He had been so close. Victory had been so close.

Dominion over Earthrealm, a chance to greatly expand his empire and acquire new technologies in the process. It was to be his victory, his destiny. He had seen it.

Though he hid his knowledge of them, he had received visions. Visions of a future where his victory was absolute. Where he stood atop a pyramid overlooking what was to be the greatest empire in the history of the realms.

These visions had affected his decisions. Prevented him from believing Goro died after Liu Kang's tournament victory. Motivated him to be rid of future traitors like Kitana and Shang Tsung at the soonest opportunity, and to strengthen the magic which controlled Sindel. To seek an alliance with the original Lin Kuei and send additional warriors to his two tournaments.

But the visions also allowed him to become arrogant. He believed his victory assured, and was enraged when victory did not come to him. Ultimately, the realization that he still needed to work towards his destiny came too late.

And those blasted Elder Gods used Raiden as their vessel to purge him.

And the reign of Shao Kahn came to an end.

And yet, he did not.

For about 22 years, darkness. A force pushing him down, suppressing him. Shao Kahn attempted to fight back against whatever this force was, but to no avail. He was able to surface on sparse occasions. He tried using his will to gain control of whatever it was that was around him. But still, nothing. Finally, after so much darkness, Shao Kahn awoke in a familiar palace. He was in… Edenia? This could not be! He had conquered this realm 10,00 years ago!

Shao Kahn sat up and noticed that he was not alone in the room. A dark-skinned man in yellow and black robes with short hair looked at him, waiting, it seemed. His arms were patiently folded in front of him and his expression neutral.

Shao Kahn stood up and glared at the man.

"Where am I?! What is this!?" He demanded.

"Greetings Shao Kahn, I am Edenia's ambassador to new realms," the man introduced himself. "Please, follow me."

"This must be some manner of trickery," Shao Kahn decided. "Edenia is mine. You are my servant. Your title of 'ambassador' was lost with your realm."

"It was not the only thing that was lost." The man corrected.

"Enough of your riddles, explain yourself!" Shao Kahn demanded. "I am your ruler, answer me!"

"No. You are not." The man responded. He spoke with complete calm, a demeanor which seemed to never break.

Shao Kahn lunged at the man, who seemed to disappear right before he could grasp his throat. Shao Kahn turned around to find the man behind him.

"Traitorous Edenian," the emperor complained. "I should have simply killed you when I took your rea-"

And then it hit him.

"Wait… I remember you now…." Shao Kahn recalled. "I did kill you."

"We battled while my wife and daughter narrowly escaped with their lives," the man recounted. "I, my own parents, my brothers and sisters, all perished trying to defend the palace from you. It is ironic-"

"What is!?" Shao Kahn yelled. "That I, the emperor of an entire realm, and a weakling like you, would share the same wretched afterlife?!"

"This is no afterlife. And no," the man answered. "The irony is that my own daughter would find happiness and love… in the arms of yours."

"So is that the game?" Shao Kahn asked. "Manipulate Mileena for your own ends? Taint my lineage?"

"There is no malice in my daughter's actions," the man responded. "No trickery, no deceit, no manipulation. Just love. Something you could never understand."

"Love is for the weak." Shao Kahn said bitterly.

"It is a shame that the Elder Gods created so few of you so-called 'protectors' with the capability to understand love," The man lamented. "But for you, Shao Kahn, it no longer matters. Please, follow me."

"Why should I do anything you say, welp?" Shao Kahn asked.

"Firstly, because as you have already discovered, you cannot harm me," the man answered. "Secondly, because your trial awaits."

Shao Kahn burst out laughing.

"My trial!?" He repeated. "You must be joking."

"You were summoned here for a purpose." The man told him.

"Nobody 'summons' Shao Kahn." The emperor said stubbornly.

"Then I am sure it pleases the Elder Gods to be the first," the man concluded. "Come."

The doors to the next room swung open seemingly of their own will.

The man calmly entered the room. Weighing his options and seeing no obvious method to escape… whatever this was, Shao Kahn was far too curious to do anything but follow.

The room suddenly dematerialized. Shao Kahn found himself seemingly in a void. Suddenly, light burst from the void. The green glow of souls. Thousands of them. Shao Kahn found that he himself had been reduced to a soul, one which glowed an angry red.

One soul floated into his view.

King Jerrod.

"You," Shao Kahn recognized. "Of course you would be high and mighty enough to put me on 'trial' for my crimes."

"We have already reached our verdict." Jerrod revealed.

"Oh?" Shao Kahn questioned. "Is it not the rules of your pathetic realm that I receive a chance to 'defend' myself?"

"Your actions cannot be defended," Jerrod proclaimed. "Nor will they be. You are responsible for the enslavement and damnation of countless souls. The ten thousand gathered here are but a modest number of the lives you've torn apart."

"Ten thousand..." Then it hit him. "Ermac."

"Yes," the ten thousand souls answered in unison. "The Elder Gods have deemed us your prison. A prison made from your victims."

"Then the Elder Gods are even more foolish than I thought," Shao Kahn decided. "You were made to serve me, Ermac. No force in the universe can change that."

"Care to test that theory?" Asked the souls.

Before Shao Kahn could even respond, he suddenly found himself in a village. It was burning.

Shao Kahn smirked. His extermination squads at work.

"We have been given the right to judge you," came Ermac's voices. "You will receive the same 'kindness' you have given to us."

Right. They were showing him this. But why?

The answer became clear when a Tarkatan grabbed him and pulled him out from where he hid.

"Look, a survivor!" The Tarkatan announced.

Shao Kahn recognized Motaro instantly.

"Motaro, tell this mongrel to stand down! I am your emperor!" Shao Kahn demanded.

But Motaro couldn't hear him. No one could.

"The emperor ordered there to be no survivors." Motaro spoke.

The Tarkatan extended his blades and skewered Shao Kahn. And he felt every last bit of pain from the blow as everything went black.

Then, he found himself running along a large plain, surrounded by centaurs. Upon close inspection, he himself was now a centaur.

Shao Kahn looked ahead, and saw an army of Shokan charging from the opposite direction.

The two armies clashed and Shao Kahn found himself being overwhelmed by a Shokan warrior. He lunged forward with the spear in his hand, but the Shokan grabbed it with both right arms and snapped it like a twig.

The Shokan then grabbed the centaur by its horns with both upper arms.

"Weak centaur," the Shokan said disdainfully. "It is the Shokan who will forever be Shao Kahn's favored race!"

And then the Shokan tore his head off by the horns. The pain Shao Kahn felt from this was excruciating.

Then he was a woman in Edenia, cowering with her children in front of a demolished house. A towering Tormentor stomped overhead like a Kaiju in Earthrealm cinema.

"Close your eyes, children," came the woman's voice.

"We'll be with your father soon."

The Tormentor smashed through a building, debris came crashing down…

And they were crushed.

Shao Kahn then found himself a Naknadan, carrying large stones on a cliffside for what would become the Kolosseum.

The stones were immensely heavy, moving slow. Even with six arms, it was a struggle.

"Move, slave!" Demanded one of the emperor's soldiers, cracking a whip which created a searing pain in Shao Kahn's back.

Even worse, it unbalanced him and caused him to fall down the cliff.

The emperor watched himself fall.

And then the sudden stop.

Then he was an Edenian warrior fighting in Mortal Kombat.

Facing him was a Masked Guard.

"This will be easy." Shao Kahn thought.

He was rushed and impaled by a naginata before he could even land a punch.

It continued like this for all the years that followed. Endlessly. Experiencing the fates of all those who had been forced into the Ermac collective. He felt their pain every single time. But only their physical pain. Like any true monster, he carried no remorse.

But throughout this he could see events progressing through the collective. See Reiko attempt to continue his work. See Mileena fight against Kotal Kahn alongside her love Tanya. See Kotal Kahn be fooled into believing the soul collective was loyal to him.

See Ermac being savagely beaten in a wintery forest by Jacqui Briggs.

"Fight back!" He shouted.

"We took her father's arms, remember?" Came the collective's voices. "She deserves retribution. All of your victims do."

And then it was back into the cycle.

He found himself as some manner of rebel, his encampment being torn through by a blood-starved Skarlet. It was only a matter of time before Shao Kahn found himself gutted by her blades.

Then he was a prisoner in the dungeons. His crime long forgotten. Shao Kahn saw his executioner, a man as large as the emperor himself, raising a massive axe to cleave the prisoner's head off.

His eyes remained open as the head fell into a bucket below. Seconds later, brain death.

Then he was a Kahn Guard soldier. A woman, alongside her husband, also a soldier. They were shouting at Shang Tsung. Something about what he had done to their daughter. A confused Ferra looked on from the background mounted atop Torr.

Shao Kahn had almost forgotten about the experiment.

"Why don't you let your daughter decide for herself?" Shang Tsung asked with a devilish grin. He turned to the symbiote.

"Ferra, Torr. Kill." He commanded.

Torr lumbered over and grabbed both Shao Kahn in the form of Ferra's mother and her father by their heads.

"Squash!" Proclaimed Ferra.

She had no memory of them. It was like they were complete strangers.

And then Torr crushed their heads.

Then he was a messenger. In Tarkata.

"Shao Kahn doesn't give us food!" Baraka was shouting in his face. "He starves us to use our ferocity to his advantage! But if we cannot feed, we cannot survive!"

The messenger was about to reply, but the other Tarkatans were clearly far too starved. In spite of Baraka's protest, they tore him limb from limb and feasted upon him.

Shao Kahn then found himself a Kytinn. Their hive was burning around him. Soldiers were wiping out every last Kytinn they saw.

Then spikes smashed into the side of Shao Kahn's head. He fell to the ground and looked up to see Reiko, holding a spiked club and glaring at him with cold indifference.

Shao Kahn could feel his wounds healing. Little bugs repairing this body.

Reiko was prepared for this. He held a torch in his other hand. He threw it onto the Kytinn. The flames spread quickly. But the burning was a long agony.

Next he was flying over Edenia as some kind of humanoid avian. He vaguely recalled an Edenian warrior named Aasgarth whom he had imprisoned to interrogate. He wasn't sure if he ever got around to it, but more vividly recalled culling the numbers of this species after the conquest due to uprising.

But this particular individual was clearly some form of defender, launching a spear which went through the head of a Tormentor. Was it the same one that had crushed that family?

It didn't matter. A Kytinn caught up to the avian and stabbed into Shao Kahn's current body with their stingers.

He fell from the sky bleeding, before he hit the ground.

Then, he was a Saurian staring right at a pile of corpses. More Saurians.

Zaterra.

This Saurian attempted to fight back, but his hands were bound and one of Kahn's soldiers ran him through with a sword before much could be done.

Then he was a vampire being forced through a portal, punishment for some offense to the emperor. On the other end was Earthrealm.

It was broad daylight and the vampire burned to death in agony. Alone.

Then it was Edenia again. Shao Kahn was in the body of a child, crying beside dead parents.

Two soldiers of his empire walked in, their armor and weapons stained with blood.

"I told you I heard something." Said one of them.

"Should we leave him? He's just a kid." Asked the other.

"A kid who could grow up to rebel against the emperor." The first argued.

"Good point." Conceded the second.

The soldier lifted a mace and bludgeoned the child to death. Shao Kahn felt every moment of pain.

Then Shao Kahn found himself a lifetime ago. He was a soldier of the Dragon King's empire, facing down the new regime: himself.

"You murdered emperor Onaga!" Shouted the soldier.

"He is emperor no more," the Shao Kahn of this memory responded. "Bow before me or die."

The soldier attempted to fight. Shao Kahn knew this was folly, and soon felt his own hand grabbing the soldier by the throat and snapping his neck.

The next moment Shao Kahn was a Kytinn again, being impaled on Sindel's Kwan Dao during the conquest of Edenia.

Then he was a Tarkatan facing an Earthrealm warrior with a crossbow in Mortal Kombat. He was charging at the warrior until an arrow pierced his head.

Then another Naknadan. Dying of severe exhaustion, starvation, and thirst during the construction of the emperor's own palace.

He found himself glad he needed neither food nor water. A small gift of his former status as Outworld's Protector God.

Still, it seemed to take him an eternity to die.

Then he was a member of the Edenian Resistance. Thrown into the arena and mauled viciously by HighEnas for the entertainment of the emperor's troops.

Then Shao Kahn came to be in his own courtyard. He was in the body of some manner of assassin, sneaking their way through the courtyard to get to the emperor himself and kill him.

The assassin approached a gigantic stone statue in Shao Kahn's likeness.

The emperor instantly knew what fate he would be subject to by way of this assassin's memories.

The statue's eyes suddenly began to glow red. The statue began… moving. It stepped off its pedestal and lumbered towards the assassin.

The assassin tried to run, only to be crushed underfoot by the Shao Kahn statue.

The emperor felt each and every bone shatter.

Then he was a fisherman, protesting the Kahn Guard's seizing of his land.

The soldiers responded by cutting off his arms and legs one by one, and then throwing him into the lake to drown.

Another agonizingly slow death.

Shao Kahn then found himself in the very situation he had been expecting to be put through the moment this madness started.

He was in the body of King Jerrod. Every detail exactly as he remembered it. Feet frozen in place, a worried young daughter, a wife arriving to aid in the fight too late.

And his own Wrath Hammer coming down and crushing the head he now occupied. It was faster than many of the other deaths, but hardly less painful.

Then he was in the body of a Shokan. Crushed during a collapse in the Cobalt Mines.

Shao Kahn barely paid attention to the pain. After experiencing Jerrod's death, he had an epiphany. He finally understood the purpose of this cycle.

And he laughed. Even as he was put through the fate of some poor fool who fell into the acid pit at the Dead Pool.

"Ermac!" Shao Kahn shouted. "I know what you're doing!"

The soul collective didn't respond. They were far from finished.

The body of a Masked Guard. Blood drained by a vampire rebel.

The body of a scout for his army. Mauled by a TaiGore in a dense forest.

"Answer me when I'm talking to you!" Shao Kahn demanded.

The body of a Shadow Priest. Torn apart by the unstable portal that hovered in the center of Outworld.

"You're trying to make me go through all the suffering I've caused, is that it?!" Shao Kahn continued.

A village burning. Screams. He was in the form of a mother suffering from severe burns, still trying to hold on to a child that was already ashes. A spear through the heart from a centaur ended her misery.

An Osh-Tekk. Limbs torn off by Goro during the conquest of the Osh-Tekk realm. Left to bleed out and die.

"Well it isn't WORKING!" Shao Kahn screamed.

The Edenian ambassador from when this all began. Killed by having his head stabbed through by the spikes on Shao Kahn's gauntlets.

"Are you expecting me to feel some kind of regret!? Anguish!?" Shao Kahn ranted on in spite of the pain he was being subjected to.

A vampire. Wings torn off and left in the dungeon to die.

A Kreeyan. Defending a Kytinn from Kahn's soldiers. Blinded by a knife slash and then beaten to death.

A Vinparian. Defending their realm from Kahn's invasion. Trampled by charging centaur forces.

"I regret NOTHING!" Shao Kahn proclaimed. "I am Shao Kahn! Conqueror of worlds! Ruler of all that I survey! You are all nothing to me! Less than nothing!"

Several rebels in a row. Excruciating torture each time.

"All that you're doing is showing me moments of my greatest accomplishments! The building of my empire!"

A Naknadan. Caught stealing food for his family. All eight limbs impaled on a spiked wheel and then left for the vultures to pick apart.

"But I must commend you!" Shao Kahn continued.

A child. Starved to death because both their parents had been drafted into fighting in the conquest of Edenia.

"For ENTERTAINING me!" The emperor finished.

The cycle stopped. Shao Kahn was returned to the void of nothingness.

"It does not matter how you wish to perceive our judgement," said the voices of Ermac. "All that matters is keeping you imprisoned."

Shao Kahn laughed again.

"Do your worst."

He was immediately subjected to the memory of a man thrown into hot lava simply for questioning the emperor's will.

And so the cycle would continue, seemingly infinite. One horrible death of a soul used to comprise Ermac after another. Shao Kahn was forced to experience each. All the while, he was able to maintain an awareness of what the soul construct saw. Mileena's continuing efforts against Kotal Kahn. For brief moments, he could even manifest, his rage coming out through the soul construct.

And then there was a very recent day that quite amused the emperor.

After living through an assassin having their neck snapped for failing to eliminate an Earthrealm target, the cycle stopped. Shao Kahn could feel the collective intentionally weakening their defenses.

"Finally ready to submit to your superior?" Shao Kahn asked into the void.

"We need information from you," the collective answered. "Nothing more."

Then the soul collective began digging into his mind. All at once. They sought something. A location. To find something only he would know how to find.

The orbs…

In particular, Vaeturnus. Possibly others?

Shao Kahn laughed.

"It's at the Lava Shrine," he told them. "I only tell you because I know you traitors won't survive. I hope you all burn to cinders."

"Does that statement include your daughters?" The collective asked.

"Mileena is now one in the form of many, she can survive long enough to await my return," Shao Kahn reasoned. "Then it's just a matter of killing her precious Tanya and the rest of those sentimental fools. Then she will know her place. Skarlet… was a useful weapon."

"You disgust us." Responded the collective.

"You presume that I care." Shao Kahn shot back.

"Enough of this," the collective decided. "We have peered into your mind. We have what we need… more than you even realize."

"You are my tool to use, Ermac, not the other way around!" Shao Kahn shouted.

He made his best effort thus far to push back against the collective, but even his will was overpowered by ten thousand wills. For now…

Shao Kahn was banished back into the depths of the collective. Returned to the cycle. Living out ten thousand of the billions of deaths he had caused… and receiving some sick entertainment from seeing his "accomplishments".

Still, the former emperor of Outworld was contained. Subject to the Ermac collective's judgement.

Neither party was aware that Shao Kahn was not the only former emperor of Outworld to be concerned with.

And perhaps neither would be until it was too late.

Ermac kept Shao Kahn's presence secret from Mileena. She had enough to worry about. In fact, at this exact moment the soul construct was collaborating with her on their plan to free Kitana and Sindel from the revenant corruption, with Jade and Tanya listening intently and offering counsel as needed.

All the while, Rain entertained Ferra and Torr by creating various constructs out of water, a trick that had always been popular with children in his village.

Emerald was polishing her blade, always wanting to be ready for the next engagement.

Skarlet and Nitara's newfound love had quickly made them inseparable, and at the moment, Nitara was busy trying to teach Skarlet how to dance. It was very clearly a work in progress, but both lovers were committed.

The little things in life. The collective had to simultaneously remind themselves that moments like these were what mattered. Not revenge against a dethroned tyrant.

This weighed on King Jerrod especially, but as he spoke to his daughter through Ermac, he just knew….

That however dark the past may have been, the future would be bright.