hand… that’s a more recent development. Only been going on for about seven years.”

“Seven years?” Emily’s voice was a horrified whisper. “But… that means Angels have been coming down and killing souls that could have been redeemed! That could have made it to Heaven!”

“I was just as surprised as you are,” Lucifer said, a wry grin spreading across his face. “Though, I have to admit, the first soul to make it up there… a snake demon… Sir Pentious!?” He let out a booming, genuine laugh. “Oh, Father must be howling! The King of Hell, who once took the form of a serpent to tempt humanity, and the first soul redeemed is a snake! It’s too perfect!”

Emily couldn’t help it—she laughed. A bright, clean sound. Lucifer joined her, and for a moment, the tension in the room evaporated.

When the laughter faded, Lucifer’s tone grew soft. “Emily. When I was trapped powering that weapon… I overheard things. Lute is dangerous. She hates demons, yes—but she also hates change. She tried to stop Charlie, the former overlords, even you, from interfering.” His eyes glowed faintly. “You have a gift. You see the good in everyone—Winners and Sinners alike. That makes you powerful. And vulnerable at the same time.”

Emily nodded slowly. “I know. I’ll be careful. I can feel something brewing with Lute… I just don’t know what.”

Lucifer nodded. “Good.” His gaze dipped to the prosthetic wing. “And—unlikely though it may be—if you ever find yourself stuck in Hell, you have my protection. Full clearance. You wouldn’t be confined to Pride. You could roam the rings freely. I’d be your guide.”

Emily stared. “You… you’d really do that?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

She hesitated, then asked quietly, “So… what are the odds of me becoming a—”

“A Fallen Angel?” Lucifer finished for her, his gaze softening. “I don’t know, Emily. Like you said, Heaven is changing. We’re communicating better than we have in millennia. That’s a good thing. But like I said, the more things change…” He trailed off. “I don’t have the gift of clairvoyance. But I can tell you this: if that ever happened, by accident or by design, a lot of people in Hell would be incredibly pissed off at Heaven for casting you out.”

A small smile touched Emily’s lips. “I believe it. I think some of them are already grateful. The ones Charlie and I saved… they’ve been talking. Some of them even want to try for redemption now, because of what we did.”

Lucifer smiled back, a genuine, warm expression. “Good.” He then tilted his head, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “And besides… someone called you”—he switched languages fluidly—“un vrai ange. A true angel.”

Emily blinked. “Who said that?”

Lucifer only gave her a coy smile and a slow, theatrical wink.

She threw her hands up. “Lucifer!”

He dismissed the ward with a lazy flick of his cane. “Have fun figuring it out.”

Emily huffed, her wings rustling as she left his room, the prosthetic clicking faintly with each step. She pushed into the hallway, muttering the phrase under her breath, trying to get the pronunciation right. She didn’t see Alastor until she bumped directly into him.

“Oh! S—sorry, Alastor.”

The Radio Demon adjusted his coat, polite as ever. “No harm done, little dove. Though your tongue seems to be wrestling with something.”

Emily flushed. “Ah—yeah. I’m trying to say it right. ‘Un… vray… on-juh?’”

Alastor paused, delighted. “Ah! A fair attempt, my dear, but the pronunciation is ‘un vé-ri-ta-ble an-je.’ Soft ‘r.’ Don’t strangle it.”

Emily stopped, turning to face him fully. A blush of embarrassment colored her cheeks. “Oh. Thank you for the correction, Alastor.” She took a breath and tried again, her voice softer, more careful. “Un véritable ange.”

“Thanks, Alastor,” she said, smiling.

She took to the air, flying slowly back toward Heaven. And halfway up the ascent, realization struck her like a bolt of lightning.

Lucifer’s wink. The corrected pronunciation. The tone Alastor used.

“Oh my Father,” she breathed. “It was …”

Alastor—the Radio Demon, Overlord of Hell—had called her a true angel.

She wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered… or deeply, deeply puzzled.

Either way, she didn’t stop smiling the rest of the way home.

Author's note: I've fallen deep into the Hazbin Hotel rabbit hole, and while I'm usually known for my Danny Phantom crossovers, I had to write this because I'm desperate to see a conversation between Lucifer and Emily on screen. My greatest hope for Season 3 is simple: more episodes. I didn't mind the eight-episode count for Season 1, as it was building the show's foundation, but Season 2 felt like a sprint when it desperately needed to be a marathon. What they accomplished in eight episodes was incredible from a writing standpoint, but it left so much potential on the cutting room floor—dynamics and moments that needed time to breathe. I think most fans can agree that we want more episodes in Season 3, and I wrote this story to explore a dynamic I'm hoping we get to see. Will it happen? Most likely not, but I'd love for the show to at least acknowledge the emotional fallout of everything that went down. This is my interpretation of that conversation, and I'll admit I'm probably not perfectly right on the characterization; I'm also speculating on the history of how Lucifer and Lilith ruled Hell before the Exterminations and before she left. This is just my take on what that crucial talk might look like, and I feel like a moment between these two angels would be so powerful to witness—hopefully, we'll get more episodes and the chance to see it.

[ravensuperr]

Ranma 1/2 The Fight and the Deal

“Akane, how many times do I gotta tell ya? Ryoga is P-chan!” Ranma’s voice echoed through the Tendo dojo, sharp and insistent.

Akane Tendo crossed her arms, glaring at him from across the room. “Ranma, stop making up such ridiculous lies! Ryoga-kun would never be my pet piglet. That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said this week!”

Ranma groaned, hands thrown up. “It ain’t a lie! He followed me all the way to China, remember? He fell into one of those cursed springs — the Spring of Drowned Piglet! Cold water turns him into that squealing ball of bacon you cuddle at night, and hot water turns him back! I’m tellin’ ya the truth, Akane!”

Akane’s eyes narrowed, her temper flaring. “You’ll say anything to make Ryoga look bad, won’t you? You’re just jealous because he’s kinder than you!”

“I ain’t jealous!” Ranma shot back, his voice cracking in frustration. “I’m warning you! He sleeps in your bed, Akane! In your bed! Doesn’t that seem even a little weird to ya?!”

Her cheeks flushed red. “He’s adorable! You’re just being a pervert, as usual!”

Ranma clenched his fists. “Fine! Don’t believe me. But I ain’t makin’ this up! You can even ask your old man — he’s seen it!”

“Me?” Soun Tendo blinked from the side of the room, realizing both their gazes had turned on him.

Ranma pointed accusingly. “Yeah! Tell her, Pops! You saw it happen!”

Soun hesitated, a bead of sweat rolling down his face. “W-well… I think I might have seen something like that once… maybe P-chan… changed shape a little… after being splashed with hot water?”

Ranma growled, “Think? You told me you saw it!”

Soun gave a nervous chuckle, waving his hands. “Perhaps I only imagined it! Who can say with these old eyes, ho ho ho!”

In truth, he had seen everything with crystal clarity — P-chan’s squeal, the puff of steam, Ryoga standing there naked and panicked. But Soun and Genma had agreed long ago: if letting Akane and Ranma bicker brought them closer, then a little lie was worth it.

Akane scowled. “Dad, don’t fall for Ranma’s ridiculous stories. You should know better.”

“Akane…” Ranma’s voice dropped, lower now — the edge of his patience worn thin. “I’ve been tryin’ to tell you this for a year. If you still don’t believe me, then how about we settle it once and for all?”

She crossed her arms tighter. “And how do you plan to do that?”

Ranma jabbed a finger toward her. “Go ask Ryoga yourself. Bring two thermoses — one with cold water, one with hot. Splash the cold water on him. If he turns into your precious P-chan, then you’ll finally admit I was right — and apologize. But if he doesn’t…” He took a step back, folding his arms. “Then I’ll apologize. For everything. Every insult, every bad word I’ve said about him. I’ll even stop fighting him if he picks one with me.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “You mean it?”

“I don’t joke about stuff like this,” he muttered. “But you gotta promise — if I’m right, you say you’re sorry. Deal?”

Akane paused, biting her lip. Finally, she nodded. “Fine, Saotome. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Ranma smirked, though his eyes betrayed exhaustion. “Good. Maybe now you’ll finally listen to reason.”

He turned and walked off toward the yard, muttering under his breath. “Can’t believe it takes this much to get through that thick skull…”

Akane shouted after him, “What was that?!”

“Nothin’!” Ranma yelled, then ducked just as a potted plant flew past his head.

Later that night…

Dinner at the Tendo house had been its usual chaos — Genma and Soun crying over sake, Kasumi humming as she cleared dishes, Nabiki making quiet observations from behind her smirk.

But upstairs, Akane sat at her desk, a small lamp casting a soft glow over her open diary.

“Ranma’s being ridiculous again,” she wrote, the nib of her pen scratching across the page. “He actually thinks Ryoga-kun is P-chan. Honestly! It’s so silly, I almost feel bad for him. Maybe he’s jealous — Ryoga’s so nice to me, after all.”

She paused, tapping the pen against her lip. Her brow furrowed slightly.

“Still… why does he sound so serious about it? He really believes it. And he said Father saw something too… No, that’s crazy. Ranma just wants to make Ryoga look bad.”

Her pen hovered over the page, but no words came for a moment. Then she sighed.

“Fine. I’ll go through with his stupid challenge. Just to prove how wrong he is. I’ll even make sure it doesn’t humiliate Ryoga — I can fake it somehow, maybe switch the thermoses so nothing happens. That way, Ranma learns his lesson, Ryoga doesn’t get dragged into it, and I’ll still come out on top.”

Akane closed the diary with a small smile — but the flicker of doubt remained behind her eyes.

She blew out the lamp and lay back on her futon, staring at the ceiling.

“Honestly, Ranma,” she whispered. “You really don’t take anything seriously, do you?”

But even as she said it, that little voice in the back of her mind — the one she tried to ignore — whispered something she didn’t want to admit.

What if he’s telling the truth?

She frowned, turning onto her side. “No way,” she muttered, clutching her pillow tighter.

Outside her window, the wind rustled the trees. Somewhere in Nerima, fate was quietly lining up the pieces for a showdown that would shake the entire dojo — and everything Akane thought she knew.

[ravensuperr]

The Truth Hidden in Wings

SCENE: The Private Library of the Hazbin Hotel

Warm lamplight spills across towering shelves. Dust motes drift lazily like slow snow. Emily perches on a floating ladder, carefully sliding a thick leather-bound volume back into place. Her prosthetic golden wing flickers—a tiny mechanical twitch—and then stalls.

EMILY “Ah— not again—”

The wing fails to counterbalance. Emily slips.

Before she can scream—

A red blur. A shadow stretching impossibly fast.

Alastor’s silhouette lunges, catching her at the waist and guiding her gently to the floor. His smile stays bright, but his eyes widen just slightly—a flash of fear hidden behind theatrics.

ALASTOR (quietly) “My, my… do be careful, my dear. A fall like that could be… disruptive.”

Emily hugs herself, embarrassed, wings shivering.

EMILY “I’m so sorry. It just… locked up again. Sometimes the prosthetic misfires. Raphael said that can happen while it’s still calibrating with the rest of my wings.”

Alastor tilts his head, intrigue sharpening his gaze. His shadow flickers like a living thing.

ALASTOR “…Raphael? As in Lucifer’s brother?”

EMILY (oblivious) “Oh! Yes. I’ve met him a few times. Sara sent me to him after—” (touches her prosthetic wing) “—well, everything. He specializes in healing and reconstruction, so he was the natural choice.”

Alastor files this away silently, eyes narrowing imperceptibly.

ALASTOR “And the other Archangels? Surely you’ve met them all.”

EMILY “Most. The Seven Virtues… a few of Lucifer’s brothers. I’ve only never met Michael.”

Alastor’s smile tightens. A faint ripple of tension crosses his features.

EMILY (continuing, casual) “I asked Raphael once if I could meet him. He said Michael is always too busy. And when he does take a break, he avoids people. So Sara and I never pushed it. It’s normal, really. Very few angels see Michael often. Adam was practically the only one, and that was just because Adam annoyed him.”

Alastor’s internal gears turn. Michael. Never met him. Already, alarms ring.

Emily yawns, fatigue showing.

ALASTOR (brightly, shifting the mood) “Well, my little dove, you seem rather tired. You ought not fly back to Heaven in your state.”

EMILY “Oh… I couldn’t impose. I should tell Raphael about this wing malfunction, and—”

ALASTOR (firm, no-nonsense) “Nonsense. You’re fatigued. Using divine portals when exhausted is hardly wise. I imagine your sister would agree.”

Emily hesitates, then sighs.

EMILY “…She probably would. I don’t think I could open a stable portal right now.”

Alastor’s smile warms.

ALASTOR “Splendid. Then you shall stay the night.”

EMILY “Alright… I’ll ask Charlie which room—”

ALASTOR “Oh, not one of the sinner suites. Those are for rehabilitation. You belong in the guest wing near Lucifer’s quarters. Far more appropriate.”

Emily blinks, surprised.

EMILY “Charlie has a guest wing?”

ALASTOR “Of course. Her father arranged it. For dignitaries, angelic visitors… or those who must not be disturbed.”

Emily nods slowly.

EMILY “Well… if Charlie and Vaggie are okay with it, I wouldn’t mind staying there.”

ALASTOR (bowing slightly) “I’ll inform them myself.”

EMILY “…Then where should I wait?”

Alastor’s eyes gleam.

ALASTOR “My personal room… or my radio tower.”

Emily’s eyes light up.

EMILY “I’ve never seen your radio tower before! I love radio broadcasts… could I see it?”

Alastor beams, his shadow stretching protectively ahead.

ALASTOR “Splendid. Follow me, dear.”

They walk toward the tower. Alastor’s shadow lingers just behind Emily, a silent guardian, while his mind races over the revelation she unknowingly delivered—

Never meeting Michael. Something about it feels… wrong.

END SCENE.