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SM/DC Chapter 158 : Power Ring
🕑 Added 2025-06-24 23:32:54 +0000 UTCTHE ANTIMATTER UNIVERSE – QWARD
Arthur had never seen a sky like this.
Above him stretched a churning veil of distorted light sickly yellow auroras slithering like serpents across a void that pulsed and bent as though alive. The stars here weren’t stars; they were fractures in the firmament, violent tears in the fabric of reality that occasionally blinked.
And beneath that twisted sky stood Qward the so-called throne world of fear.
Its towers stabbed the horizon like crooked fangs, forged from blackened steel and metals not found in his universe. The buildings weren’t built they were grown, or perhaps forced into existence by fear alone. The air smelled of metal and blood and something even more fouler.
The yellow sphere that held Arthur moved through it all with swift purpose. Suspended inside, arms limp but eyes sharp, Arthur watched every inch.
‘So this is it... Qward. Heart of the Sinestro Corps.’
The roads below were filled with foot soldiers. Yellow Lanterns of every kind some humanoid, others with claws, tendrils, chitin, scales. Their auras pulsed in unity like a giant, sickened heartbeat. Their constructs swirled around them in madness.
Fear was their currency here. And they wore it like armor. Literally.
Arthur let his head lean against the edge of his glowing prison, his blue eyes flicking toward his escort.
Sinestro led the flight, arm raised, ring glowing, carrying Arthur forward like a trophy. Around them flew Romat-Ru, Amon Sur, and a dozen more, their rings humming in eerie resonance with the world below.
“You’re quieter now,” Sinestro said without looking back, his voice echoing faintly inside the sphere.
Arthur didn’t answer at first. He took in another few miles of horror, the chained titans dragging constructs across black fields, the screams of prisoners echoing from towers.
Finally, Arthur smirked. “Just admiring the architecture.”
Sinestro glanced back over his shoulder. “Qward is... efficient. A world forged in discipline and fear. Unlike your Earth, our society here is not... diluted by sentimentality.”
“I can see that,” Arthur muttered. “Real cozy.”
Sinestro ignored the sarcasm. “This is where will once tried to conquer fear... and failed. The Guardians once feared this place, you know. Tried to destroy it. But fear is not so easily erased. It grows.”
Arthur stayed silent, but his thoughts spun like blades.
‘So much pride. So much certainty. He really believes this place is indestructible. Perfect. Time to crush that belief of his.’
The sphere descended lower now, sweeping over what looked like a coliseum—a structure shaped like a clawed crown sunken into the earth. Yellow light seeped from every crevice, and from within, Arthur heard cheering. Chanting. Something primal. Something ravenous.
They were taking him to an a Pit.
‘Of course.’
Sinestro finally brought them to a halt inside a vast circular sanctum one of the few places that seemed still in this city of shifting madness. Arthur’s cage floated to the center of the place and gently lowered him down. As it cracked open, the yellow light faded his limbs free, though his wounds still ached faintly. He stood up slowly.
Sinestro hovered above him, arms crossed behind his back like a general addressing a promising new recruit.
“Welcome,” he said, “to your new home.”
He landed softly before him, eyes narrowing.
“I expect understanding.”
Arthur’s face didn’t move, but his thoughts sharpened.
‘He’s not trying to force me. He wants to persuade me.’
Sinestro walked past him slowly. “You wield power most in my Corps could never even comprehend. You command darkness, and it does not consume you. You embody fear... but you are not its slave.”
He turned, eyes glowing faintly.
“Tell me, Arthur Blackwynd… why do you fight? Why don’t you wear a ring already?”
Arthur stared at him for a long moment.
Then he shrugged. “I like to work alone.”
That answer didn’t seem to disappoint Sinestro. If anything, it amused him.
“Good,” he said. “Because soon... you won’t be working at all. You might be the one leading.”
Arthur arched a brow.
Sinestro raised a hand. And the sound of thunderous cheers echoed from beyond, then rising into a full roar that shook the foundation of the pit. Arthur could feel the vibration beneath his feet. Yellow Lanterns by the hundreds maybe more chanting, screaming, howling in brutal, unified celebration.
They had found their next monster.
Arthur stood in the center of it all, the yellow hue of Sinestro’s constructs still casting sharp shadows across his face. His blue eyes flicked toward the others, then toward Sinestro, then up into the haze of that nauseating sky that stretched above Qward like a noose of fear.
A faint smirk curled the edge of his lips.
‘I can’t exchange, not while I’m in another universe. Good thing I did what I did…’
Just one direct route, straight into the belly of the beast.
‘If I had attached a shadow soldier to someone, the system wouldn't have let me cross the boundary of another universe. letting myself get dragged here as a prisoner was the best idea after all..’
Sinestro turned slightly, perhaps noticing the quiet glint in Arthur’s expression.
“You’ve already witnessed our might,” he said, gesturing broadly to the other lanterns, the ring-bearing legions beyond, the very air of this place. “You’ve seen the price of fear and the strength it grants those who embrace it. I know what you’re thinking. I know what you want.”
Arthur didn’t reply.
“Arkillo...my second-in-command...his ring gone missing. That power, that seat of influence... could be yours. But I offer you more than that.”
Sinestro raised his hand. A sharp, sleek, glowing with concentrated fear. Within it floated a yellow power ring, humming like a caged beast, pulsing with a silky, almost hypnotic rhythm. Its light danced across Arthur’s face like golden fire.
Arthur didn’t even glance at it.
His thoughts remained distant, far from the ring. Far from the citadel.
‘Step one: infiltrate.
Step two: collapse from the inside.’
He smiled, faint and knowing.
‘Time to find their central power battery... and destroy it.’
Finally, his eyes returned to Sinestro, cold and unreadable. And then
“I accept.”
Sinestro blinked once.
He had expected resistance. Calculations. Hesitation. Not... this.
But then, he smiled too slow and satisfied, like a man laying the final stone on a monument.
“Very well.”
Sinestro extended his hand, the ring still glowing between his fingers. Around them, the energy of Qward pulsed stronger, as if sensing the shift in fate. The world itself watched.
Arthur stepped forward, calm and deliberate. He reached out, his hand steady, his breathing even. As his fingers closed around the ring, he felt the heat of it crawl into his skin. Not a physical burn but something deeper. It whispered. It writhed.
Fear was alive in this thing.
Arthur turned the ring in his palm, studying it not putting it on. Just looking. Feeling.
‘Taking Arkillo’s ring was a waste of time, then…’
He turned it once more, watching it pulse.
‘I’ll try this then....’
Sinestro’s voice echoed, a whisper beneath the roar of Qward: “Welcome, Arthur. The Corps awaits.”
Arthur said nothing. In the center of his vision, reality pulsed fractured for only him to see.
[System Alert: A Yellow Power Ring has been acquired.]
[Conditions met. Combine with: Volthoom’s Cracked Ring?]
[Y/N]
His lips parted slightly, not in shock but in something that resembled dark amusement. He didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
The moment the word left his tongue, both rings one glowing with the corrupted might of fear, the other an ancient fragment of impossible madness levitated from his palm. Not too much for everyone else to see. Yellow and corrupt green. Fear twisted with madness. Power lit with chaos. The air around Arthur thickened, distorted, bent into itself.
Lightning without sound sparked between them.
The Yellow Ring crackled as if resisting. The Cracked Ring pulsed once then latched on.
A stream of violet-black tendrils burst forth from Volthoom’s ring, wrapping around the Yellow one like roots consuming a dying star. The yellow faded. It bled out. Slowly, agonizingly, until there was nothing but shadow.
The fusion finished with a snap.
In his palm, resting quietly, pulsed a new ring.
Its form was as Black as the void between galaxies. Its glow was subtle, not radiant like the others. It did not shine it absorbed.
Arthur stared at it.
Just for a second just one heartbeat he saw something burned into the face of the ring. A shape. A symbol.
The sigil of the Black Lanterns, death incarnate.
Then it flickered. Twisted.
Changed.
Something else stared back. An icon he had never seen. A jagged, evolving shape. No words accompanied it.
Only:
[Ring of the Shadow Corps.]
Arthur’s eyes narrowed.
"This is…I swear I just saw something else..."
He almost said it aloud but his instincts screamed quiet. He closed his fingers around the ring, letting his expression shift into something casual, collected. Sinestro hadn’t seen. The light if it could even be called that had gone dark the moment the fusion completed. Arthur summoned Arkillo’s ring in his palm just so he won’t get caught.
Still, Sinestro turned, curious.
He had noticed. Not all of it but enough.
That flicker in the air. That disruption.
He glanced at Arthur’s palm.
“Will you not wear it?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “The others are watching.”
Arthur lifted his gaze slowly. Smiled calmly, cleanly, with just enough performance to sell it.
“Oh, I will.”
Arthur turned his back to Sinestro for a moment. Just enough to breathe, just enough to center himself, just enough to think.
‘This is beyond anything I planned… What did I just craft?’
The ring pulsed in his hand once more, almost as if acknowledging the question.
He slid it onto his finger.
And the very universe watched.
Comments
Dylan Richman
Yah ummm can u not leave on a cliff hanger! I'm dieing over here!!! TFTC!!!!
