PROLOGUE: EMERALD MORNINGSTAR

He really was the best.

He IS the best.

If anyone needed a more on the nose showing, they'd never get one so clear. He stood in the black expanse of space. Between sectors left broken and without their green-guardians.

His power burned like a star in supernova. Green fissures of light flowed from every inch of him. Steam and sparks danced on his knuckles where power-rings once belonging to others adorned many of his fingers.

Others like Boddika. The warrior-princess turned space-cop. She was a deadly combatant. Evidence shown in the red lines cut into Hal's everchanging suit. It was once a suit— skintight second skin, that embodied hope and safety. Now it was growing. Shifting into armor. Something crude and violent.

Since their battle, he ran through even more— with even more ease. Like Adara and Arisia. The dutiful new recruits. Recruited by Hal himself. He was their hero. If he wasn't so masked by trauma and loss, their faces in defeat would've been etched into his mind forever. Perhaps they still will be.

But not at the moment.

Not while he stood across from a twelve foot tall titan of a bolovaxian with enough muscle to make bodybuilders look anorexic.

He used to terrify Hal. Back in his training days. Back when his greatest fears were not blocking a left hook or energy blast.

He wasn't afraid anymore. There was no need for bravery. He wasn't afraid. He'd experienced his worst fears and then some.

Everything else was a cakewalk.

Even Kilowog.

"You don't wanna do this, chump." His voice was hard— gravely.

"THEY did this!" Hal raged.

"We all got a job….. you know this."

"I'm tired of this. When does the job become a cage we can't escape? Why do we accept it? We have limitless power— the single greatest weapon in the universe, and were relegated to….. goddamn rules! Those rules are a cage. They're the reason Coast-City is nothing more than a crater— I couldn't save them or bring them back because of RULES. ITS ALL BURNED! MY LIFE is ash!... and the Guardians started the fire. It's in me now."

"Then let me be your extinguisher." Kilowog took up his fighting stance, sniffling away the tear rolling down his pink skin.

Hal charged him with a roar.

Kilowog conjured a massive shield just in time to block the forty foot tall construct of a boxing glove heading straight for him.

"Damn."

The fist hit and his construct shattered like green glass. He rolled through space among the shards until they faded to smoke.

He got his bearings and took flight. Adrenaline flooded his muscled limbs instantly.

As he flew, he looked back and fired, attempting to keep the pressure on Hal. To do his job.

Only Hal wasn't there.

"Give me your ring, Kilowog!" Hal yelled from in front of him. Twenty constructs of ultra-militarized f-22 fighter jets hovered above him. Their mounted turrets took aim.

Before Kilowog could even react he was carpet bombed by gunfire.

The mushroom cloud of green smoke could be seen across planets.

Kilowog floated aimlessly in silence. Uniform torn, as if it was made of cloth. How could one be hit so hard the very physical make up of their clothing changed?

He slipped in and out of conciousness. Thick meaty jaws slack and bruised by construct blasts. He was missing a tusk.

"That's a first…" He thought.

Then another first came.

Hal stood over him. Victorious.

He aimed his four ringers. They glowed like a green sun. Like a dark sun. An omen of the end.

"Your ring. Don't make me repeat myself."

Kilowog held out his hand, weakly, shaking as blood spilled from his wounds. He didn't notice it before but his arm was so broken that shards of bone floated around it in the endless vacuum they occupied.

Hal flew down and approached his ring-bearing hand. A hand that saved lives and taught youngsters the art of combat.

Youngsters like Hal.

He was never Kilowog's best student. In a way, that's what made him the greatest Green-Lantern. He was always too confident in himself. It made him open to mistakes Kilowog was hard wired to catch and exploit.

Even now.

Hal grabbed his arm, entirely too focused on the ring. Open. Exposed. So sure he'd won. At the same time, with his final semblances of energy, Kilowog swung around and caught his wrist with his only good hand.

Even then, Kilowog saw no fear.

Even as he ripped off the hand of Hal Jordan. Leaving him powerless in the vacuum of space.

Blood spilling and skin freezing.

No fear.

Only a deep rooted— blinding, sadness.

Then the rage came, like the quiet before the storm.

As he suffocated and froze and bled out, he raged. He raged at the loss of his people. At the memory of his father never having been proud of his son. At cheating on the love of his life. At Mongul the tyrant and killer. Darksied. Steppenwolf. Sinestro. At the justice league. At himself and what he needed to do. All the lanterns he betrayed.

So much rage.

Kilowog watched in horror as the read beacon flew like a homing missile. Zipping and dashing through an asteroid belt surrounding a moon to the south. Blasting through a meteor and dwarf planet, leaving a path of fiery destruction in its wake.

Quite symbolic.

Hal felt it coming.

He willed it.

"NO!"

Hal held out his only good hand, letting the red power-ring of rage slip onto his finger.

"[Hal Jordan of Earth. You hold insurmountable rage in your heart. You belong to the Red Lantern Corps.]"

Hal roared. An endless fountain of burning plasma flowed. He aimed his stump at Kilowog and fired a stream of volcanic plasma blood.

Kilowog brought up a shield, backing away as the blood of a fallen hero burned through. At the same time, he fitted on the last of the extra rings. Only then realizing most of them were out of power.

"You did all this….. with no charge?"

Hal charged, tackling Kilowog head on. They rolled through space. Kilowog punched him in the nose, breaking it with ease. He went to punch again.

Hal shielded himself in red and head butted Kilowog's fist, causing it to snap at the wrist.

"ACK!"

With his only good hand, Hal hammered away at the bolovaxian's face.

Again, again, again until they landed on a desolate dry planet of endless desert tidal waves.

Hal rolled from the crash. Fiery blood crystallizing the sand into glass in his wake.

Like a fiend, he got to his feet and made a run for Kilowog.

"Greenie, don't make me kill you!" Kilowog fired and conjured an array of weighted chains around the red juggernaut. The blast of green ripped through his stomach. The chains slowed him until they melted away. He kept running, not bothering to guard himself.

Kilowog tried to get to his feet but Hal fired a blast, throwing the red energy like it was a baseball. It crashed at his feet, turning the ground to glass. He fell through. Burning shards dug into his skin where his suit was torn.

Before he could recover Hal was on him. He screamed magma.

Kilowog brought up his busted arm to defend, encased in a second layer of armor thanks to his rings.

He didn't hear his own screams. But he felt them as his arm was vaporized followed by half of his face.

Half blind and without an arm, he tried again for a shield. He willed it.

Hal vomited hell-fire.

Kilowog's shield steamed and cracked. He raised his fist. "You're still my student, chump. And I got a final lesson for ya…"

He sat up, pushing against the end.

"In brightest day….. In blackest night. No evil…. shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evils might…." He stood, pushing back Hal as all four of his rings glowed like the stars above.

Then, the plasma volley stopped. Hal's hand rested on Kilowog's shield. For the first time, he looked coherent. Which shouldn't have been possible. He was wearing a red ring. Red Lanterns couldn't gain sentience until they entered the pool on Ysmault.

Kilowog's words echoed.

"Let those who worship evils might…."

His power was fading.

"Beware my power, green lanterns light." Hal finished the oath. "Lesson learned. There is nothing more you can teach me."

Hal's red ring vibrated and twisted, shifting into another green power-ring. His suit morphed, taking on its old form. A construct of a hand cut off the bleeding on his stump.

Kilowog hadn't blinked in what felt like years.

"You just changed a power-ring purely on will-power….."

"You don't win this, Kilowog."

Kilowog dropped his head and laughed. "You and that damn ego. Don't worry, I'll knock you down to size like alw—"

The blast ripped through his chest. One quick and silent shot in space. Heard nowhere.

Kilowog looked up at Hal. The tears flowed but he made no sign of anything more. His sights were already on Oa.

***

They crash landed. Kilowog's body, naked and beaten and burned and other things better left unsaid.

Hal walked through the empty— destroyed, city with rings on each finger and six around his neck.

The central power battery sat at the end of the city like a monument.

The Guardians stood in front of him. Waiting for him.

He flew to them. Clearing the ten mile distance in seconds.

The blue dwarves eyed him with stern overgrown white eyebrows.

"Hal—"

He raised his fist to fire on the first Guardian— only to be blasted out of the way by someone else.

Seconds later, he was climbing out of the rubble of a collapsed apartment complex to find an impossibility.

"We knew no one new could take you down, so we enlisted the help of an old ally." The Guardians said in unison.

"Sinestro." Hal snarled.

"Jordan. You're getting old, friend. A little insane as well. Not to worry. I'm known to instill discipline quite well." He raised his newly gained green lantern ring.

The two went to war.

Every hit birthed an old memory of an old battle. The greatest of the greens versus the creator of the yellows.

Fear and will.

Old and new.

Tyranny versus liberation.

Hal won.

Sinestro stood no chance. He was old. Down about twenty rings and without the boosting effect of intense— very recent, trauma.

Oa lay in waste. Reminding him of Coast-City. The two blended in flashes, everytime he blinked. The one thing that never changed was the Guardians.

Always there.

Watching.

Holding him back.

Stopping him from saving his people.

They huddled, exchanging items and whispering about some last hope— wherever they may be. Then a Guardian fled.

Hal didn't care. He'd find him. He'd find him and do to him what he'd do to the others.

"You did this."

"And for that we are so sorry." The Guardians charged.

Hal did the same.

From the greatest to the gravest. The Morningstar had fallen, cast out of the heavenly kingdom of oa for his hubris and rage and pain and daring nature to be different. Legacy left in ruin. Lanterns left at their lowest. Exterminated.

No green lights danced across the skies any more. Will had waned.

Except for one. A little star in a big sky. In over its head. Alone. Afraid. Guided by the last Guardian of the Fallen Oa.

Fittingly, it headed straight for earth….

"You WILL save us all. Whoever you are."