Luthor lost his mind for a while. There was no clean way to measure how long the panic lasted. Time didn't move right anymore. It folded in on itself while he shouted into a helmet that didn't echo properly, while he clawed at walls that felt too smooth to be real, while his breath kept fogging up nothing because the air inside never changed.
Silence crept back in, awkward and heavy. His heart beat slowed as his thoughts lined up again, one shaky piece at a time. That was when he finally started seeing instead of just reacting.
There was a ruined spot at the center of his chest where the suit had been burned straight through.
The metal edges were scorched and warped outward. Purple residue clung to the fabric around it and splattered the floor nearby in sticky streaks.
More of the same substance coated several of the fallen figures scattered along the corridor.
He didn't need a lab to figure that one out. Whatever these bodies were, that violet mess had once been inside them. Blood, or whatever passed for it here.
He looked back at the place where he'd woken up. The floor was stained darker there. Thick and uneven. A smear that suggested something had ended badly before it started again.
None of it lined up with his logical senses.
The damage to the suit said the body had died. No question. And yet here he was. Breathing, Moving, and even Thinking. The wound itself was gone beneath the armor, sealed as if it had never existed.
"So that's how it is," he muttered to no one. "All that buildup over gods and heavens and fire pits, and instead I wake up in… this."
He lifted his arms slowly.
Four limbs stretched where two were supposed to be. Long, thin, and awkward. His legs were wrong too, bending backward at the joints like a predator's. When he shifted his weight, the balance felt alien in a way that went beyond fear. It felt engineered for a different way of moving entirely.
He tried to touch his face and hit the inside of the helmet instead. The material resisted without resistance, as if pressure simply didn't apply the same way. His senses flowed through it anyway, distorted but intact. All he could tell about his head was its silhouette, reflected faintly in the curved metal nearby. It was tall and narrow. Something that ended in a sharp ridge.
He tried his voice next.
"Test. Luthor Spencer. Still me."
The sound came out in English. Same tone. Same rhythm. That alone told him everything. No borrowed instincts. No inherited memories. Just his mind was dragged into the wrong shell.
Standing up proved harder than it looked. Every shift sent him tipping sideways, his center of gravity unfamiliar and unstable. He ended up crawling for a while, dragging himself along the corridor like someone relearning how to belong to a body.
Once the shaking eased, he forced himself forward and began to study the dead.
There were two kinds of armor. One grey like his. One deep red. That much was obvious. Whatever war had happened here, it had not been subtle. Scorch marks tracked the walls in chaotic arcs. Nothing about the place felt abandoned in a peaceful sense.
He didn't know which side he was supposed to be on.
Without language, without context, without even the ability to open a door, the distinction felt meaningless anyway. Enemies would kill him on sight. Allies would see a malfunction.
He exhaled slowly inside the helmet, sarcastically blaming his fate. "What a Great start."
He pushed himself upright using the wall and began moving again, one careful step at a time.
The corridor was long, lined with sealed doors and dead panels that ignored every desperate button press. Lights glowed without responding. Systems hummed indifferently. Whatever ship this was, it did not care that he was lost inside it.
Hunger crept in before exhaustion. A dull, hollow pressure that grew sharper with every step. He had no idea what this body needed to survive. No idea how long it could hold out. The helmet wouldn't come off. The suit wouldn't respond. Even death felt operationally complicated now.
Hours blurred together. His thoughts unraveled into loops. He shouted at the doors. Pounded the walls. Kicked uselessly until his legs trembled and finally gave out. He slipped down against cold metal and passed out without ceremony.
When he woke again, the panic didn't return.
Only clarity of misfortune.
"This is it," he thought tiredly. "Trapped, starving, and too stupid to even end it clean."
The irony almost made him laugh.
With what little strength he had left, he pushed himself up again and resumed wandering. This time, he didn't conserve his voice. He shouted down corridors. Slammed fists into sealed bulkheads. Made noise for the sake of not vanishing quietly.
By the time the door finally opened, he was barely standing.
The sudden movement startled him enough that he lost his footing and collapsed backward onto the floor. Shapes filled the doorway. Grey armor. A tight formation. Long staff-weapons angled toward his chest with merciless precision.
He raised one shaky hand.
"Hey. Hi. Not hostile. Just very, very lost."
Voices burst into sound around him. Harsh syllables. Sharp tones. None of it meant anything.
The formation shifted. A taller figure stepped forward, broader than the others, presence radiating authority even through layers of armor.
Luthor stared up at him helplessly. "Sorry, man," he said hoarsely. "No idea what you're saying."
They scanned him. Whispered among themselves. Weapons never wavered.
Then the taller one took a staff, triggered its shape into something bladed and luminous, and approached without hesitation.
Luthor watched the weapon coming down with a strange sense of detachment. "Well, I guess this is it..."
He was prepared for death.
The impact was not theatrical. No flash or instant vaporization. It was just a clean strike, driving through him as any other weapon would.
Pain followed naturally.
Breath fled his chest in broken gasps he couldn't control. The world narrowed to sound and pressure and a fading pulse inside his ears. The soldiers stepped back. The captain spoke. Orders passed. The door sealed again.
Luthor never heard the end of it.
For the second time, the light claimed him.
This time, he didn't admire it.
He drifted upward again, stripped of weight and sound and rage in slow, dissolving layers. The peace tried to settle in. He rejected it out of spite.
"So that's your trick, huh, you God," he thought. "No heavens or hell. After one death… another life… How nice it would be if there was eternal peace… but sigh..."
He drifted, irritated even as the warmth soaked through him.
Then gravity returned.
Sound rushed back in. Hands grabbed him. Voices crowded close. Something forced its way out of his throat as his body convulsed. Air burned into his lungs. The world slammed into focus piece by piece.
He tried to move and found that he couldn't in any familiar way.
Someone cried out in triumph. Someone laughed. Rough hands lifted him.
"He's alive," a voice said in a language he somehow understood now. "He actually lived."
Luthor looked down and saw nothing but a tiny, trembling body wrapped in rough cloth.
The hands weren't huge.
He was small.
Very small.