CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX — MARK

The sky above Brockton Bay split open with a terrible brilliance, a blinding crack of white fire. The heavens themselves seemed to shudder under the descending weight of something vast and wrong—something apocalyptic. A thousand voices screamed without sound. A thousand futures twisted into something unrecognizable.

The Simurgh was here.

Mark should have been afraid. The whole city should have been gripped by the same suffocating terror that had marked every one of her appearances. But he wasn’t. Not anymore. Not since he arrived.

Superman.

He stood on the rooftop of a battered apartment complex, eyes turned skyward, waiting—surrounded by others who shared his belief. The faithful. It had taken weeks for them to gather, weeks of whispered conversations in broken churches and shadowed alleys, weeks of witnessing the impossible made real, time and time again. Leviathan was dead. The Slaughterhouse Nine were gone. And in the aftermath, something had taken root in a city long thought forsaken.

Hope.

And it was all because of him.

Mark clasped his hands together, fingers tightening. Around him, the others did the same. They murmured their shared conviction, their faith unshaken even as the wind picked up, howling through the ruined streets, sending debris tumbling like weightless paper.

Superman would come.

He always came.

The storm of her arrival reached its peak. The Simurgh’s song—that terrible, keening wail—rose with it, gnawing at the edges of thought, unraveling reason, pulling—

A streak of red and blue cut through the sky.

An answer.

The Simurgh loomed, vast feathered wings unfurling, a thousand shifting, impossible shapes folding within themselves with every movement. She was an intelligence beyond human comprehension, a being of unknowable malice. Inevitable.

But for the first time, Mark swore—she hesitated.

Superman didn’t.

A sonic boom split the air. And in an instant, he was upon her. Faster than thought itself. His fist shattered the sound barrier as it connected with her frail-looking frame.

Mark had heard of so many others who had tried—and failed—to hurt her. He had heard of the strongest heroes in the world reduced to puppets or corpses, flung aside like broken things against the Simurgh’s will.

But she was reeling.

Mark exhaled sharply, gripping the rusted edge of the rooftop, his knuckles white. Superman didn’t stop. He pressed forward, unrelenting, driving her up with every strike. The Simurgh’s song split the air again, focused this time, clawing at the minds of those below, whispering inevitability.

And yet, Superman endured.

Mark’s breath caught as the battle climbed beyond the clouds, streaks of white, blue, and red trailing through the darkened sky. The Simurgh fought hard. But Superman forced her higher. Further. Away from the city. Away from them. 

Until—

Gone.

Silence.

Mark’s lungs burned as he realized he hadn’t been breathing. The storm had stilled. The pressure in his skull had lifted. The terrible song had faded to nothing.

Brockton Bay was safe.

Around him, the others erupted into cheers, their voices rising in joyous cries and prayerful reverence. Mark simply fell to his knees, shaking.

Not in fear. Not in exhaustion.

In awe.

Because he had believed. Because he had known.

Superman had saved them all.

And somewhere, beyond the stars, he still fought—for them.