For the first time in years, the world felt safe.
No ruptures in the sky.
No unexplained tremors.
No glowing figures hovering above cities.
News anchors spoke about rebuilding. Governments spoke about unity. Scientists spoke about stability.
People moved on.
They always do.
Ser-Ez stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, the wind brushing past him like it was testing something. He didn't float. He didn't glow. He didn't try to be more than he was.
For once, the sky was calm.
Kate leaned against the car behind him. "Feels normal," she said.
He didn't answer immediately.
"Yeah," he finally said. "Too normal."
Far below them, the ocean shifted.
Not violently.
Just… subtly.
As if something deep beneath it had turned in its sleep.
⸻
Years Earlier
The facility never had a name.
Officially, it didn't exist.
It was built in the shadow of a fallen fragment — one of the rocks that followed Krypton's destruction through space. Most of those fragments were useless. Some were deadly.
But one was different.
They called it Cryptsidium.
It didn't glow green.
It didn't weaken.
It pulsed.
Like it was alive.
And the scientists — driven by fear of the next cosmic being, driven by the need for control — decided to do what humanity always does when faced with power.
They tried to own it.
He was born into white light and cold metal.
No mother holding him.
No lullabies.
Only observation windows and containment glass.
They infused him with microscopic particles of Cryptsidium before he could even speak. They monitored his heartbeat before he understood pain.
They called him Magnolia.
Not because of softness.
But because the magnolia tree outside the underground complex was the only living thing that survived the early radiation bursts.
It bloomed in poisoned soil.
So did he.
⸻
The Collapse
The logs stopped at 03:17 a.m.
Security footage showed containment doors bending inward.
Not outward.
Inward.
As if something inside had stopped holding back.
The Cryptsidium core overloaded.
Energy tore through reinforced steel like paper. The facility imploded, swallowed into itself, leaving behind a crater so clean it looked surgical.
No bodies were recovered.
Authorities labeled it a geothermal accident.
An unstable pocket beneath the Earth's crust.
Case closed.
People moved on.
⸻
Present Day
Miles beneath the surface of the Earth — not in the molten core, but in the hollowed mantle caverns where pressure bends rock like clay — something shifted.
There are places in the planet untouched by drills, untouched by satellites.
Places where heat does not burn… but compresses.
Magnolia had learned to exist there.
Not burning.
Not aging.
Waiting.
Cryptsidium does not decay.
It adapts.
And so did he.
His body no longer looked entirely human. Veins traced faint silver lines beneath his skin. His heartbeat echoed like distant metal striking stone.
He did not dream.
He calculated.
Above him, tectonic plates adjusted.
In Tokyo, a subway line briefly lost power.
In Lagos, a bridge trembled for half a second.
In Los Angeles, a glass of water rippled on a kitchen counter.
Experts called them minor anomalies.
Statistically irrelevant.
Magnolia opened his eyes.
They were not glowing.
They were steady.
Focused.
He had felt it.
The signal.
Ser-Ez.
Not a sound. Not a pulse. Something deeper. A frequency embedded in existence itself.
Power recognizes power.
And for years, Magnolia had buried himself deeper, suppressing his energy, letting the world believe he was a mistake long erased.
Because Cryptsidium had taught him something the scientists never understood:
Power matures.
It ripens.
Ser-Ez was not complete yet.
Not fully aware.
Not fully ascended.
So Magnolia waited.
Because killing him too early would waste the harvest.
Above ground, Ser-Ez turned suddenly, gripping the edge of the cliff.
Kate noticed. "What?"
He didn't know how to answer.
For a split second, he felt heavy.
Like gravity had increased.
Like something far below had looked back at him.
Then it passed.
"I don't know," he said quietly. "It felt like… something woke up."
⸻
Beneath Them
Magnolia stood now.
The cavern walls around him shimmered faintly, reacting to the Cryptsidium embedded within his bones.
Fragments of the old lab still clung to him — not physically, but structurally. He had rebuilt himself from the wreckage. Reinforced himself.
He walked forward.
Each step caused microscopic fractures in surrounding stone.
He reached the surface barrier — miles above him — and placed his palm against solid rock.
He did not push through.
Not yet.
His voice had not been used in years.
When it came, it was steady.
"Soon."
Not hatred.
Not rage.
Certainty.
Scott — Ser-Ez — was the only variable between him and completion.
Between him and destiny.
The world believed peace had returned.
Governments slept easily.
The sky remained blue.
But beneath every city…
Beneath every ocean…
Beneath every heartbeat of the planet…
Magnolia waited.
And the Earth, slowly, began to tremble in its sleep.
⸻
— Vale Chronicle III
Recorded before the ground remembered what it was holding.