John Constantine lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled ever so slightly. It wasn't the first time he'd stared death in the face—but never like this. Never when it had golden eyes and a spinning celestial weapon for a spine.
Mahoraga stood in the dimly lit room, impossibly large yet perfectly still. The wheel on his back rotated with the faint sound of grinding stone, slow but deliberate, like a clock counting down to something inevitable. Constantine's wards had failed the moment the being stepped into his space—sigils flickered out, protective circles cracked, and even the air seemed unsure whether it should hang still or flee in panic.
"Right," Constantine exhaled a breath of smoke, eyes fixed warily on the divine creature. "You said you're looking for Death. You mean the Endless one, yeah? Pale, black clothes, more charm than any of us deserve?"
Mahoraga said nothing, but his head turned just slightly. His expression unreadable, a statue carved from silence.
"She doesn't show up for just anyone," Constantine muttered. "Not unless someone's dying, or supposed to be dead."
"I… died many times," Mahoraga said at last. His voice had that same abyssal calm, not deep out of power, but deep like eternity. "But I returned. Again. Again. Again."
"Resurrection?" Constantine asked. "You a bloody Lazarus Pit reject or something?"
"No. I adapt."
That word settled in the air like a prophecy. Constantine could feel it—this being wasn't just tough. He changed with every attack, with every wound, with every moment. Adapted not like a lizard to heat or a man to pain, but like a law rewriting itself to survive a new reality.
"Jesus wept…" Constantine whispered. "You're a walking paradox."
Mahoraga didn't respond. His gaze was fixed on something else—somewhere else. As if a thread of his awareness was still tethered far beyond this plane. He was not fully here. Not yet.
Then, without warning, the golden eyes closed. He dropped to one knee, and the wheel on his back spun faster—once, twice, then began glowing.
The world shifted.
---
Somewhere else—far above mortal realms, between the folds of space where dreams blend with final truths—Death of the Endless sat on a bench beneath a tree with no leaves. The stars above were not stars, but souls, blinking softly as they passed into her care.
She tilted her head as if hearing something faint in the distance.
A memory. A name. A presence long lost.
The air beside her shimmered like heat on pavement, and a whisper echoed on the wind.
"Mahoraga..."
Her expression—often unreadable, always calm—softened just slightly. She remembered him. Not as a lover, not yet, not fully. But as a presence… an ache in the flow of endings. Something long exiled from the chain of death and rebirth.
And now, he was here.
Death stood.
The leaves fell upward into the sky.
---
Back in Constantine's flat, Mahoraga opened his eyes. A thin trail of black blood dripped from one nostril. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, slowly standing once more.
"She remembers me."
"Who?" Constantine asked. "Death?"
"Yes."
"Well, congratulations, mate," John muttered, "you've officially got the Grim Reaper's attention. Hope it works out better for you than it usually does for the rest of us."
Mahoraga took another slow step forward. The wheel turned again, slower this time. As if time itself responded to it.
"I must reach her."
"Good luck with that," Constantine said, sighing and taking another drag. "She ain't exactly in the phone book."
But Mahoraga didn't seem to need directions. His body pulsed with a strange rhythm—his very atoms adjusting. He was adapting again.
To space.
To time.
To the rules of this world.
A blinding flash tore through the room as Mahoraga disappeared in an instant, leaving behind a room full of burnt symbols and smoldering curtains.
Constantine coughed through the smoke, rubbing his temples. "Yeah… that's going to be a problem."
---
Across dimensions, in the Hall of the Endless, Dream stood at his balcony, shadows coiling around him like living threads. His eyes—twin pits of starlight—narrowed.
"He is not from here," he said aloud, not to anyone in particular.
From behind him, Destiny turned a page in his massive book.
"He is not in this story," Destiny said, voice like rustling parchment. "Not yet."
"And Death?"
"She remembers him." Destiny's tone was almost curious. "Even when the universe does not."
"He will break the boundaries of this realm," Dream murmured. "Unless she stops him."
Destiny said nothing. The wheel on Mahoraga's back spun within the book, etched into the page where there had once been only white.
---
Mahoraga awoke in a forest that did not belong on any map.
The sky was an endless dusk, and the trees were tall and black, reaching into clouds that never moved. There was no wind, and yet the branches whispered like voices long dead.
He stepped through the trees slowly. Each footstep sent ripples through the earth—not of force, but of presence. The land accepted him, bent to him, feared him.
Then, at the edge of a cliff that overlooked nothing and everything, he saw her.
Death.
She stood barefoot, dressed in simple black. A silver ankh hung from her neck, gleaming softly. Her skin was pale, not from lifelessness, but from timelessness. Her eyes were deep, kind, impossibly old.
Mahoraga took a step forward. "You remember."
Death nodded. "I always do."
He looked at her, searching. "Why am I here?"
"I don't know," she said softly. "But I felt you. When the ritual tore a hole in the walls between worlds… when you bled through the void… I felt it."
He was silent for a moment. Then: "I was not meant to exist here."
"No. But you do."
"Do you wish me gone?"
Her gaze softened. "No."
The wheel slowed on his back. For the first time since arriving in this reality, it did not turn in defense or adaptation. It turned in recognition.
Mahoraga looked at her. "I crossed death many times. But you never came."
"I couldn't," she said. "You were beyond me. Your cycle—your world—it wasn't mine."
"But now… it is?"
She smiled faintly. "Now… we'll see."
A silence passed between them. Not awkward. Not threatening. Just the quiet that comes when two eternities meet for the first time in a thousand lifetimes.
"I want to stay," Mahoraga said.
"Then you must understand," Death replied. "This world has rules. And already, they've noticed you."
From the shadows beyond the trees, something moved—ancient, golden-eyed, and armored in green flame.
A voice boomed across the dreamscape.
"By divine right, by the balance of soul and sin, I—the Spectre—deliver judgment upon the anomaly that walks outside the Book of Destiny!"
Death sighed.
Mahoraga turned to face the Spectre, and his wheel began to spin.