To begin at the end.
It wasn't the thing that came from that other world, that other universe, that killed their world. How could it? It was an impossibly advanced piece of technology, true, but it was harmless. Later on, the survivors would discover that it was a probe, designed to burrow through the pinholes of reality and explore other dimensions. Merely a scientific endeavor. Completely benign.
No, what killed their world were the things that came after.
These things had no name. They dwelled in a place that had no need for names, or anything at all. Their universe contained one thing only, and that was themselves. Ancient, shapeless, dead to every thought and emotion but hate. When the probe shot through their dimension, they sensed it. Reached out, tasted, and
followed. Used whatever primal cancerous power they had inside them to tear the pinhole wide, and spilled through into the world.
Now, this world wasn't defenseless. Its dominant species, humanity, knew war. Had known it its entire brief existence. And among that species were certain individuals with incredible abilities, and they used those abilities for both good and evil. For miraculous feats of self-sacrifice and depravity. But mostly they used those abilities to beat the shit out of each other in totally sweet fight scenes whenever they met.
So when the things from that other place came through -- all darkness and teeth -- well this world, with all its military and all its missiles, its nations and institutions, its super-heroes and super-villains, fought back. And considering how unprepared they were for anything like this, they did a damned good job. Its countries forgot age-old atrocities and joined forces for the first time in history. The superhumans abandoned the strictly held tenets of moral alignment to battle the invaders alongside their arch-enemies.
For six years the planet shook. For six years humanity devoted itself to total war. Every citizen, every resource, and every minute of every day was arrayed beneath a banner of resistance. For six years they fought and killed and died.
But mostly they died. With great effort and loss the invaders could be killed, true, but they simply could not be stopped. They were too strong and fearless, too incomprehensible and too adaptable, too great in number and too full of hate to be stopped. They turned the world into a cracked shell. Entire nations,
continents, were reduced to ash. The dried ocean floors were carpeted with the dead. Cities gaped like open wounds. And here and there were remnants of those iconic figures whose great powers and abilities defined their final age: a shredded cowl, a broken shield, an empty power ring.
But after six years, after the monsters had had their fill and moved on to find other worlds to slaughter, there were some who managed to outlast them. A few hundred thousand people survived, scattered around what remained of the planet. And whether through sheer power or skill, intelligence or determination, or whether they were just that damn lucky or just that damn tough, a very few superhumans had survived with them.
And while the rest of humanity set out to find each other in the new wildernesses, these few superhumans, heroes and villains alike, gathered together and forged in the rage of their loss a new and unbreakable mandate: They would do what they could for their people, and then they would find whoever was responsible for leading those creatures to their world, and make them
answer.