The following days did nothing to make things better.
The cracks continued to spread.
At first, they had been small lines across his bones, almost imperceptible even to his own perception. Then they began appearing in more places. His right arm, shoulder, several ribs, and finally part of his leg showed fractures that refused to respond to anything Alex tried.
His body regenerated cuts, bruises, and muscle damage with relative ease. But every time he tried to repair one of the fractures, something went wrong.
It was as if his body knew how to rebuild itself, but simply refused to do so.
That night, Alex remained sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his hand.
He could see every cell.
Every tissue.
Every connection.
He could observe the energy flowing through his body and the way his cells attempted to rebuild the damaged areas.
And then something happened that he had never seen before.
One of the cracks opened.
There was no immediate pain.
Only a small, dry sound.
Alex looked up.
"No…"
Another crack appeared across his forearm.
Then another.
And another.
Within seconds, the lines began spreading across his entire body.
Alex suddenly stood up.
"No, no, no…"
He tried using his matter manipulation.
Nothing.
He tried concentrating energy over the fractures.
Nothing.
He tried directly altering the structure of his cells.
The result was the same.
His body simply rejected every attempt.
"Come on!" he growled through clenched teeth. "Come on!"
A crack ran across his chest.
The air seemed to disappear from his lungs.
Alex dropped to his knees.
For the first time since he had obtained that human form, he felt something different from pain.
He felt as though he were losing something.
His own structure.
As if his body were reaching the limit of something it had been trying to sustain for far too long.
The cracks began to emit light.
Alex raised his head.
"What…?"
The skin on his arm began disintegrating into glowing particles.
It didn't fall to the ground.
It simply ceased to exist as matter.
His hand became energy.
Then his forearm.
His shoulder.
Alex watched in horror as his entire body began losing cohesion.
"No!"
He tried to hold on to his form.
He tried to remember how to breathe, how to move his muscles, how to keep his bones connected.
But the harder he tried, the faster he came apart.
His chest opened in a silent explosion of light.
The walls of the room momentarily disappeared beneath the radiance.
And then…
His body ceased to be human.
For several seconds, nothing existed.
Then a small sphere of light appeared where Alex had been.
The energy began to expand.
First, it took an irregular shape.
Then a silhouette.
And finally, it once again formed what he had been before having a physical body.
Alex floated in the center of the room.
He no longer had skin.
Or bones.
Or organs.
Or blood.
He was once again a being of pure energy.
But he wasn't exactly the same.
His light had changed.
Before, his energetic body had resembled a flame contained within a humanoid shape.
Now there was something much deeper inside him.
Something that seemed to extend beyond his own existence.
Alex opened his eyes.
And the world changed.
He didn't simply see the room.
He saw the planet.
For an instant, he could perceive Earth as a gigantic structure of matter and energy. He could feel the movement of the tectonic plates, the magnetic field, electrical currents, the atmosphere, and the immense amount of energy flowing through the planet.
Alex instinctively recoiled.
"What…?"
His perception continued expanding.
For the first time, he could sense something beyond matter.
Gravity.
Not simply as a force.
But as a network.
As an invisible structure connecting celestial bodies to one another.
Alex raised a hand.
A small sphere of energy appeared in front of him.
But this time, something different happened.
The sphere began to deform.
Light curved around it.
Space itself seemed to bend slightly.
Alex's eyes widened in surprise, and he immediately closed his hand.
The anomaly disappeared.
"I couldn't do that before…"
He tried again.
This time, he focused his attention on the energy surrounding him.
He felt heat.
Electricity.
Radiation.
Magnetic fields.
Even small fluctuations coming from outer space.
He couldn't control all of it.
Not yet.
But he could feel it.
And that alone was something completely new.
Alex looked toward the window.
He could perceive the Moon.
Not see it as some distant image.
But feel its presence.
Its mass.
Its gravity.
The energy it received from the Sun.
And beyond that…
The Sun.
Alex remained motionless.
For the first time, he understood that his perception was no longer limited to what his eyes could observe.
He had taken another step.
One he didn't know how to control.
Then something else happened.
A memory appeared.
It wasn't a memory of his death.
It wasn't the void.
It was something much older.
A name.
A symbol.
A story.
Alex brought a hand to his chest, even though he no longer possessed a physical body.
"Superman…"
The memory became clearer.
Batman.
Wonder Woman.
Green Lantern.
Flash.
Justice League.
Young Justice.
Names he knew.
Characters he had seen.
Stories he had read or heard about.
Worlds that had once existed for him only within comics, shows, movies, and video games.
Alex became completely still.
"No…"
Another memory appeared.
Gotham.
Metropolis.
Oa.
The Green Lanterns.
The Justice League.
Earth.
But this time, the images weren't fiction.
They were memories of something he had known before he died.
Alex began to understand.
"I know this world…"
His energy fluctuated violently.
"It can't be."
He remembered his old life.
His room.
His phone.
The stories he had read.
The times he had watched Superman on a screen.
Batman.
Flash.
The comics.
The arguments about which character was stronger.
Stories about alternate worlds.
Crisis.
Multiverses.
The concept of a DC Universe.
Alex remained silent.
"I'm…"
The sentence died in his throat, even though he no longer had a throat.
"I'm in the DC Universe."
The realization hit him with more force than any attack he had ever endured.
For several seconds, he didn't know what to feel.
Fear.
Disbelief.
Fascination.
Everything mixed together.
"So Superman is real…"
He remembered his conversation with him.
The way he had spoken.
The way he had arrived at the crater.
The concern on his face.
Then he remembered Batman.
The training sessions.
Hal Jordan.
The Guardians.
And finally, the others.
Robin.
Artemis.
Kaldur.
M'gann.
Conner.
His team.
Alex closed his eyes.
"They're all real…"
Another wave of memories appeared.
But it stopped before becoming complete.
He tried to reach them.
Nothing.
He couldn't remember how he had arrived there.
He couldn't remember why he had been chosen.
He couldn't remember what he truly was.
But now he had one piece of information he hadn't possessed before.
He knew where he was.
And he knew that knowledge could change everything.
Alex opened his eyes.
A faint cosmic light traveled across his energetic body.
And this time, it didn't feel like something he was trying to control.
It felt like something that had just awakened.
Far away, beyond Earth's atmosphere, a small disturbance passed through space.
It wasn't an explosion.
It wasn't a threat.
It was barely a fluctuation.
But something in the universe seemed to respond.
Alex felt it.
For the first time, he could perceive a tiny fragment of the immensity surrounding him.
And he realized something that unsettled him even more.
His body hadn't been destroyed.
It had stopped pretending to be something it wasn't.
Alex looked at his hands made of energy.
"Then… what am I?"
For a few seconds, he waited for that voice.
He waited for it to answer.
But it didn't.
Only silence remained.
Alex slowly lowered his hands.
"All right."
His energy stabilized.
"If I still can't know what I am…"
He looked toward the sky.
"At least now I know where I am."
And for the first time since arriving in that universe, Alex didn't feel lost.
He still didn't know his origin.
He still didn't understand that voice.
He still didn't know why his body had begun destroying itself.
But now he had one certainty.
He had died in one world.
And awakened in another.
A world he had once believed existed only in stories.
The DC Universe.
And if his memories were correct…
Then he was only beginning to discover just how vast that place truly was.
It was time to leave the nest behind and spread his wings toward something new.