Deep beneath the Earth's surface, entombed in molten rock and crushing pressure, Verlin remained unconscious. His body had sunk over 750 kilometers below the surface, pulled down by his extraordinary density through the compromised layers he'd shattered during his final explosion.
Time passed in absolute darkness, absolute silence, with molten rock filling his lungs, his throat, his eyes.
No sunlight penetrated this deep. There was no hearing, no sight, no sensation, only the void of unconsciousness.
Starved of their primary fuel, his cells began to adapt.
Kryptonian biology, once sustained by Earth's yellow sun, turned instead to the environment around him—the heat, the pressure, the raw geothermal energy radiating through the mantle.
Slowly, incrementally, Verlin's body learned to leech power power from the rock itself. From the crushing force around him. From the blistering heat.
It was far less efficient than sunlight. Geothermal energy was harder to absorb and harder to convert. But his cells adapted anyway, taking whatever they could from the hellish conditions.
His energy reserves rose by fractions. A sliver. Then another.
But the dagger in his chest remained active.
The rune-etched blade continued its relentless drain, pulling energy from his body at a constant rate. Every joule his cells managed to extract from the geothermal heat, the dagger siphoned away. Every bit of power he wrested from the mantle vanished into the weapon's insatiable hunger.
A silent battle played out in the depths—Verlin's adapting biology fighting against the dagger's curse. His body absorbed energy. The dagger stole it. His cells became more efficient at converting geothermal energy. The dagger maintained its drain.
The cycle continued, day after day, month after month, year after year.
Verlin's energy reserves neither rose nor fell. They remained at near zero, held in perfect, terrible equilibrium. His body produced just enough to keep him alive, and the dagger consumed just enough to prevent any recovery.
He didn't wake. He didn't move.
He simply existed, suspended in a state between life and death, buried in the mantle of the planet he'd tried to save. And this state lasted for more than eight years
Then something changed.
The dagger's glow, which had pulsed with stolen energy for eight years, began to stabilize. The rhythm softened. The flickering runes steadied. And then— They faded.
The blade was saturated.
The drain stopped.
For the first time in eight years, energy flowed into Verlin's cells and stayed.
His body, which had spent eight years learning to survive in impossible conditions, now had something it hadn't possessed since the day he fell.
Surplus.
Deep in his dormant mind, something stirred. Not true consciousness—just the faint spark before waking, like a dreamer sensing dawn through closed eyes.
His cells, no longer fighting a losing battle, intensified their efforts. The geothermal conversion that had been barely sufficient now ramped up, drawing more heat, more pressure, converting it faster than they had in years.
A fingers twitched.
Molten rock shifted in his lungs as his chest expanded—not in a breath, but in the memory of one.
His eyes flickered beneath sealed lids.
And then, after nearly a decade of slumber, Verlin woke.
Pain.
Immediate, overwhelming, all-consuming.
The dagger in his heart made its presence known. Every nerve ending in his body fired at once, reporting damage, pressure, heat, wrongness. His lungs were full of stone. His eyes were blinded.
And he was alive.
His hands clenched, disturbing the molten rock around him. The movement caused a tiny tremor—too small for any surface instrument to notice.
His mind, starved of sensation for eight years, flooded with input all at once. And with it came memory. The last things he remembered came crashing back: Chloe, swallowed in divine light. Desna's final message. The rage and despair that had consumed him.
The memories hit him like physical blows, each one more devastating than the last. For a moment, the physical pain meant nothing compared to the agony of remembering everyone he cared about. Everyone he had failed to save.
Gone. All of them gone.
And he'd been helpless. Too weak. Too slow.
His chest heaved involuntarily, trying to draw breath, but there was no air—only magma filled his throat and lungs. The sensation should have triggered panic, should have sent him into desperate thrashing. But the stone in his lungs felt... familiar. Not natural, but not foreign either, as if his body had grown accustomed to it.
Grief pressed down on him harder than the mantle itself. Thoughts looped endlessly in his mind. If he'd been faster. If he'd been stronger. If he hadn't let his guard down. If he'd protected Chloe better. If he'd saved Desna sooner.
It made him want to stop thinking and return to unconsciousness. To sink back into that void where there was no pain, no memory, no failure.
But he couldn't.
He shoved the thoughts aside, burying them deep, anywhere they couldn't paralyze him.
He needed something else to focus on.
He opened his eyes wider, but saw nothing. Total darkness. He tried using X-ray vision but that ability didn't seem to work anymore. He tried looking through other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, but the only ones that were available were infrared and visible wavelengths.
He switched to infrared vision and immediately recoiled, squeezing his eyes shut.
The brightness was overwhelming. Everything around him blazed white-hot. The molten rock radiating such intense heat that his infrared vision was completely overloaded. It was like staring directly into the sun, every direction a blinding wall of thermal energy.
He quickly switched back to regular visible vision, though it showed him nothing but darkness. But from the pressure he felt pressing against him from all directions, he could tell he was deep underground. How deep? He wasn't sure. But the crushing weight, the absolute density of the liquid stone surrounding him—it had to be far below the crust.
He had to get out.
How long had he been down here? Hours? Days? It felt like he'd just fallen, just closed his eyes after that final burst. But the dagger in his chest—cold now, inert—suggested otherwise. And his body... it felt different. Adapted in ways it shouldn't be.
Had it been weeks? Months? He wasn't sure, but he knew staying down here wouldn't do him any good.
His muscles tensed, and he pushed upward—but instead of the effortless flight he remembered, his body simply pushed against the stone. He couldn't fly. Another ability that was gone.
He would have to climb. Or swim.
Verlin began pulling himself upward through the liquid rock, every movement slow and heavy. The molten stone was thick like honey, but far denser. Each stroke took effort. His legs kicked, trying to build momentum, his arms carved a narrow path through the glowing sludge.
It was exhausting. And he couldn't stop. The moment he paused, even for a second, he felt it—his body beginning to sink. His own weight, which had pulled him this deep in the first place, still worked against him. Without constant upward motion, gravity would drag him back down into the depths.
So he kept moving. Hand over hand. Stroke after stroke. Swimming through molten rock in absolute darkness.
He had nothing to guide him but the pressure around him. The crushing weight that pressed against him from all directions was absolute, but as he climbed—slowly, agonizingly slowly—it lessened. Barely perceptible at first, but after what felt like hours of continuous movement, he could tell he was making progress.
The closer he got to the surface, the lighter the pressure felt. But the difference was minimal. He'd been so deep that even kilometers of progress barely registered as change.
Time lost all meaning in the darkness. Minutes? Hours? Days? He couldn't tell. There was only the climb —endless, repetitive, a battle against both molten stone and his own density.
After what felt like an eternity, the rock around him changed. Distinctly cooler. Noticeably more solid. Less a liquid and more a semi-solid mass that his body had to force through rather than swim through.
He'd reached the crust.
Movement felt different here. He was no longer swimming, but almost digging, pressing through cooling stone that was beginning to harden. The pressure had eased dramatically. His body, still impossibly heavy, moved with far less resistance.
But he still couldn't stop. One pause, and he'd sink back into the semi-solid stone.
Verlin pushed upward with renewed desperation. He had to be close now. Had to be.
Then he felt it—a current. Not of stone, but of molten rock flowing in a single direction. Upward. A natural conduit carrying magma toward the surface.
A volcanic vent.
Without thinking, Verlin let the current carry him. The flow accelerated, and suddenly he was moving faster than he had in the entire climb. Magma rushed upward through the volcanic channel, and Verlin rode it like a river.
The temperature spiked. The pressure built. The flow intensified.
And then—explosion.
Verlin burst from the mouth of the volcano in a massive eruption of lava and superheated gas. He shot into the air, propelled by the volcanic pressure, molten rock spraying out around him in a fountain of fire.
For a brief moment, he was airborne—not flying—but launched by the force of the eruption.
Then gravity pulled him down.
He crashed down onto the slope of the volcano, his body carving a trench through the ash and cooled lava as he tumbled. He rolled to a stop, finally, blessedly, still.
For the first time since waking, Verlin stopped moving.
He lay there for a moment. Steam rose from his body as molten rock cooled on his skin. Muscles that had labored for days finally relaxed.
Slowly, he pushed himself to his knees, then to his feet.
And looked up.
The topography was unlike what one would expect of a once habitable planet. If this was the West Continent, it was beyond recognition.
The temperature was wrong. It should have been scorching hot this close to an active volcano, but instead, a bitter cold pressed against him. The air felt dead—thick with ash and sulfur, but lifeless.
Above him, the sky was black. Not the darkness of night, but a thick, roiling mass of clouds so dense no light penetrated. Lightning flickered constantly within them, casting everything in brief, hellish flashes of orange and red.
Ash fell like snow. Constant. Persistent. Coating everything in gray.
The ground was scorched black beneath a thick coating of gray ash. Giant fissures spread and separated the land, and between the cracks lay rivers of magma—the only things not buried under the constant ashfall.
Verlin couldn't believe what he saw. Everywhere he looked — hell. He was sure during the final moments in his fight with Radae, they had remained on the West Continent.
He took a step forward and the ground underneath his feet collapsed instantly but he paid it no attention. He had to know. Had to see if this was everywhere. For all the devastation, he was hoping it was localized.
Maybe it was just this part of the West continent and the arctic that was heavily damaged. Other parts of the West continent and the other continents should be intact. They had to be.
Another step, another collapse. The ground shattered under his mass. But he didn't stop. Didn't slow. He broke into a sprint.
It felt strange. Foreign. Ever since he'd gained the ability to fly, he had rarely moved on foot. Combined with his greatly diminished power, distances that would usually take a fraction of a second to cross, would now take measurable time.
Regardless, the air around him began to compress before a sonic boom rolled out behind him as he broke through the sound barrier. The landscape blurred. Ash and debris whipped past him in streams. He was moving at twice the speed of sound now, his body cutting through the dead air like a bullet.
Beneath him, the volcanic plains stretched endlessly. Each footfall punched through ash and scorched ground. Impact craters, vents, and fissures bled together into a monotonous hellscape.
Four minutes into his sprint, something changed.
Through the ash-choked darkness ahead, Verlin saw something that made his eyes narrow in confusion.
A wall?
Not a cliff. Not a mountain. A massive ridge of uplifted rock stretching across the entire horizon, left to right, curving away into the distance until it disappeared into the ash and gloom. It had to be several kilometers tall, rising up like a colossal barrier.
'What the hell is that?' Verlin thought to himself.
Verlin kept running, his eyes locked on the structure ahead. It didn't make sense. A wall that size, that long and curved? Natural formations didn't look like that. Had Radae done this? Some kind of manipulation of the landscape during their fight?
Or had the battle itself somehow created it?
Above the wall, lighter plumes rose against the black sky—steam or gas venting upward in enormous columns.
Seven more minutes of running. The wall loomed larger, its jagged surface becoming clearer. Six kilometers of fractured, tilted rock.
As Verlin began to slow—dropping from supersonic to subsonic speeds—sound returned.
ROARING.
A deep, continuous thunder rolled through the air. Not lightning or a single volcano—this was sustained, endless, like a massive waterfall or jet engine. The sound vibrated in his chest.
The roar came from beyond the wall.
He continued forward at a jog. The sound intensified. The smell hit him—sulfur, rotten eggs, acidic chemicals. The air tasted wrong.
Verlin reached the base and looked up. Six kilometers of fractured rock. Volcanic vents glowed along its face. Massive plumes of steam rose from beyond, backlit by constant lightning.
He crouched slightly, then leaped.
The ground shattered beneath him from the force. He shot upward, although he hadn't tried his best his body covering over a kilometer and a half in a single bound.
He landed on a rocky ledge. It crumbled instantly, but he was already crouching again. Another leap. Another 1.5 kilometers.
The roar grew deafening. Heat blasted upward from above—superheated air rising from whatever lay beyond. The steam was thick now, hot and choking.
Two more leap brought him to the top.
Verlin landed on the rim and—and froze.
The ground dropped away into a steam-shrouded abyss.
A crater.
But he couldn't see the bottom. Couldn't see most of what lay below. His vision was obscured by massive columns of steam and gas venting from thousands of points, creating a rising curtain that hid the depths.
Verlin stared into the swirling, opaque depths.
A crater.
A massive, Impossibly vast crater.
His mind raced, trying to make sense of it. What could have caused this?
He doesn't remember either him or Radae unleashing this level of attack, atleast not while on Earth. The only thing that came to mind was the final moment before he lost consciousness, when he had…
Actually, he wasn't sure what he had done, all he remembers was how he had wanted Radae to feel the pain he felt. How much he wanted the god dead. And his body responding to that urge.
He closed his eyes, as his mind wandered. There was so much wrong. In such little time everything had gone wrong. He had so many questions. Did Radae survive? Are there any survivors on the planet? How long had he been unconcious? Who was the person that made a contract with Radae?
All those questions can be answered if he can rid himself of the dagger in his chest, and get himself some sun.
Verlin opened his eyes and stared up at the black sky. Not a single ray of sunlight pierced the clouds. He could try jumping into space, but without the ability to fly, he would be helpless once he left the ground—unless he somehow launched himself directly toward the sun and hoped nothing blocked his path.
There were too many unknowns. He didn't even know which direction the sun was in. One wrong jump, and he could fling himself into deep space—an embarrassingly stupid way to die after surviving all this. And Earth's orbit was almost certainly filled with debris.
No. That wasn't an option. His best chance would be to find or build a spacecraft.
And the only place that made sense was the Arctic—where the Coratian mothership still rested.