During a lull in the war, the villains unite under Brainiac, who kills Earth-Two's Alexei Luthor while recruiting the Earth-One Lex Luthor to conquer the remaining Earths. The Anti-Monitor meanwhile creates a new body for himself, and tries to use an antimatter cannon to penetrate the limbo universe and destroy the five partially merged Earths. The Flash (Barry Allen) dies stopping this attempt. A furious Anti-Monitor absorbs the energy of millions of worlds and vows to travel back through time to prevent the creation of the multiverse. The Spectre unites the heroes and villains by warning them about the Anti-Monitor's plan; the heroes travel back in time to stop the Anti-Monitor, while the villains travel back in time to the ancient planet Oa to prevent renegade scientist Krona from creating the technology necessary for the Anti-Monitor's plan to succeed. The villains fail, and Krona continues his experiment. The Anti-Monitor waits for Alex Luthor to reopen the portal between the positive and antimatter universes, capturing the heroes, but a magically empowered Spectre creates an energy overload which shatters space and time. The five Earths merge into a single shared universe, and the superheroes return to the present; only those present at the dawn of time remember the original realities.