After the light, darkness became Bruce's whole world.
It was not the gentle dark behind closed eyes, nor the simple dark of a room at night. This was deeper, heavier, an ocean without water pressing in from every side. There was no snow, no fire, no pain, no body. For a while, there was only drift.
Then one thought surfaced through the dark, weak and frightened.
Frank…?
No answer came.
Instead, another voice rose around him, thin and terrified.
I don't want to die.
Then another joined it. Then hundreds more. Then thousands, all whispering the same prayer too late. At first Bruce thought the fear was his own, but the longer he floated in that endless black, the clearer it became that the words were everywhere, spoken by mouths that had already spent their final breath.
When sight returned to him, or something close enough to sight, he saw them.
Gray sparks drifted through the darkness like ash caught in a windless night. No, not drifted. Sunk. All of them were sinking, sliding slowly toward a distant light that did not grow closer so much as wait.
Bruce tried to reach the nearest spark. He wanted to catch it, steady it, tell it not to be afraid. But nothing moved. He had no hands, no arms, no body at all. He was only another small bead of ash-light among countless others, sinking with them into the cold.
Useless again.
The darkness changed beneath him. Far below, something smoldered, a deep ember-glow spreading under the void, and one by one the gray sparks slipped through an unseen surface and dropped farther, like rain falling into a black lake.
Then Bruce passed through too, and the void became a current.
It pulled him into a vast, slow passage, its walls pressing around him like a tunnel made of gravity. Ahead stood something too large to understand at first.
A Gate.
Not a door. A threshold. A mountain of stone and shadow, carved with spiral steps that descended toward a furnace-bright glow. On either side, skulls leaned from the walls, huge and ancient, their empty eyes turned toward the stream of souls as if listening for names.
Around the current moved the Wardens.
They were ghost-pale figures, almost human, but wrong in the way broken things are wrong after being repaired by hands that did not understand what they once were. They glided through the dark with patient silence, circling the sinking souls without hurry, without urgency.
One of them reached into the stream and plucked a spark from the flow.
Bruce watched it struggle in that pale grip, watched it stretch and twist until it wore the shape of a man in a hardhat, a length of pipe driven through his jaw and skull. His death clung to him, branded into shape like a final signature.
Then the Warden released him.
The man sank back into the current and joined the others.
Bruce understood then. Every soul carried its death. Burns, fractures, missing pieces, wounds that did not bleed but remembered. They moved without sound, yet their mouths formed words Bruce heard anyway.
I don't want to die.
Some souls panicked. They brightened, thrashed, and tried to swim away from the Gate. They fled toward islands of bone drifting in the current, mountains of ribs and skulls piled together in obscene shapes. Some were human, some animal, and some belonged to things Bruce had no name for.
The Wardens followed, never seeming to hurry. They did not need to. The bone islands crumbled beneath the frightened souls, dragging them down into darker water, and the Wardens simply gathered what remained and folded them back into the stream.
Bruce watched, helpless, until he finally saw the pattern.
The souls who kept moving were left alone. Those who clutched, those who fled, those who refused the current, were taken. Only stillness invited the second drowning.
But where were they going?
Bruce looked toward the Gate. He wanted the light beyond it to be good. A warm room. A green field. A place where Frank might be waiting with that tired look on his face, saying, You really screwed this one up, buddy.
But the longer Bruce stared, the less the light felt like mercy. It was not hearth-light. It was furnace-light. Patient, hungry, certain.
Judgment waited at the foot of those steps, and after that, there would be no turning back. No Frank. No second chance. No door to pound on. He had done what he could and still fallen short, and now he drifted among voices he had wanted to help but had been too slow, too weak, too human to save.
The current thickened around him.
The Wardens turned.
Their faces shifted as they approached, assembling out of endings: a nurse with blood dried across her cap, a soldier with dog tags clattering against his throat, a schoolboy with one shoe, a mother with a prayer still frozen on her lips. They were not monsters. That would have been easier. They were inevitability wearing familiar faces.
Bruce looked up into the dark and asked, without words, if this was all.
Was this where trying led?
He had only wanted to be useful. Like the heroes in movies. Like Neo. Like a comic-book paladin. Ridiculous, maybe, but he had meant it. He had tried. He had failed. And yet, even now, surrounded by all those terrified little lights, something in him refused to stop reaching.
If he could, he would take them with him. He would carry their fear, their pain, their shame, whatever weight they could not bear. He only wanted to help. Just once, he wanted to set something right.
Please, he thought, and the thought rose through the darkness like a flare without flame. Please. If anything is listening, give me a sign. Let me fix what I broke. Let me help more people. Let me take the pain if I have to. Give them another morning. Give me the burden. Please. Just one miracle.
Something answered.
A crack split the ceiling of the underworld, and then it broke open.
White light poured down. Not the furnace-light of the Gate, but something softer and brighter, sun-warm and newborn-clean. It struck the current, and the Wardens recoiled with a sound like silk tearing. From the black floor, white flowers surged upward by the thousands, blooming in a rushing wave until an island of softness rose beneath Bruce and lifted him against the pull.
For the first time, the dark smelled kind.
New snow. Cut apple. Clean linen warmed by sunlight.
Bruce looked up.
Something hovered in the brilliance. It was small and haloed, with wings like down and eyes like summer water. The little being drew itself up, clearly trying very hard to look mighty.
"B-behold," it said.
Then it coughed.
Not a thunderous divine cough. A tiny one.
"The hour is running out."
Bruce stared.
The being glanced aside, as if someone only it could see had given it notes. Then it tried again, braver this time.
"H-humanity is fractured. Divided. Small when it should be one. The stars are not empty, Bruce. Others are there. Others beyond them. And one day, if humanity has not grown strong enough, they will come and take what is yours."
The small chest puffed up.
"So humanity must become one people. Strong. Wise. Kind, too. Kind is very important." It nodded sharply, pleased with itself. "But also fast. Very fast."
Bruce processed this as well as a dead man without a body could.
Is this God?
It felt like God. It also felt like God had borrowed someone's cape and tripped over it.
"That's…" Bruce thought carefully. "That's a lot."
World peace. Space. Humanity. Aliens, apparently.
He tried to look down at himself, but there was no down, no body, only light.
"I'm more of a carry-heavy-things guy," he admitted.
The little being's glow softened.
"I know."
Those two words were gentle enough to hurt.
"I c-can't do everything," the being said. "I am not all-knowing. Not all-powerful. Big miracles make me tired, and then I have to sleep." It looked embarrassed by this, as if needing rest were a terrible professional flaw. "But I can give you something."
It reached for him.
The touch was not really a touch. It was warmth deciding where it belonged.
My child, the voice said, steadier now, deeper than the small body should have allowed. You know what it is to suffer. You know what it is to be unwanted. You know what it is to want to help and fail.
Bruce could not speak.
The light moved closer.
Then learn. Grow. Mend. Change what you can before the hour runs out.
A spark crossed from the Godling into him, white as noon and soft as milk. It sank into Bruce and found his center.
For one impossible moment, he felt himself brighten. Gray became pale, pale became white, and white became something living. A heart formed within him, not flesh, but light. It beat once, then again.
Around it, a thin ring drew itself tight. Not armor. Not a wall. A boundary. A place where Bruce ended and the darkness could not simply pour in. When fear pressed against him, the ring hummed. When sorrow rose, the heart steadied it.
It was small, yes. A starter flame. But it belonged to the same family as suns.
A gift of making, mending, healing and life.
Not a weapon. Not a miracle he could throw around without cost. Something to practice. Something to grow. Something to become worthy of.
Bruce tried to salute, or bow, or do anything respectful. He managed only a bright, bewildered yes.
Time running out. Humanity divided. Stars not empty. Help people. Move fast. Don't leave anyone behind.
"Um," the Godling squeaked, suddenly anxious, "not now-now."
Bruce paused.
"First you have to become again. Sorry. It is a process."
The little being's voice changed once more, becoming old enough to make the flowers bow.
"You will go up by going in."
Below them, the current burned like a slow galaxy. The Gate waited. The Wardens hovered at the edge of the white light, no longer reaching. Almost shy now, as if remembering they had once been gentle.
Bruce turned his not-face toward the sinking souls. He could not save them. Not yet. But he sent three thoughts into the dark as hard as he could.
Keep moving. Don't stop. You're almost there.
A few sparks brightened.
The Godling fluttered happily.
"Good," it whispered. "Good."
Then it yawned, a real yawn, small and helpless and far too honest for something divine.
"I have to rest now," it said softly. "Be brave. Be kind. Work on becoming better, so you can help others."
Its glow dimmed a little, and for the first time its voice carried something heavier than innocence.
"And remember, Bruce… gifts such as this are never without cost. The power I have given you will mend, but it will also change. When you form again, you will not return as you were. Your body, your life, the shape of your path… all of it will be different."
The little being hesitated.
"Do not be afraid of that. Become better anyway."
The flowers lifted Bruce higher. The pillar of white opened above him like a throat of daylight, and he rose through it, through the last thin skin of the old dark.
Then darkness came again, but not the cold, judging dark from before. This one was warm, close, and patient, the hush of held breath. Hands that were not hands turned him, tucked him, folded him inward like a blanket around a sleeping child.
Bruce became a spark, then smaller. A single cell with a white ember at its core.
Division followed. Measure. The quiet mathematics of making. The first curve of a spine. The first hint of limbs. A tiny engine learning its rhythm beside the light-heart, which beat softly at the center of him, waiting to be trained, lifted, grown.
Somewhere far above him, or deep within him, the very small God whispered, already drowsy: "Go f-fix them, okay?"
Bruce reached for a heroic answer. He managed the mental equivalent of a thumbs-up.
Help them. Move fast. Don't leave anyone. The light-heart answered with one pulse, then another.
Like a promise.