Parting was bitter, but sometimes bitterness was the price of a better future.
Henry Allen left Central City behind, carrying his grief with him to Coast City, where he would stay with his brother, Jay Garrick.
Barry, meanwhile, moved into Joe West’s house.
The West family welcomed him with warmth, though Iris was heartbroken when she learned the truth of Barry’s predicament.
She cried for him, grieved for him, and Barry—though torn apart inside—tried to show her the same resilience he showed everyone else.
The Wests became his second family, filling his days with light in a world that felt suddenly too dark.
But time is cruel.
It moves forward like a mighty river, caring nothing for who it carries or what it drowns.
Barry tried his best to let it sweep him away.
He buried himself in learning, in routine.
Even so, the nightmares of that night clawed at him in the quiet hours.
When Alex Danvers and her family heard the news, they rushed to Central City.
Alex clung to Barry the moment she saw him, sobbing into his shoulder.
The Danvers had met Nora and Henry Allen before.
The thought of Henry being accused horrified them.
They offered Barry every kind of help they could, but he declined with polite gratitude.
His parents had left enough savings to support him for a while, and he had ideas—plans—that could grow it into something greater.
Eliza Danvers left with a single plea: call us, if you ever need us.
School resumed.
Barry and Iris returned to the classroom, though Barry’s teachers quickly noticed the change in him.
His eyes no longer lit up as they once had.
His smile, when it came, seemed tempered.
They chalked it up to grief and let him be.
Years passed.
The nightmares remained.
Barry would wake in cold sweat, heart hammering, but he forced himself to look ahead.
He knew what awaited him—what he was destined to become: The Flash, the fastest man alive.
Memories from before the void guided him; fragments of the TV show he had once watched.
He scribbled them down, trying to hold on to what he could.
But this world was not the same as the show.
There were differences—the Danvers family, his father’s altered fate, his own changed reflection.
Kara Zor-El lived here, adopted by the Danvers.
And if there was Kara, then there had to be a Superman.
Yet not everything was new.
Queen Consolidated still stood in Starling City, led by Robert Queen.
Oliver Queen existed, too.
Gotham still whispered about the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.
Metropolis still housed the Luthor empire.
The parallels were both comforting and ominous.
Barry didn’t dwell too much on what was coming.
With the strange knowledge and sharpened mind the abyssal space had left him, he could navigate this universe—and whatever multiverse stretched beyond it.
Still, the proof of that abyss lingered on his skin: a scar etched on his left hand, shaped like a serpent devouring its own tail, an infinity loop.
It was not the Speed Force, of that he was certain.
Whatever it was, it was changing him.
His body grew stronger.
His mind, sharper.
He found himself immune to poisons, to alcohol, to things that should have left him vulnerable.
Joe’s fury the night he caught Barry drinking from his stash had been nothing compared to the silent alarm Barry felt when he realized liquor no longer touched him.
He even tested himself against toxins in secret.
Each one failed.
And then there was Eobard Thawne—wearing Harrison Wells’s face.
The news broke of the accident, of Tess Morgan’s tragic death.
Barry knew better.
The name alone ignited something dark in him.
Rage.
Hatred.
A fury so deep it frightened even him.
But he buried it, smothered it under patience.
Death would be too kind a fate for Thawne.
Barry swore he would make him beg for it.
And for a moment, if someone had looked into Barry’s eyes, they would not have seen the boy they knew—they would have seen the darkness he fought to keep chained.
That fury drove him.
By fifteen, Barry had finished both middle school and high school.
A year later, he completed a full course load in college—Biology, Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry—fields that would have crushed ordinary students.
He excelled with ease, stunning both Iris and Joe.
At the same time, he founded ARON Investments, a tribute to his mother.
With knowledge of the future, he placed bets on giants before they rose—Facebook, Twitter, Google, Tesla.
His wealth grew as steadily as his resolve.
Life continued.
Henry visited from time to time, and father and son shared laughter again, though always with the quiet weight of Nora’s absence between them.
Eventually, Barry told Joe he needed to leave Central City for a while.
To see the world.
To understand what was different.
Joe refused at first, afraid to lose the boy who had brought so much warmth into his home.
Barry had become family, lightening their dinners with gentle jokes, caring for Iris like a brother, offering Joe a bond deeper than obligation.
But in time, Joe relented.
Barry promised he would return in two or three years at most.
His journey began in Midvale.
Alex and Kara welcomed him with open arms, and for weeks they were inseparable.
Barry helped Kara learn to control her powers, and she, in turn, taught him about Krypton.
He even picked up her language, easing her loneliness in ways she never thought possible.
From there, he traveled to Coast City, staying with his father, who had opened a small clinic.
Henry was happy, or tried to be, though Barry saw the grief still buried deep.
While there, Barry crossed paths with Carol Ferris, heir to Ferris Aircraft.
Their relationship was unexpected but undeniable.
Together, they solved a problem with a new aircraft engine.
Barry patented his research and shared it with her, catapulting Ferris Aircraft into the forefront of aerospace technology.
His investments in the company only grew his fortune.
Next was Starling City, where Barry stayed briefly with Jean Loring, supporting her firm with his investments.
Robert Queen invited him into a project on efficient energy production, intrigued by Barry’s research.
Barry agreed—it was mutually beneficial.
Meeting Moira, Thea, and Oliver Queen was… an experience in itself.
But then Barry set his sights somewhere far more dangerous: Lian Yu.
The island where Oliver once suffered, and where death lurked in every shadow.
Barry braved the journey for two prizes—the Mirakuru serum, and the Orb of Horus.
His body was already faster, stronger, tougher than the greatest athletes.
But he wanted more.
Survival.
Endurance.
A body that could resist heat, cold, and shock as easily as it resisted poison.
At the time, Lian Yu was still used by the Chinese government to imprison dangerous men, under the command of Edward Fyers.
Barry slipped past them, finding the crashed submarine where the Mirakuru was stored.
Twenty vials lay within.
He took fifteen.
The Orb was harder.
Without magic of his own, Barry built a device to detect subtle electromagnetic disturbances—echoes of spiritual energy.
Even so, it was his mind, sharpened by the abyss, that allowed him to resist its pull.
Eventually, he unearthed it, sealing it in a special insulated case.
Barry remained on Lian Yu for six long months.
Days bled into nights of training, of survival, of combat.
Disguised, he prowled among killers and mercenaries, throwing himself into fights that pushed his body to its breaking point.
He wasn’t a boy anymore—he was shaping himself into something else, something harder.
Reckless?
Yes.
Dangerous?
Absolutely.
But experience could not be gained in the safety of theory.
And Barry needed experience.
Word spread among the prisoners and smugglers.
A shadow fighter who didn’t kill but left men broken.
Some whispered in fear, others in awe.
They called him the Beater.
His mind, honed by the abyss, processed every martial art he encountered—stances, strikes, patterns.
But knowledge alone wasn’t enough.
It was only through blood, bruises, and repetition against hardened criminals that Barry turned knowledge into instinct.
When he finally decided there was nothing left to learn from the island, he prepared to leave.
Before departing, he sought out a man—Yao Fei, the very one who would someday guide Oliver Queen.
Their meeting stretched into long conversations, Barry asking questions, listening to stories, planting seeds in the hope of altering Yao Fei’s fate.
That tale, however, would belong to another time.
For now, Barry had what he came for.
Nearly a year had passed since he left Central City.
At seventeen years old, he was returning stronger, sharper, and more determined.
But before he could move forward, there was work to be done.
He relocated to his secret lab in National City.
The Mirakuru serum he had recovered could not be studied in the crude wilderness of Lian Yu.
Here, surrounded by his equipment, he began dissecting it.
The records from the original timeline described the serum as a force that enhanced strength, speed, stamina, durability, and senses to superhuman levels—while agility and reflexes capped at peak human ability.
It granted accelerated healing, though limited.
A severed limb remained severed.
Worse, it twisted minds—making subjects impulsive, aggressive, and unstable.
And even if one survived the injection—chances no better than fifty-fifty—the price was steep.
But Barry wasn’t just any scientist.
In the void, he had mastered human genetic modification in ways this world hadn’t touched.
Within a month, he reverse-engineered the serum’s base formula.
Its flaws were obvious: a product of limited wartime science.
He corrected its incompatibilities with the human genome, altered its metabolic pathways to make it digestible and stable.
Half the work was done.
The other half required something far more dangerous—exposure to radiation to stabilize the cellular matrix.
He started with gamma radiation.
It worked.
But not well enough.
Barry wasn’t looking for good enough.
He wanted perfection.
And so, he reached further.
Beyond gamma, beyond the known spectrum—to the Omega Source.
This universe had it.
Which meant there existed a villain worse than the Anti-Monitor.
Barry’s blood ran cold at the thought, but curiosity and ambition pressed him forward.
Harnessing Omega radiation was not simple—it was chaos incarnate, difficult to trap, dangerous to even approach.
Barry built devices from scratch, burning through prototypes, failures, near-fatal accidents.
Finally, after endless trials, he succeeded.
A minuscule amount of Omega energy was collected.
Small in quantity—yet infinitely more powerful than gamma radiation.
He irradiated the serum.
The reaction was violent, but when it settled, the transformation was complete.
The serum shimmered with a deep, dangerous purple.
He called it the Omega Serum.
The earlier gamma-irradiated version had been strong.
The Omega version was ten times stronger.
Now he needed a delivery system.
Injection through the skin wouldn’t work.
Swallowing it was worse.
The serum had to be bonded directly into his bone marrow.
Designing the system was easy compared to capturing Omega energy.
Finally, the preparation was ready.
The purple liquid glowed faintly in its containment.
Permanent.
Unforgiving.
Barry braced himself.
He had tested the formula against his own genetic sequence a dozen times.
Each result came back promising.
Yet no simulation could prepare him for reality.
He gritted his teeth and plunged forward.
The pain was indescribable.
Imagine the most excruciating agony you’ve ever felt.
Multiply it by a hundred.
By a thousand.
And even that fell short.
His body convulsed, screaming with every cell.
Disintegration.
Reconstruction.
The Omega radiation burned him apart and rebuilt him at once.
He screamed until his voice was raw, but the room was soundproof.
No one heard.
No one could.
Unseen by Barry, the mark on his left hand glowed with a blinding black light, the serpent devouring its tail.
His genetic matrix expanded, adapting, stabilizing, evolving.
The abyss was guiding him.
Hours dragged into eternity.
Then, silence.
Barry collapsed into darkness, unconscious, his body reborn.
When his eyes opened, he was back in the abyssal space.
Fear gripped him.
For a heartbeat he thought he was trapped again.
But this time was different.
When he thought of leaving, he woke up in the real world.
Relief swept through him.
The first sensation was hunger.
An unbearable hunger.
He devoured everything he could find, clearing out three Belly Burger restaurants until their kitchens ran dry.
Only then did the gnawing emptiness subside.
And then he assessed himself.
The changes were undeniable.
He could see into his body—an internal vision that mapped muscle, blood, and bone.
His strength, agility, perception, senses—everything had multiplied.
Conservatively, five times stronger than the peak human condition he had already achieved.
He wasn’t just enhanced.
He was superhuman.
And yet, he knew this wasn’t his limit.
His healing factor, too, was transformed.
He hadn’t tested it yet, but genetic analysis confirmed what his instincts told him: his cells now spontaneously produced stem cells, meaning he could regenerate limbs, even organs.
The Orb of Horus was next.
Barry studied it carefully.
It was a vessel, containing a strange, tainted energy.
Magic.
Not pure, not whole—corrupted.
The inscriptions within were ancient, written in Coptic, recording fragments of Egyptian magic.
A grimoire, hidden within an artifact.
If purified, Barry wondered, could he absorb that energy himself?