A hundred million kilometers away, alone in the hopeless reaches of space, a man floated, lost for eons and still seething with rage. Even in the silence of space, he heard the shatter of the symbol on the tomb, like glass. The first sound he had heard in centuries. He had floated for what seemed an eternity, but now he knew his way back. That sound had provided the direction. He accelerated towards his planet, speeding faster, faster, calling upon the speed of Mercury, so fast it was as if he were the lightning itself. He was going home.
"Billy, you have mail!" A boy, around five, ran in through Billy and Freddy's open door to deliver a lone letter to Billy as he sat doing his homework.
Freddy reclined on his bed, procrastinating and surfing the internet, looking for news of the weird and mysterious, as well as the general superhero news he was always up to date on. "That another letter from Mr. Kent?" he asked.
"Yeah. He has a lot of good advice for my job, even though he does newspaper stuff. Sophia said that next time he's in town, I could interview him for the show. She said it'd be good practice if I want to do something bigger than community stuff," Billy responded as he opened the letter.
Freddy's was happy to hear about his friend's achievement, but his laser focus never wavered from the laptop he held or the superheroes it talked about. "That's cool. Think he knows Superman? Lois Lane does, and they both work at the Daily Planet."
"I don't think so. He seems like a bit of a scaredy-cat, so I bet he runs whenever there's something Superman would show up for. I mean, the only reason he wrote me was because I had a better view of the hydra at the museum and he wanted to write about the kid reporter."
Freddy nodded distractedly. Billy got to work opening and reading the letter. He always marveled at how conversational the letters were compared to how professional Mr. Kent's news stories were.
"Billy,
I heard your piece on the Greek artifact exhibit at the museum. It was a good story, and had some fantastic detail. It really captured the imagination, especially your descriptions of how they must have looked new and whole. I might just have to take a trip down the road to see it. I just hope it's a little less eventful than my last visit to Fawcett.
Make sure that when you are presenting something as objective as the news, it's not opinion, though. It can give people the wrong idea if you're not clear whether or not something is fact or feeling. The truth is always important to keep in mind when you have the influence you do. I've found that a good way of dealing with this…."
Billy set down the letter, unfinished. He'd get to it after dinner. Honestly, Billy found that a lot of Mr. Kent's advice applied to being Shazam as much as it applied to his job. It must come with being good at giving advice that it applied to a lot of stuff all at at once. Either way, he was glad Mr. Kent was willing to help him out – he had a lot of stuff going on, and advice from a real reporter was a lifesaver. Superman's talk told him it would be tough to have a normal life and be a superhero at the same time, but Billy hadn't really realized how hard it really was. That must be why Superman lived at the Fortress of Solitude. Maybe he had tried having two lives and given up. But there was way too much going on for Billy to give up on being Billy to just be Shazam. And one of them was talking right now.
Freddy finally stopped putting off his studying, just in time for Hayman's deep voice to call out for dinner. "Perfect timing," he said. Billy helped him stand and passed him his crutch, as he usually did. Freddy could stand up on his own, but always appreciated the assist. They headed down to dinner, making bets on what soup or stew Hayman made today.
Sivana was alive. He had barely survived the bolt of lightning that had struck his face, and he had been crushed by the news that he would not see out of his right eye again, but the hopelessness faded with the swelling and bruising that obscured that half of his face. He was never particularly handsome, though he had always had an intelligent charm to him. Now he was homely. A full quarter of his face was swallowed by a puckered burn scar, untreatable from the hours of transit it had taken to get him to proper treatment. But, and he kept this secret from the doctors, he could see some things out of his destroyed eye.
He could see the leylines and static crawling of magic as it traveled around him. He could see a patient's belief in a placebo treatment that made it more than just a sugar pill. He could see the current of life in the earth that pulsed and shifted with the hours of the day, the phase of the moon, a thousand small changes that brought the world alive. No, he couldn't read a book or other mundane things, but he had another eye for that. He could see far more with his ruined eye than anyone else could with two good ones. And he wasn't done yet. He would follow this magic to his very end, to the center of it all. He would understand everything about it, manipulate it, and he would use it to heal himself. He would live, or die trying.