#speed force

Barry winced. “I prefer to call it adjusting.”

Wonder Woman crossed her arms. “You gamble with history too easily, Flash.”

“I know, I know,” Barry said quickly. “But people are alive because of it. That has to count for something, right?”

Green Lantern leaned back in his chair. “I’m just saying, man, one day the universe is gonna send you a bill.”

Barry opened his mouth to reply—

—and a green portal tore open behind him.

Not a boom tube.

Not magic like Zatanna’s or Constantine’s.

Not Speed Force energy.

This was wrong.

The air folded in on itself, glowing an unnatural, sickly green, like light filtered through deep water.

Something stepped through.

No.

Rode through.

A massive, bat-winged Alicorn burst from the portal, with sharp fangs and teeth, red eyes, a horn on the top of his head, and a flaming green mane. It also wears an armor around its head and neck with an insignia of a pumpkin with bones going through it.

On its back sat a knight in gray and black, jagged armor, a helmet that obscured his entire face with a mow hawk of spikes at the top. His cape was made of purple fire, trailed behind him.

The room went dead silent.

Every member of the Justice League went into combat stance in the same heartbeat. Superman moved half a step forward. Aquaman gripped his trident. Green Arrow nocks an arrow.

The knight raised one gauntleted hand.

The temperature in the room dropped as the being spoke. His voice echoed unnaturally, layered, like it came from a cathedral and a grave at the same time.

“By decree of His Majesty, the Ghost King,”

“the presence of one Bartholomew Henry Allen is hereby demanded.”

Barry froze.

“…My full name?” he squeaked.

The horse stepped forward.

Once.

Twice.

“Wow, hey— Wait a second” Barry said, backing up a step. “Can’t we talk about this?”

In the blink of an eye, the knight moved in fluid motion, he leaned down, grabbed Barry by the back of his suit, and hauled him up like he weighed nothing.

“WAIT—!” Barry shouted.

The group of heroes finally snapped out of their shock as Wonder Woman, Batman threw a batarang, Green Lantern projected a barrier.

The knight swung him around and tossed him over the back of the spectral horse.

Barry barely had time to grab on before the horse reared.

The portal flared brighter.

“FLASH!” Wonder Woman shouted.

Superman shot forward—

But the horse leapt.

Straight into the portal.

The green light snapped shut behind them as the Watchtower was silent.

No portal. No knight. No Flash.

Just scorched air and frost on the floor.

Green Lantern lowered his construct slowly. “…”

Batman stared at the empty space where Barry had been.

“…That,” Hal said weakly, “did not look like a time wraith.”

⸻

Barry didn’t know when the Watchtower became something else.

One second, he was clinging to a horse for dear life.

The next—

Endless stone.

The air shifted, heavy and cold, carrying the faint scent of ozone and something older. Not rot. Not dust. Just age. The kind of age you felt in your bones.

They thundered down a massive hallway.

High vaulted ceilings. Pillars carved with symbols Barry didn’t recognize. Green fire burned in sconces that gave off no heat.

This wasn’t a ruin.

This was a castle that had never needed to decay.

It had simply… always been.

The spectral horse slowed.

The knight pulled to a stop in front of a towering set of double doors, black metal banded with unique carvings.

Without ceremony, he grabbed Barry again and set him down hard on his feet.

“Oof. Okay. Thanks. Gentle,” Barry muttered, straightening his jacket.

“Wait here,” the knight commanded.

He dismounted, patting the horse’s armored neck.

The alicorn snorted softly, green vapor curling from its nostrils.

The knight knocked once.

Heavy. Final.

From the other side of the door came a voice.

Young.

Tired.

“Come in.”

The knight opened the door and stepped through.

It shut behind him.

Barry was alone.

With the alicorn.

Barry shifted his weight.

The horse stared at him.

He glanced sideways.

The horse’s glowing eyes didn’t blink.

“…So,” Barry said, forcing a nervous smile. “You uh. Come here often?”

The horse tilted its head.

Barry looked away.

He could feel it still staring.

Thirty seconds passed.

Maybe a minute.

Then the doors opened again.

The knight stepped out.

“The King will see you now.”

Before Barry could respond, the knight mounted his horse in one smooth motion.

The spectral steed turned and trotted back down the hall, hooves echoing until both rider and mount vanished around a bend.

Barry stood there.

Alone.

With a door.

“…Right,” Barry whispered. “Cool. Cool cool cool.”

He raised a hand and knocked.

From the other side came the voice again, “Come in.”

Barry took a breath and opened the door.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting.

An ancient lich.

A towering demon.

A glowing, incomprehensible being of pure energy.

What he got was a kid.

White hair. Pale skin. He wore dark royal robes, the fabric shifting like mist. Above his head floated a crown made of green flame, hovering without touching him, flickering gently.

That was the King.

The boy barely looked up at first, too focused on the mountain of paperwork spread across an enormous black desk.

“Hold on—” he muttered, scribbling something down. “—if that soul file isn’t reconciled, Clockwork’s gonna yell at me again…”

Barry stood there, frozen.

The boy glanced up briefly, eyes flicking over Barry, then back to the papers.

“Yeah, yeah. Come in. Sit.” He waved lazily to a chair across from the desk. “This’ll just take a sec.”

Barry sat.

Mostly because his legs decided to on their own.

The boy finished signing something, stamped it with a glowing green seal, and finally set the stack aside.

Then toxic glowing green meets blue.

The room felt heavier.

“Okay,” the boy said. “I’m Phantom. The Ghost King, ruler of the Infinite Realms.”

Barry blinked.

“…You’re kidding.”

Phantom tilted his head. “Nope.”

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Also known as the High Sovereign of the Dead, Tyrant-Slayer, Conqueror of Stars—” he made a vague hand motion, “—Breaker of Chains, Warden of the Veil, yada yada. There’s more, but honestly, I stopped keeping track.”

Barry stared.

“…You look sixteen.”

Phantom’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

Barry gestured weakly around the room. “So. Where exactly am I?”

“The Infinite Realms,” Phantom said easily. “The in-between. The place souls pass through before moving on. Home of ghosts. Also the connective tissue between every dimension, universe, timeline, basically if reality’s a spiderweb, this is the webbing.”

Barry frowned. “So… like a cosmic waiting room?”

Phantom considered that.

“…That’s actually not the worst description I’ve heard.”

Barry swallowed. “And you’re the King.”

“Unfortunately,” Phantom said. “Administrative nightmare.”

Barry hesitated, then finally asked the question burning in his chest.

“Okay. Then why exactly did you have your… knight guy kidnap me from the Watchtower?”

Phantom leaned back in his chair.

His expression shifted.

Not angry.

Not cruel.

Just… tired.

“Because, Barry Allen,” Phantom said, folding his hands on the desk, “you are making an absolute mess of my paperwork.”

Barry exhales slowly, running a hand through his hair. “Okay… hold on. Back up. You keep calling yourself Phantom. What does that even mean? Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t— you know— messed with any ghosts.”

Danny’s glowing eyes soften just a fraction.

“You didn’t,” Phantom says. “Not directly.”

Barry relaxes for half a second, until Phantom continues.

“But you did something worse.”

Barry stiffens. “Worse than messing with ghosts?”

Phantom folds his hands together on the desk. “You tampered with souls.”

That gets Barry’s full attention. “I— what? No, I didn’t. I just— I changed time.”

“Yes,” Phantom says calmly. “That’s the problem.”

He stands, moving around the desk, the faint glow of his crown casting ghostly light across the floor.

“Every time someone dies, their soul passes through the Infinite Realms. As Ghost King, I am responsible for processing their arrival. Their status. Their eventual moving on. Every soul has a record. Every transition has paperwork.”

Barry blinks. “That’s… a lot of paperwork.”

“You have no idea,” Phantom mutters, then continues.

“When you altered the timeline, people who were once dead suddenly… weren’t. Their souls were here. Logged. Filed. And then—” He snaps his fingers softly. “Gone. No record of them moving on. No transfer. No destruction. Just… missing.”

Barry frowns. “Because they were alive again.”

“Yes,” Phantom says. “They go back to being alive in your universe.”

Barry opens his mouth to respond, but Phantom keeps going.

“Then there are the opposite cases. People who were once alive,have suddenly appeared in the Realms as dead. With no cause. No arrival event. As if they’d been dead for years and no one bothered to file it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense—” Barry starts.

“And then,” Phantom continues, voice sharpening just a bit, “you did it again. The ones who came back to life? Dead again. New dead. New living. Records contradicting themselves. Souls appearing, disappearing, reappearing. Entire chains of causality breaking.”

Barry finally snaps, “But I fixed it! I reset the timeline! No one remembers the other versions— it’s supposed to be like the original!”

Phantom sighs. A long, tired, very un-teenage sigh.

“In your universe, yes. But the Infinite Realms exist outside of your timeline. Outside of your resets. We remember everything.”

Barry goes very still.

“That means,” Phantom continues quietly, “we remember every soul that arrived… every soul that left… and every soul that was supposed to went back or was not supposed to arrive yet.”

Barry’s voice is small now. “So you’re saying… you remember every version.”

“Yes.”

Silence hangs heavy between them.

Barry looks down at his hands. “I didn’t know. I was just trying to save people.”

“I know,” Phantom says. “And you are far from the first Flash to sit in that chair.”

Barry’s head snaps up. “First?”

Phantom tilts his head. “The Infinite Realms connect to the entire multiverse. There have been many speedsters. Many Flashes. Many broken timelines.”

Barry swallows. “That’s… not comforting.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

Phantom moves back behind the desk and pulls out a thin stack of papers, sliding them across to Barry.

“I have a proposal.”

Barry hesitates, then picks them up. “A contract?”

“Yes,” Phantom says. “If you sign it, you agree not to change the timeline. No deliberate alterations. No ‘fixing’ things by running back in time.”

Barry’s jaw tightens. “I can’t just— what if there’s an emergency?”

“Then you request an audience,” Phantom replies. “You explain your case. I decide whether the change is permitted.”

Barry looks up, incredulous. “You want me to ask permission to save people?”

“I want you to think before you rewrite existence,” Phantom says evenly.

Barry scoffs. “And if I don’t sign?”

Phantom shrugs, far too casually for what he says next.

“Well, considering your ability to travel time comes from your speed, then I sever your universe’s connection to the Speed Force.”

Barry goes pale. “You— you can’t— that wouldn’t just punish me. That would punish every speedster.”

“I’m aware,” Phantom says. “Which is why these exist.”

He slides more papers across the desk.

Barry looks down. His stomach drops. “Contracts… for the others.”

“Yes. Same terms. Same consequences.”

Barry grips the papers, anger and fear battling on his face. “You’re holding my entire universe hostage.”

Phantom doesn’t flinch, but something in his expression shifts. The glow in his eyes dims just slightly.

“This isn’t about leverage,” Phantom says quietly. “It’s about damage.”

Barry frowns. “Damage to what?”

“To souls.”

Phantom steps away from the desk, the flames of his crown flickering lower.

“When a timeline is rewritten, a soul isn’t just ‘reset.’ It’s pulled, twisted, layered over itself. The same soul forced to exist, die, return, and die again. Over and over.”

Barry’s breath catches.

“That kind of strain leaves fractures,” Phantom continues. “Memories that don’t belong. Echoes of deaths that never happened. Pieces that don’t quite fit anymore.”

“What happens if it keeps going?” Barry asks quietly.

Phantom meets his eyes.

“Eventually, the soul starts to unravel.”

Barry’s voice is barely above a whisper. “Unravel… how?”

“First, instability,” Phantom says. “Then erosion. And if it happens enough times—” He hesitates, just for a second. “The core collapses. The soul doesn’t move on. It doesn’t reincarnate. It doesn’t exist.”

Barry goes pale. “They just… disappear?”

“Not just in your universe,” Phantom says. “Across all of them. Every variant. Every possible version. Gone.”

Silence crashes down between them.

“I won’t allow that,” Phantom says firmly. “Not for convenience. Not for hope. Not even for good intentions.”

Barry looks down at the contracts, his hands trembling slightly.

“This isn’t punishment,” Phantom adds more softly. “It’s prevention.”

Barry is quiet for a long moment.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Phantom adds. “Take a few days. Read everything. Then contact me.”

Barry looks up. “How?”

Phantom produces a ring and places it in Barry’s hand.

It looks similar to a Lantern ring, but simpler. Darker. Etched with faint, glowing symbols.

“Whisper into it,” Phantom says. “A portal to the Infinite Realms will open.”

Barry turns it over in his fingers. “It seems simple, can anyone use it?”

“No,” Phantom says. “It’s bound to your soul. If you lose it, it returns to you. If someone steals it, it returns to you.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“It’s efficient.”

Phantom stands. After a moment, Barry does too.

Phantom leads him to the center of the room.

“You are not a villain, Barry,” Phantom says. “But power without limits breaks more than it saves. Remember that.”

A portal opens, toxic green swirling like liquid fire.

Phantom gestures. “We will speak again.”

Barry hesitates at the edge of the portal, then looks back.

Phantom gives a small, tired smile.

Barry steps through.

The portal snaps shut behind him.

⸻

Light slams into Barry’s vision.

For a split second, all he can see is white and steel and motion. The sterile glow of the Watchtower. The hum of systems. The loud, overlapping voices of his teammates.

They’re talking. Fast. Urgent. Focused.

So focused they don’t notice the green-edged portal fading behind him.

They don’t notice him.

Barry blinks, his eyes burning as they adjust. His heart is still pounding like he’s running, even though he’s standing still.

He clears his throat.

Every voice in the room cuts off.

Heads snap toward him.

For a heartbeat, no one moves.

Then—

“Barry!”

“Where did you go?”

“Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

They crowd him, questions overlapping, hands on his shoulders, scanning him for injuries, for signs of magic, for anything that explains what they just saw.

It takes a few minutes before the noise settles enough for anything to make sense.

“Hours,” someone finally says. “You were gone for hours.”

Barry exhales slowly.

For him, it had been minutes.

Maybe less.

His fingers tighten around the stack of papers still clutched in his hand. The contracts. Proof that it hadn’t been a hallucination. That it hadn’t been a dream.

Someone looks down at them. “Barry… what is that?”

Barry swallows.