WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dark Nights Death Metal: Rise of the New God #1 by James Tynion IV, Jesus Merino, Vicente Cifuentes, and Ulises Arreola, on sale now.
The DC Multiverse has been destroyed and reborn multiple times over the years, pushing the heroes of those worlds to the absolute limit to save them. But there's little they can do stop the newest wave of destruction, which is just a side-effect by the sheer magnitude of perhaps this Multiverse's final battle.
The Darkest Knight has officially begun his final fight with Perpetua and the entire Multiverse might be destroyed in the process.
The battle between Perpetua and the Darkest Knight has been a long time coming. Ever since convincing her to turn her back on her previously chosen champion (Lex Luthor), the Batman Who Laughs was able to convince her to work within his plans for a recreated Multiverse. While she indulged in parts of it and gleefully destroyed many of the worlds that had previously made up the extended DC Multiverse, the Batman Who Laughs went to work on his plans, which includes taking control of a Batman who'd been bonded to the powers of Doctor Manhattan. After having his body killed by Wonder Woman, the Batman Who Laughs had his mind transferred into this more powerful form and essentially becoming an unstoppable reality-warping mad man.
Now, with Perpetua at her weakest thanks to the efforts of the remaining Multiversal heroes (and the betrayal of Owlman from Earth-3), the Darkest Knight has taken the time to strike. Coupled with the Crisis-Energy he tricked the heroes into bringing him, the Darkest Knight confronts Perpetua and confidently tells her that he intends to be the end of her. Their fight is on a galactic scale, with the pair using entire planets as mere weapons to attack the other. At one point, it even appears that the Darkest Knight has taken the Earth's sun into the palm of his hands, proving just how powerful and epic this battle has become.
It turns out their battle is more than just enough to wipe out the reality of Prime-Earth, however. All across the universe, every alien can feel the end being set into motion. The last of the multiversal heroes try to outrace the collapse of the Bleed, the space between realities. At the end of time itself, Rip Hunter and a handful of other time-travelers like Waverider watch as Hypertime, the potential paths the future could take, crumble apart into nothingness. Meanwhile, in the Sphere of the Gods, even the demonic and angelic forces of old watch in shock and horror as the Darkest Knight brings about the end of all things.
It's such a massive fight that the entire Multiverse will end as a result of it, thus setting up the Chronicler from the Omniverse to arrive. The Chronicler is sent through time and space to chart the final days of entire Multiverses, so perhaps their stories can live on and their legends can be remembered. To the Chronicler's shock, the raging battle is enough to cause the premature end of all things known in the DC Multiverse.
Previously, it has taken the machinations of forces like the Anti-Monitor, playing out over massive battles, to try and destroy the Multiverse, but now it seems a drag-out fight between two unstoppable forces might be enough to cause the end of all things. No worlds are safe, and there are only a few heroes remaining who could figure out a way to win the day.