Word Soul: DARKSEID Chapter 2.

Chapter 2: Ghost In The Machine.

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He didn't scream during the first few tools.

Not because the torture didn't hurt.

But because he'd screamed his throat raw. And against the War Hammers, it didn’t matter.

Made of Nth Metal, the War hammer shattered nerves first. Then bones. His left leg bent the wrong way. His right arm spasmed. Something inside his chest cracked, maybe a rib, maybe more.

Granny Goodness didn’t rush. She swung like an artist. A painter. A priest. Each blow deliberate. Each pause between them a sermon.

“You’re special,” she said. “But you don’t know what you are.”

Another swing. His head snapped back, blood pouring from his nose.

“You think words are power? You think you’re the first brat to shout and get lucky?”

She lifted the hammer again. “Let’s find out if your magic works when you’re nothing but pulp.”

The room pulsed. Motherbox hummed in sync with her fury. Something ancient and wrong vibrated in the air.

He tried to hold on. To focus. Anything.

A name. A face. His old life.

But it was gone. Burned away.

Only one thing stayed.

I don’t want to die.

He didn’t even say it aloud.

He thought it.

Whispered it inside.

And something heard him and responded.

-SURVIVE!-

The hammer came down again — full force, straight toward his skull.

But just before it hit, something shifted.

A cold wash swept over his body — not fear, not pain, but separation. Like he’d stepped backward out of his own skin.

Then silence.

Stillness.

No heartbeat.

No breath.

He looked down without eyes, somehow able to perceive his immediate surroundings.

His body was on the floor.

A limp, cracked mess. Blood everywhere.

But he wasn't in it.

He was above it. A slightly translucent, featureless white sphere, the size of a soccer ball.

A soul.

Floating.

Weightless.

Untouchable even by the acrid air molecules.

Below, Granny stood over the corpse, breathing heavy with a Hammer covered in blood and grey matter. She stared at the body, then tilted her head.

"...Died too fast," she muttered. "Pity. I was just getting to the good part."

She tossed the hammer aside with a grunt. It clanged against the wall and started floating again. She turned to the Motherbox and began tapping in a command.

He slowly drifted back, away from the unrecognizable scene. Firstly, because the Nth Metal War hammers slightly pulled at his soul mass and secondly to avoid her. Just because he was invisible to the naked eye didn't mean taking risks. He might be detectable through other methods.

The farther he got from his body, the lighter he felt. The chamber blurred behind him. Even Granny’s voice started to fade.

He moved through the walls of the Terrorspire like it was mist. No resistance. No sound. Just motion and solid matter phasing.

And for the first time since waking in the Pits—

He wasn’t afraid.

He was free.

Not alive.

Not dead.

But in between. A ghost.

Apokalips was louder when you weren’t alive.

He drifted through corridors like a shadow, unseen, untouched. But he heard everything. The clank of chains. The hum of furnaces. The moaning of machines that didn’t know they were dying.

No heartbeat. No breathing. Just awareness.

He didn’t need to sleep.

Didn’t need to stop.

So he moved.

Learning.

The Pits were just at the surface of the core. Beneath them, tunnels crisscrossed like infected veins. Slave barracks. Data banks. Weapon forges. Parademon hatcheries. There were places down here that weren’t on any map.

And above it all, wrapped around the planet like a cruel net, was his Presence.

-DARKSEID. Never say name out loud. He watches. Always watches-

He couldn’t see him, but he could feel it — this pressure. A cold, cosmic surveillance. A God watching every ant on his world and knowing their names before they did.

It wasn’t paranoia. It was fact.

He saw it happen.

On the fourth cycle of wandering — he’d stopped counting hours and days; time didn’t matter here — he overheard a group of slaves planning their escape.

Unseen and intangible, he followed the trail of the stolen slave ship. Bursting through parademons and barricades placed along their chosen route through cargo tunnels, their desperation paid off and the space ship launched it into orbit.

They never made it past the atmosphere.

He hovered in the open scaffolding of a broken watchtower, watching the dark sky split open. No sound — not from space — just light. Red. Deadly. A zigzag of impossible geometry.

-Omega Beams-

They chased the ship.

Turned mid-flight.

Danced around debris.

And burned it out of existence. Gone. Not wreckage. Not corpses. Just gone.

Not even a scream reached the surface.

He knew the Omega Effect could rewrite reality. Unmake it. There was no hiding from it. It bent around corners, through walls, across galaxies.

But it even hunted and destroyed their souls.

In his new ghost state, he could sense other spirits, particularly the recent dead- though most were unresponsive gray shades that quickly dissolved into Apokalip's air. Now he knew why- not even souls were safe from Darkseid's Omega power.

-DARKSEID IS. APOKALIPS HIS. OMEGA HIS-

He shivered.

That could’ve been me.

Still could be.

Floating wasn’t enough. Invisibility wasn’t enough. Even being a ghost wasn’t enough.

If he wanted to survive — really survive — he needed a way off this world. Pronto.

Not through the sky. Not in a ship.

Too easy. Too obvious. Too risky.

He needed a backdoor.

And Apokalips had one.

BoomTubes.

-BoomTubes?-

He just needed a Motherbox.

Only problem? Those were kept locked up — tight. Guarded. Tracked.

Except...

He’d seen one.

Granny’s.

The same box she set on the table between torture sessions. Arrogant. Careless. Like she thought no one could ever take it from her.

Maybe she was right.

But he wasn’t no one anymore.

He was something else.

Something dead and not gone.

And if the box was still in her chamber, maybe he could steal it and then he was out of here.