Three months slipped by.
Ethan found himself settling into a routine that would've seemed downright crazy to the guy he was before the accident. But now? It felt right. Or at least, it felt like who he was turning into.
His days were all about the music. Gigs, recording sessions, interviews, keeping up that carefully polished image of Ethan Clarke: up-and-coming star, the kind of musician whose warmth seemed real because, honestly, it was. The whole "Bard" thing had run its course, but the music career was the perfect cover. No one thought it was strange for a famous singer to keep popping up around Metropolis. Artists were weird. Everybody just accepted it.
And then his nights—those belonged to his hero carrier.
He never picked a hero name for himself. The press handled that.
It started out with a headline in the Metropolis Star after he broke up a mugging in Suicide Slum, then spent almost an hour helping the victim navigate the police station: "MYSTERIOUS SAMARITAN BRINGS LIGHT TO CITY'S DARKEST CORNERS."
Then came a TV spot after he cleaned up contaminated water in some tenement building—fixing the supply, curing a dozen people who'd been sick for months: "THE LIGHT OF METROPOLIS—WHO IS THE CITY'S NEW GUARDIAN?"
Pretty soon, social media did what it does—shortened it to just "Light."
The name stuck.
In three months, Light became part of Metropolis's nighttime routine. Not on Superman's level—nobody matched Superman—but he was out there. People saw him: dark clothes, a bit mysterious, showing up in problem neighborhoods, stopping crimes, healing people, disappearing before anyone could grab a clear photo.
His "digestion"—Was slow, terribly so but it kept crawling forward. Every time he genuinely helped someone, every time he pushed back darkness, every life he made better, the needle inched ahead. Sequence 7 was still a ways off. But he was catching up.
And Clark? Clark was always around for it.
Although he didn't need his help most of the time Some nights, things got seriously dicey (Metropolis had no shortage of that), but Superman was never more than a shout away.
It hit Ethan one evening: this was exactly the kind of partnership he'd always wanted with his own Clark—the brother he'd watched from the sidelines, always chasing those impossible standards. Now though, he wasn't waiting in anyone's shadow. He was making his own light.
He didn't miss the irony.
Everything went sideways on a Tuesday.
Three hours into his nightly patrol, Ethan found himself wandering the deserted warehouse district near the docks. This was where a bunch of the city's nastier supply chains overlapped: drugs, guns, stolen goods—you never knew what you'd run into, but there was always a chance to be the kind of hero the Sun pathway liked.
But tonight, it was dead quiet. Weirdly so. The kind of stillness that made the tiny hairs on Ethan's neck stand straight up.
He was passing a narrow alley when his gut punched him with a warning.
No sound. Nothing visible. Just a chilling sense—something was very wrong nearby. It crawled over his skin, wound tight around his instincts, and screamed for attention.
Intuition told him something was wrong there. A brief check with Evil detection told him all he needed to know. Something was there
Ethan halted. Looked straight into the alley.
It was dark in there. The lights were illuminating anything clearly there but he could see something with his might vision though due to the distance it wasn't very clear
Every sensible part of Ethan wanted to keep walking. He was Sequence 8, just above last on the ladder. Whatever was making this place feel so wrong was probably way out of his league.
But that wasn't what the Sun pathway demanded. It wanted people who walked into the darkness.
So he did.
First thing that hit was the smell. Copper, salt, something older and rotten and deeply wrong. Blood, but old blood, the kind seeping into the air and turning sweet with decay—like the body had already started giving up to entropy.
His eyes got used to the gloom.
Two figures at the far end. One was a man: work clothes, heavy boots, hard hat tossed on the ground. His head hung back at a sickening angle, throat bared.
The other figure was latched onto his throat.
Not in some poetic, symbolic way, either. Physically attached, mouth pressed right where the shoulder met the neck, making a sound as if drinking. It made Ethan's stomach twist.
The thing "drinking" looked almost human—a woman, pale skin, dark hair, her clothes shredded and stained from what she'd been doing. But if you looked a little closer, the details were off. Her fingers were too long. The jaw was stretched in a way no person's could be. And the eyes—
Her eyes, when they snapped toward Ethan, were pure black. No whites, no shine. Just darkness.
Vampire.
The word rose up from Ethan's old memories and the instincts seared into him by the Beyonder's power. Comics, movies, legends—all of it warring for space in his mind with the gut-deep supernatural sense that screamed: Undead. Vampire. The real deal.
Here. In Metropolis. Three miles from Superman's territory.
The vampire let go of her victim with a sound that would keep Ethan awake for weeks—a wet, sucking hiss as she unlatched. The guy in work clothes slumped sideways—out cold, maybe worse, Ethan couldn't tell.
"Well," the vampire said. Her voice sounded lovely and twisted at the same time, music played through a broken speaker. "This is unexpected."
Ethan's mind fired through every possible move, faster than he'd ever managed before. Fight? He was Sequence 8. No clue what sort of tricks a DC vampire would have. LOTM experience was useless—these weren't undead from the Forsaken Land; they played by totally different rules.
Run? The Sun pathway spit on the idea. Every bit of his being pushed him to face this head-on. This thing, this twisted life feeding in the dark, wasn't something you ran from.
Call for help?
No question. Absolutely.
"SUPERMAN!" [T/L: Hey brother, you sure this guy isn't from one of the cowardly pathway?]
Ethan's voice bounced through the alley as he threw both hands up—dumping every bit of purifying energy his Sequence 8 body could create.
The light that burst out of his palms wasn't gentle. This wasn't the glow he'd used on Lily's fever. It was blazing, raw, the total wrath of the Sun pathway, made for burning evil out of the world. Pure, golden-white fire. Daylight at midnight.
The vampire shrieked.
Not a human scream. The sound stabbed right through Ethan's ears, more like broken glass than pain. The creature staggered from the light, arms up, pale flesh starting to smoke where his power touched her.
And then she dropped.
Way faster than Ethan expected. One second she was hunched there, the next she'd collapsed, twitching on the ground as the sun-borne light chewed through whatever kept her alive. [A/N: He would have been insta killed had it not been for the absolute advantage mc has. This vampires are no joke]
Ethan didn't stop.
He kept the beam locked on her, pouring in everything he could. Not out of spite. Just terror, raw and cold. He had no idea how hard it was to kill a DC vampire—maybe they healed, maybe they didn't die at all. He wasn't taking chances.
He kept burning her.
The vampire's skin charred, then cracked, then started leaking smoke that smelled like burning flesh, sulfur, and something as old as nightmares.
"I am NOT cut out for this," Ethan muttered, arms shaking from effort—and fear. "Seriously. This is way above my pay grade. This is—"
There was a burst of wind. A flash of red and blue.
Clark landed hard enough to spiderweb the concrete.
"Ethan! What's going on?"
"Vampire!" Ethan yelped, not lowering his hands, not even moving his eyes from the writhing thing on the ground. "It's an actual vampire! Blood, fangs, the whole deal! It was feeding on that guy!"
Clark's eyes flicked to the unconscious worker, back to the burning monster, back to Ethan. His face ran through surprise, worry, and that weird laser-deep focus he got when he started working through problems faster than any computer.
"Is it dead?"
"I don't know! I don't know if vampires work the same way here! I'm gonna keep this up until either it stops moving or I'm empty!"
"Stop. I've got this." Clark touched Ethan's shoulder—reassuring, steady, strong. "That's enough. You did your part. Let me handle the rest."
Ethan cut the light, fighting the urge to fire it up again. His arms dropped, weak and trembling. He'd used more power in those seconds than he had in three months of patrols. The world spun a little.
Clark crouched over the vampire, scanning with every sense he had. She was still moving, kind of. Not dead. Just burned to near nothingness.
Then he checked the construction worker—pulse, breath, all business, smooth and quick like someone who'd done a thousand triages.
"He's alive," Clark said. "Lost some blood, but he'll make it. I'll get him to the hospital."
"And her?" Ethan asked, pointing shakily at the vampire.
"I'll contain her. Then I'll see what's going on." Clark's face darkened—he almost never looked like that. "Vampires in Metropolis. That's… new. Even for us."
"Tell me about it."
"Go home, Ethan. Sleep. You've burned yourself out. You need to be at full strength if something else is happening tonight."
"You won't hear me argue."
Clark scooped up the unconscious man like he weighed nothing. He grabbed the vampire's smoldering carcass with a little less tenderness.
"I'll dig into this," he said, already lifting off. "Figure out if this was a one-time freak or something bigger. Stay off patrol until I call."
"Won't be an issue." Ethan slumped back, letting the bricks hold him up. "I've had enough for one night. Or year. Or two."
Clark gave a crooked, tight smile. Then he was gone—vanishing upward, both bodies in his grasp, headed for totally different ends.
Ethan stood there, alone with the stink of cooked vampire. Blood pooled in dark, confusing shapes for the city crews to wonder about come morning. Deep in Ethan's chest, the Sun pathway hummed, warming him: satisfied.
He'd gone straight into the dark—real, hunting-nightmare dark—and burned it away.
His progress ticked forward ever so slightly.
But the feeling—the creepy, writhing sense that'd led him here in the first place—hadn't really vanished. If anything, it had grown, spreading out and weaving into the city's shadows. Made him wonder if the vampire was just the tip of something much, much worse.
Something lurking out there, getting hungrier as the city slept.
He pushed off the wall and started home, heart still pounding and just one thought echoing in his head:
DC vs Vampires.
He hadn't known what Earth he'd landed on before—couldn't pin it down from a handful of clues.
Now, for the first time, he was starting to get a worryingly clear idea.
And honestly? That thought spooked him more than anything he'd faced in that alley.
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Question: Ethan made a mistake here. What do you think it was?
Your answer: