Kapitel 3: Hope
Months passed in agonizing darkness.
Clark could no longer distinguish the days from the nights, the hours from the endless moments of torment. He didn't know how long he had been drifting, lost between worlds, trapped in the merciless grip of a tunnel. His body was a battleground of pain, each muscle strained, every joint on the verge of disintegration.
His once-impenetrable form felt fragile, brittle. His Kryptonian physiology had been pushed beyond its limits, and the energy needed to sustain him had been drained to the last drop. His mind was fractured—memories of his home, of the world he had destroyed, swirled in confusion, flickering like dying embers.
**Every breath felt like a struggle.** His strength had evaporated, leaving him weak, hollow. Even the act of thinking was exhausting. He couldn't remember when the agony began, but he knew it hadn't stopped. It gnawed at him from every angle, inside and out, relentless in its fury.
And yet, the tunnel continued, the pull of the unknown dragging him forward.
Then, suddenly, everything changed.
**Light.**
Not the soft golden light of Earth's sun. No, this was something *other*, something intense, sharp, like a searing blade against his broken skin. It overwhelmed his senses. It *burned*.
Clark barely registered the sudden transition. His mind, already near the breaking point, was flooded by an onslaught of foreign sensations—heat, light, and the harsh pull of gravity. He tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond. His limbs were too weak, too broken to carry him. His body felt as though it had been subjected to forces far beyond anything he had experienced, as if every fiber of his being was being tested in ways he couldn't comprehend.
The heat from the sun above him was *unbearable* at first. Stronger than Earth's yellow sun, it felt like fire against his skin, like it was *melting* him from the inside out. His mind screamed in agony, but his body, weak and shattered, couldn't move to escape it.
But even in that pain, there was something else—something primal. **Life.**
The alien sun had a strength he had never felt before. It was *radiating* through his skin, the rays pulling at him, drawing out the energy that had been burned away. His wounds, both physical and emotional, started to *respond* to it. Not healing immediately, no—nothing could fix him that quickly. But the healing process had begun.
His skin, scorched and cracked, slowly started to knit together under the fierce sun. Every inch of his body screamed in protest as the rays dug deep, filling his cells with energy. It was far more than his body was used to, too intense to be comfortable. The Kryptonian healing factor was being pushed to its limit, struggling to keep up with the unrelenting power of this foreign sun.
Every time he tried to move, the effort felt like lifting a mountain. His arms, once powerful, now felt like they were made of stone. His legs refused to hold him up, and his breath came in ragged, shallow gasps.
**Still, the sun burned down on him, its rays like molten lava, bathing him in its overwhelming glow.**
With each minute that passed, Clark felt the sun's energy weaving into his body, pulling him from the brink of collapse. It wasn't enough to fully heal him—not yet. His muscles were still strained, his bones still aching, his heart still heavy with guilt. But the sun was *stronger* than anything he had known. And it was working, bit by bit, to restore what had been broken.
The pain was agonizing. But it was also… **necessary**.
Clark had been destroyed by his own choices, by the destruction he had wrought. The sun didn't care about the sins of the past; it only cared about the future, about survival. As its rays continued to pour into him, there was no more room for guilt, for regret. The desert around him, the vast emptiness, seemed to accept him as he was—broken, but still alive.
He tried to push himself up, but his body trembled with weakness. His limbs were heavy, his heart pounding like a drum in his chest. He wasn't even sure if he could stand.
*One more try.*
With a strained grunt, he managed to lift his head slightly, his blurred vision slowly focusing on the horizon. The desert stretched out endlessly, barren and hostile. The wind was hot against his face, and the sand shifted beneath him like it was alive.
But before he could gather the strength to do anything more, darkness overtook him. His body simply couldn't hold on any longer.
**He collapsed again.**
This time, though, the sun continued its work. Even as his consciousness slipped away, the heat of the sun *stayed* with him, continuing to seep into his broken body. Every part of him that was weak, that was damaged, felt the burn of the sun's rays slowly stitching him back together.
Hours passed—or maybe it was days. Time was a blur. When Clark finally opened his eyes again, he was barely aware of the shadow that had fallen over him.
A voice broke through the fog in his mind, muffled at first, but growing clearer. "We've got a live one. Get him to the transport, now."
He could barely register the sounds, his head still swimming in exhaustion. Figures appeared over him, moving quickly, their hands reaching down to him. But his body was so heavy, so stiff, that he couldn't even raise a finger to resist.
They lifted him gently, as though he were glass. His body, once so powerful, now felt fragile and broken. The sun's light still clung to him, lingering in his skin, feeding him energy, but it wasn't enough to fully restore him. It was slow, and he was far from healed.
But for the first time since the destruction, something had begun to stir in him again.
Something that felt like hope.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein