The Kansas sun drooped at the edge of the world, turning the wheat fields the color of old gold and rust. Ethan Kent's pickup chugged along the empty stretch of Route 7, engine whining and rattling in that way he'd grown used to. It was just another tune in his life's regular soundtrack.
Ethan kept both hands on the wheel. Hands marked up, thick-skinned, tough from years of farm chores. Only twenty-three, and this was it for him: hauling crops to the Smallville market, mending fences, sorting out the accounts while his Ma worked beside him and Pa tried—badly—to hide the pain in his back.
He checked the rearview. Nothing behind him except endless flat highway and the last rays of sunlight. The cash box lay on the passenger seat—$412 today, not bad at all. Mrs. Patterson took three bushels of sweet corn for her church gathering. Old Man Wheeler fought him down on the tomatoes again. Typical.
Ethan blew out a tight breath. Allowed a flicker of a smile.
This was fine. This was enough.
—
Thirteen years ago, he'd bolted awake, screaming.
It felt like a train had smashed into his mind, unloading memories that didn't belong: a different life, a different world. Not just another chance at growing up—another him, someone who lived and died elsewhere, now dropped into a reality that should've existed only in comics or movies.
He was in the DC Universe.
That realization nearly broke him right then. For weeks, ten-year-old Ethan didn't sleep much. He just lay there, staring at the ceiling, mind racing through every disaster story he could remember. Darkseid. Brainiac. Joker. Doomsday. Reality-bending crises, monsters and gods who saw planets as toys.
And him? He was nothing. Just a Kansas farm kid. No alien powers, no money, no magic. Only blood, bone, and a brain stuffed with nightmare knowledge about possible futures he had no way to stop.
One detail really twisted the knife: his brother was Superman.
Clark—gentle, impossibly good Clark—destined to be the greatest hero on Earth. The Man of Steel. The person who'd carry whole worlds on his shoulders.
Ethan remembered when the truth landed, heavy as a falling star, at age eleven. Clark had lifted the tractor with one hand to grab a baseball. He'd laughed it off, mussed Ethan's hair: "Our little secret, okay, buddy?"
Ethan had nodded, heart pounding, mind racing. The memories had warned him, but seeing it in real life made the fear settle deep and cold.
He was the normal one. The afterthought, the "bonus" kid Jonathan and Martha had years after they took in the boy from the stars. Just plain old Ethan, living in a literal god's shadow.
—
The years blurred by in the background of quiet desperation.
At twelve, he begged for martial arts lessons. He trashed his hands and legs practicing moves he read about in dusty library books. It didn't take. No matter how hard he worked, he couldn't fight like Batman.
Thirteen brought a new obsession: magic. In a world stuffed with it, surely something could work. He burned through all his saved money on sketchy occult books and weird trinkets, but nothing ever happened—not so much as a spark.
Fourteen and desperation kicked in. He tried to copy the Flash—a contraption of chemicals and wires in the barn. Nearly cooked himself. Pa found him out cold in a haze of fried wires and singed hair. The chewing out lasted hours.
At fifteen, he gave up. He could still see that sunset, sitting on the fence, feeling something inside him vanish—a stubborn hope, maybe. Or just the last bit of refusal to accept he'd never matter.
You are nothing special, he told himself. You never will be. Just stop.
Clark dropped by on leave from Metropolis, halfway into his own legend. "Hey, little brother. You okay?" Ethan kept it together—barely.
What was he supposed to say? That he once jumped off the barn roof, thinking he might fly if he wished hard enough? That every sad little experiment just proved how hopeless he really was?
"Nah, just...life stuff," he'd muttered.
Clark sat beside him. They watched the stars fade in, quiet and close under the Kansas night. Warmth rolled off Clark without even trying—like the sunlight itself, barely contained.
Ethan loved him. Nothing fake about it. Maybe he'd buried any jealousy so deep it was just part of the noise. Still, whenever they sat together, he always felt small.
—
Static crackled on the truck radio, pulling Ethan out of the memories.
He twisted the dial. Nothing. Just more static. Radio was usually fine here. Maybe a storm?
He squinted through the windshield. Sky was clear. Purple deepening, first stars coming out, nothing unusual at all.
The road was empty—all the way to the horizon, Kansas land stretching flat as ever. Not a single car, no lights, no houses, just the thin stripe of highway.
Something in his gut tightened. It was irrational, but after thirteen years living with DC's nightmares, his instincts always braced for something weird.
It's just the radio, he told himself. Calm down.
He pressed the gas a little. Ma was making pot roast tonight. Pa needed help after dinner. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And then the lights came.
One second, the road was empty. Next, there it was—a blinding, unreal blast hurtling straight at him.
Ethan slammed the brakes. The tires screamed. Time trickled out, his heartbeat stretching into forever.
He saw the empty road. The impossible light. Something inside the glare, shapes he could barely look at—twisted angles and wrong geometry.
Then everything hit at once.
Metal groaned. Glass popped. He lost gravity, spinning through air that felt charged with ozone and something else—something ancient, and not quite real.
Pain crashed in. His ribs crunched, skull smacked against something hard—then blood, flooding his mouth, hot and metallic.
The truck crashed. Upside down? Sideways? No telling. He landed against a smashed roof or maybe a door. Glass everywhere. His own blood seeping out, hot and thick.
I'm dying, he realized. And, strangely, the thought relaxed him. He wouldn't go out fighting a monster or saving the world. Just a plain car wreck. Regular, random, human.
At least I won't have to watch everyone I love die in the next Crisis.
Still, as blackness crept into his vision, something else stirred.
It started in his chest—a too-full, overpowering sensation, like he'd somehow outgrown himself. Doors opening inside, dozens, hundreds, each leading to something huge and terrifying and beautiful.
Images raced through his mind:
A blood-red moon over a cursed city.
Gray mists forever churning.
Flaming tarot cards.
Names, whispered in ancient syllables—Fool, Error, Door, Darkness, Sun, Visionary—twenty-two voices talking over each other.
SEQUENCES. PATHWAYS. BEYONDER.
The ideas seared themselves into him, iron-hot.
YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.
Chosen? For what? Who was choosing?
No answers. Just the feeling of more—knowledge, power, a cascade of half-understood mythology, expanding far beyond anything DC had ever prepared him for.
He was burning. Drowning. Pulled in every direction at once—twenty-two different ways, all at the same time.
This isn't possible, he thought desperately. This isn't a part of DC. Beyonders, Outer Gods, Sefirot—none of that's here. None of it's real—
The pain got worse. He screamed.
But not for himself. Not for the blood or the ruined body.
He screamed for his brother.
"CLARK!"
The name ripped out, raw and desperate, every last scrap of strength he had.
Then, finally, everything went dark.
—
Seven hundred miles away, Clark Kent stopped cold.
He was interviewing a city councilman—nothing exciting, just local policy work. Still, it mattered.
But all at once his notepad slipped from his hands, head whipping to the west.
That scream. That voice.
He knew it better than anything. He'd heard it in nightmares and childhood mishaps, whispered over years of shared life.
Ethan.
Clark blurred into motion. One moment at his desk. Next, a streak racing across the sky, windows shattering behind him.
He honed in on the noise of the world—cutting away everything but the heartbeat that mattered.
A heart—fluttering, fading.
Shallow breaths.
No. No. No—
Clark broke the sound barrier. The land whipped by, state after state vanishing below him.
He found what was left of the truck three miles from the road, Kansas field flattened around it. Mangled metal, blood splashing across the stalks—so much he wished he couldn't see it all in such horrifying detail.
"ETHAN!"
He tore the wreck apart, peeled the cab like a can to get to his brother. Ethan was broken—skull cracked, ribs shattered, bleeding out internally, everything wrong.
He's dying. He's dying, I wasn't there, I should have been there—
Clark gathered him up as careful as possible. His brother's blood soaked into the Superman suit.
"Stay with me," his voice trembled. "Stay with me, Ethan. I've got you. I've got you."
He took off for Metropolis General, faster than hope, praying for anything—anyone who could save him.The only real brother he'd ever had.