It started with whispers—digital ghosts flickering through surveillance networks. Cameras that blinked out the second they spotted Paradox's face. Drones reporting impossible coordinates. Algorithms predicting patterns that couldn't exist. LexCorp called it "quantum turbulence." Bruce called it "a damn headache." Clark didn't say anything at all.
He just stared at the letter.
The Kryptonian language had almost faded from his memory, like an old dream too quiet to matter. But the symbols here were sharp. Alive. And worse—familiar. Whoever left this message hadn't just studied Krypton's lost tongue. They'd written in his dialect. Family dialect.
The message had been burned into the paper without heat. Not printed. Not inked. Etched by vibration, the way ancient Kryptonian scholars would infuse prayer into crystal.
Clark's fingers tightened around the paper.
"Paradox," he murmured.
The name tasted wrong. Like something out of time.
Behind him, Lois stepped out of the Planet lobby, eyes scanning the street until she spotted him.
"You okay?" she asked.
Clark folded the letter and pocketed it before she saw. "Yeah," he said, too quickly. "Just… had a weird memory."
Lois narrowed her eyes. "Did it involve alien poetry and another invasion?"
"Not yet."
She stared a moment longer, then pulled him into a brisk kiss and walked ahead. "You get that look every time something weird's about to happen," she muttered.
Clark lingered.
He looked toward the horizon.
And then he flew.
Far across the city, in a hidden chamber beneath what used to be Gotham's subway line, Paradox crouched over a new device. Not a weapon. Not exactly. It looked like a series of floating glass rings, each spinning at a different speed. Between them, fragments of light danced like water caught in a speaker's pulse.
Ivy sat nearby, legs curled beneath her, watching him as she nurtured a glowing sprout with a root system made of copper nerves. They didn't speak much anymore while he worked. She'd learned when to stay quiet—when his thoughts stacked high and wide like scaffolding.
Still, she broke the silence this time. "Are you building a teleporter or a blender for timelines?"
He grinned without looking up. "Both. It's called a Phase Funnel. The idea is to isolate narrative momentum—track how events naturally unfold in a timeline and siphon off the excess entropy."
She blinked. "In English."
"It lets me see where stories want to go. And maybe… change the ending."
Ivy sat back. "That sounds like something fate would want to strangle you for."
"Fate's been trying since breakfast."
He activated the rings.
A shimmer passed through the device, and for a second, Ivy saw them—moments not yet real. Versions of Paradox: one standing beside Bruce Wayne in a desert fortress; another laughing in a cosmic bar with Thor; a third version bleeding beneath a broken moon, holding a girl made of starlight.
She blinked and it was gone.
Paradox frowned.
"Didn't like that last one."
"You saw it too?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he stood, pulled off the stabilizer band on his temple, and stared at the flickering data. "I think something's coming. Or maybe I'm being pulled toward it."
"Do you want to be?"
"…Not sure yet."
She rose and crossed to him. Her hand brushed his. "Then do what you always do."
He glanced sideways. "What's that?"
"Lie to fate and make something better."
Elsewhere, Superman hovered above the Arctic winds, his breath forming diamonds in the air. Before him rose the crystalline spires of the Fortress of Solitude. But he wasn't there to reminisce.
He was there to ask questions.
The Kryptonian archive greeted him as he stepped inside. "Kal-El. Welcome. Do you wish to access the ancestral databanks?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "Search for: Paradox."
The AI paused.
"Multiple entries found."
Clark blinked.
"Display them."
And there it was.
Images. Records. Old science logs, half-corrupted. A figure with human DNA but Kryptonian-laced technology. He was listed under a rogue program lost during Krypton's final years.
Name: Project Paradox.
Purpose: Temporal elasticity experiments. Forbidden.
Creator: Unknown. Possibly House Vex.
Final log: 'Subject believes itself outside of causality. Advises termination. Record ends.'
Clark took a step back.
Someone had tried to make this person. Or something like him. Long before Earth. Long before he was even born.
"…who are you?" he whispered.
And then, as if the Fortress heard him too well, the lights dimmed.
"Warning," the archive said. "Paradox signature detected. Local space-time pressure rising."
Clark turned and flew hard into the night sky.
Back beneath Gotham, Paradox smiled as the Phase Funnel stabilized.
"Got you," he muttered.
Ivy raised an eyebrow. "Got what?"
He stood. "The first fragment of a new system. One that doesn't just build tech."
She tilted her head. "Then what does it do?"
He looked up at the funnel.
"It builds stories. Mine."
And miles away, in a bar that wasn't supposed to exist, a man in gold and red robes paused mid-drink. Doctor Fate slowly turned toward the horizon.
"…Oh no," he said softly.