Stormcatcher felt it first.
Not fear.
Not danger.
Pressure.
The air above the military installation warped, folding inward like a mirage being crushed by invisible hands. Instruments spiked. Alarms blared. Soldiers looked to the sky, and even before they saw him, they knew.
He had returned.
A tear in the clouds opened like a wound, and from it descended a figure wrapped in void-violet and molten gold. Jack Storm did not fall — he arrived, wings unfolding with a thunderclap that rippled across kilometers.
He looked different now.
Not just stronger.
Denser.
His presence alone bent gravity. His red eyes burned with streaks of solar gold, and faint ember-veins pulsed beneath his skin as if a star had been grafted into his blood.
Stormcatcher rose into the air to meet him, fists clenched, aura flaring.
"You're alive," he said.
Jack's voice carried through the sky.
"Did you doubt it?"
Stormcatcher's jaw tightened. "You should be ash."
Jack smiled faintly.
"I was."
And then he moved.
The Storm vs The Catcher
They collided with a shockwave that flattened the base beneath them.
Stormcatcher struck first, his enhanced body unleashing an A-rank punch that would have obliterated cities.
Jack caught it.
Not blocked.
Caught.
Stormcatcher's eyes widened.
Jack twisted his wrist and flung him through the air, sending Stormcatcher tearing through clouds like a missile.
Stormcatcher recovered, slamming back toward Jack with a sonic boom, driving a knee into Jack's ribs.
Jack didn't budge.
His body rippled, absorbing the impact like liquid steel.
"Still human," Jack said quietly. "Still trying to hurt me with force."
Stormcatcher roared and unleashed everything — gravity distortions, raw physical might, bursts of demon-infused energy.
Jack let it hit him.
Then he vanished.
He reappeared behind Stormcatcher and struck him once.
Not a punch.
A reality fracture.
Stormcatcher screamed as his body was hurled downward, crashing into the ground so hard the earth cracked open in a spiderweb of destruction.
Jack followed him down slowly, wings barely moving.
Stormcatcher tried to stand.
Jack placed one hand on his chest and pushed.
The ground collapsed beneath them into a massive crater.
Stormcatcher lay broken, barely conscious.
Jack stood over him.
"I could kill you," Jack said.
Stormcatcher spat blood. "Then do it."
Jack shook his head.
"No," he replied. "You're proof."
Stormcatcher looked up weakly.
"Of what?"
Jack's eyes burned.
"Of what they did to you."
He turned away.
Five Minutes
Jack rose into the sky.
And then he accelerated.
Not to supersonic speed.
Not hypersonic.
Trans-planetary.
In under a second, he crossed oceans.
In two, he was above another continent.
To radar systems, he didn't appear — he skipped.
A violet-gold streak carved around the Earth like a blade.
Deep underground, military bunkers trembled.
Jack drove his fist into the crust of the planet.
The ground split open.
Miles of reinforced rock peeled back as if reality itself obeyed him.
Hidden nuclear silos were ripped into the open like exposed bones.
Jack destroyed them.
Not with explosions.
With erasure.
Warheads collapsed into dust. Reactors were unmade. Launch systems folded into nothing.
In Russia.
In America.
In China.
In Europe.
In every secret location the world had buried its end-of-civilization weapons.
Jack found them all.
Because now, the Earth itself whispered to him where they were.
He moved too fast to be seen.
In five minutes, he erased humanity's ability to destroy itself.
The World Watches
Every government watched helplessly.
Satellites that still functioned caught glimpses — silos tearing open, mountains cracking, underground facilities ripped into the sky.
A general whispered, "We can't stop him."
Crowe stared at the feed.
"No," he said. "We never could."
The Statement
Jack returned to the sky above Earth, hovering where every camera could see him.
His voice didn't travel through sound.
It traveled through force.
Through the air.
Through technology.
Through fear.
"Nothing you possess can hurt me."
The words echoed across the planet.
"Nothing you build can stop me."
People froze.
"Whether you like it or not…"
Jack's eyes burned brighter.
"I am your saviour now."
Silence swallowed the world.
Not because it was quiet.
Because it was afraid.
Jack Storm hovered above the Earth like a god that refused to kneel.
And humanity finally understood what it meant to live under something it could never control.
The world did not end the day Jack Storm erased every nuclear weapon.
It simply became something else.
There were no mushroom clouds. No firestorms. No final scream of civilization tearing itself apart.
There was only a terrible, suffocating quiet.
Because for the first time since humanity discovered how to kill itself on a planetary scale, the button was gone.
1. The Silence After Power
In military command centers around the globe, officers stared at screens that showed nothing but confirmation messages:
WARHEAD — DESTROYED
SILO — COLLAPSED
SUBMARINE PAYLOAD — LOST
ORBITAL PLATFORM — NONFUNCTIONAL
Every layer of mutually assured destruction had been erased in under five minutes.
Not sabotaged.
Not hacked.
Removed from reality.
A general in Washington whispered, "We're naked."
In Beijing, a minister dropped to his knees.
In Moscow, a war room fell completely silent as red status lights turned to gray.
For centuries, humanity's real superpower had never been courage or intelligence.
It had been fear.
The fear of what retaliation would look like.
Jack had taken that away.
2. The Storm Over the World
Jack Storm hovered above the planet, wings spread, eyes burning like twin dying suns.
People around the world saw him.
Not just on screens.
They felt him.
The sky itself carried his presence, a pressure that made hearts beat faster and instincts scream.
Some fell to their knees.
Others screamed at him through their windows.
Some cried.
Some prayed.
A child in Brazil asked his mother, "Is he an angel?"
She didn't know how to answer.
3. Crowe's Defeat
Crowe stood in a bunker that had just become a tomb.
Not because it was about to be bombed.
Because it had lost all meaning.
A subordinate whispered, "Sir… what do we do now?"
Crowe didn't look away from the screen showing Jack floating above the clouds.
"We don't do anything," he said.
The truth hurt.
"We can't."
Stormcatcher lay in a medical bay, his body slowly repairing itself. He watched Jack's silhouette on a wall monitor.
"…He spared me," he muttered.
A scientist hesitated. "He didn't have to."
Stormcatcher closed his eyes.
"That's what makes him terrifying."
4. Hell Watches
Deep in Hell's unseen layers, the Infernal Broker knelt again.
The Devil's presence was pleased.
"His rebellion is maturing," the Devil said softly. "He has severed humanity's leash from itself."
The Broker hesitated. "But he is no longer afraid of them."
The Devil chuckled.
"Good."
5. Jack Alone Above Earth
Jack drifted higher.
He felt the world beneath him trembling — not physically, but emotionally. Fear was a kind of energy now.
"…I didn't want this," he murmured.
But he didn't regret it either.
Because now there was no one left who could threaten the planet with extinction.
Only him.
He looked down at Earth.
"I'll protect you," he whispered. "Whether you want me to… or not."
And far beyond the stars, something ancient began to pay closer attention.