Kael didn't want attention, but it found him. On his way home from school, he walked into a robbery. Without thinking, he stepped in front of the gunman to protect a screaming woman.
The bullet bounced off his chest. He barely felt it. Everyone stared.
The next day, police asked questions. A news reporter showed up at Lysa's café. And somewhere across Gotham, in a shadowed cave beneath a mansion, Batman rewound the footage over and over.
"He didn't flinch," Bruce said flatly. "Not even instinctively."
The boy had triggered at least two alien detection satellites. Kryptonian. Something else too. Unknown. Possibly Viltrumite? Impossible. Still… worth watching.
Kael, meanwhile, kept trying to be normal. But "normal" didn't apply when you accidentally snapped your desk in half or crushed a basketball backboard during gym class.
Worse, the dreams had started.
Explosions. A sun exploding. Fists slamming through planets. Screams in languages he didn't understand.
And always… always that golden energy, swirling like fire.