Inside the building, the clash between Clark and the Phantom intensified with every passing moment. The two Kryptonians fought in a violent, destructive ballet, tearing through the structure. Each blow shook the walls, each impact leaving craters in the floors. The building groaned and creaked under the force of their battle, but neither combatant seemed willing to stop.
In the midst of the chaos, Martha had managed to find another way out, a narrow path through the damaged second-floor hallway. But fate wasn't kind. As she stumbled through the shortcut, her foot caught on a broken beam, sending her crashing down to the basement below with a sickening thud. She groaned in pain, her body battered from the fall.
Clark, seeing his mother in peril, tried to move toward her, but the Phantom wasn't done yet. It wasn't going to let him leave.
"Clark!" the Phantom taunted, his voice mocking, as he swung a powerful fist that sent Clark tumbling across the room. The battle raged on, building energy crackling in the air.
Fueled by rage and fear, Clark's eyes burned with intensity. His control over his punches broke, and he began to strike with unrelenting force. His punches landed with such power that the Phantom actually flinched, momentarily retreating. The building's walls cracked, the air heavy with the tension of their battle.
But even as Clark moved to reach his mother, the Phantom regained his composure. He lunged forward, pulling a weapon from his side: a Kryptonian grenade, one capable of destroying an entire city. The green glow of the grenade flickered ominously, and Clark's heart froze in horror.
"No!" Clark roared, diving toward the grenade just as it activated, its deadly energy charging up.
With a frantic desperation, Clark slammed his fist into the grenade, his strength enough to shatter it before it could unleash its devastating blast. But the impact sent shockwaves through the building, the explosion of force knocking Clark back and leaving him vulnerable. The shockwave reverberated throughout the structure, causing cracks in the walls to widen and floors to buckle.
The building began to collapse.
As debris fell around him, Clark rushed to Martha, who was lying helplessly on the floor, battered and hurt. He tried to lift her, but the weight of the crumbling building was too much. He shielded her with his body, holding her tightly as the structure around them began to collapse in on itself.
The Phantom had managed to escape in the chaos, leaving Clark and Martha trapped in the ruins of the once-sturdy building.
Outside, Chloe felt her heart shatter as she watched the destruction unfold. Her mind couldn't process the sight of the building falling apart, piece by piece, as dust and debris filled the air. She screamed, the horror finally bursting free from her throat.
"NO!"
Her voice was raw, desperate, filled with an anguish that only those who truly loved could understand. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she dropped to the ground, her hands pressed into the dirt as though she could anchor herself to reality. The weight of it all—the fear, the loss, the impending emptiness—crushed her.
"AAAAHHHHHHH!"
Her scream tore through the air, but it wasn't enough. Nothing could stop the building from crumbling, nothing could undo the destruction.
The world seemed to stop around her. The sirens, the chaos, the screaming—it all faded as the crushing weight of her emotions took hold.
And all she could do was scream.
The world had collapsed around her.
Chloe sat frozen, her body trembling as she stared at the ruins of the building that had crumbled before her very eyes. The weight of the moment crushed her, suffocating her, leaving her gasping for breath. The night sky was thick with smoke, the sirens a distant wail in the backdrop of a disaster too immense for her mind to process. She couldn't move. She couldn't think.
And then—
A sound.
A muffled, distant shift beneath the debris.
Chloe's breath hitched. Her tear-streaked face snapped toward the ruins, her heart hammering against her ribs. The remaining dust clouded her vision, but she heard it again—a deep, guttural groan, followed by the scraping of stone against stone. The debris trembled, as if something—no, someone—was forcing their way through.
The next second, the ground shook as an invisible force erupted from beneath the wreckage. The rubble exploded outward, steel beams and shattered concrete launching into the air like paper.
Chloe threw up her arms to shield herself, eyes wide in shock as the destruction unveiled a single, unbroken figure.
Clark.
He rose from the debris like a god among mortals, the weight of an entire building crumbling off him as though it were nothing. His hands were wrapped tightly around a frail body, shielding her from harm. His mother.
The moment Chloe saw them, her breath caught in her throat.
Clark carefully laid Martha down on the ground, the urgency in his movements betraying his terror. He didn't look up. His focus was only on her.
Chloe barely noticed the gasps and fearful murmurs from the surrounding officers and bystanders. The world had stilled, everyone frozen in disbelief. A man—no, something more than a man—had survived the destruction of an entire building without a single scratch. And now, he knelt in the heart of the devastation, desperately shaking his mother's still form.
"M-Mom?" Clark's voice wavered, his hands trembling as they cradled her face. "Mom, wake up."
Silence.
Chloe's chest tightened. No. Please, no.
Clark shook her again, more urgently. "Mom, please. It's okay now. I got you. You're safe. Just wake up." His voice cracked, breaking into something raw and desperate.
Still, she didn't stir.
The night air was thick, the smoke dissipating, revealing the unbearable truth.
Martha Kent was gone.
Clark didn't move. His hands remained where they were, his fingers gently pressing against her cheek, waiting for warmth that would never return.
Chloe's lips parted, but no sound came out. Her vision blurred, tears slipping down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away.
Clark… he wasn't even crying.
He sat there, utterly still, staring at his mother's face as though he could will her back to life with sheer belief alone. His expression was empty—so empty it was horrifying.
"No…" he whispered.
His hands trembled as he shook her again, firmer this time.
"No. You're okay. You're just sleeping."
His voice was hollow. Detached.
Chloe wanted to move. To run to him. To take his hand and tell him he wasn't alone.
But before she could, movement in the distance caught her attention.
The police.
They had their guns drawn.
Chloe's breath hitched.
They were afraid. Terrified. They had seen what he did—how he had survived the impossible, how he had emerged from the destruction without a single wound. And now, they stood on the crumbled remains of the street, weapons pointed directly at him.
"Hands where we can see them," one officer ordered.
Clark didn't respond.
He didn't even look up.
"Sir, I said—put your hands where we can see them!"
The officer took a step forward, gun trained on Clark's head.
Chloe's body moved before she could think.
"NO!" she screamed, her voice shattering the night.
Clark finally looked up.
His gaze met hers.
And for the first time, Chloe saw it.
His face—once filled with warmth, once filled with hope—was shattered.
Broken.
Tears glistened in his eyes, but they didn't fall. They just sat there, trapped, as if he refused to accept them. As if crying would make it real.
Chloe's breath was ragged, her entire body shaking. "Clark, please," she whispered. "Please, you have to—"
Before she could finish, he was gone.
A blur of motion, a sudden gust of wind—Clark vanished into the night, disappearing with lightning speed before anyone could react.
The world fell into silence.
Chloe remained where she was, tears slipping down her face as the weight of everything crashed down on her.
He was gone.
And she was alone.
The Last Tether
Clark was gone.
The moment his figure blurred into nothing, Chloe's heart clenched so violently she thought she might break apart.
The world around her was moving—sirens wailing, officers murmuring, people whispering—but she could barely hear it. Everything was a haze, a blur of emotions so strong they left her trembling.
Her hands curled into the dust-covered pavement, nails digging into the cold, rough surface.
Martha was dead.
Jonathan was already gone.
And Clark…
Clark.
Her breath hitched as something inside her shattered.
He had lost everything.
The last piece of his family. The last part of his world that connected him to something real, something human.
And now—
Now they all knew.
The murmurs spread like wildfire among the police and the crowd that had gathered.
"He survived that?"
"No one could have—"
"He's not human."
"What is he?"
The officers who had been holding their guns now hesitated, their hands still hovering near their holsters. Fear flickered in their eyes, uncertainty gripping them as they processed what they had just witnessed.
They had pointed their weapons at him. At Clark.
Because of Jimmy?
Because of her?
The weight of the truth slammed into Chloe's chest like a physical blow.
Clark's secret… his greatest secret… was no longer just a secret.
The world had seen.
He had always feared this moment. The day people would look at him and not see Clark Kent, the boy from Smallville, the man who had spent his entire life protecting them.
Instead, they saw something else.
Something not human.
Her stomach twisted violently.
They were scared.
Of him.
A rage unlike anything she had ever known boiled beneath her grief.
How dare they?
How dare they look at him like he was a monster?
The man who had saved them more times than they could ever know. The man who had just lost his mother—the only family he had left—and they had the audacity to point guns at him? To whisper about him like he was something to fear?
Her hands curled into fists.
Clark wasn't a monster.
Clark was—
A sob caught in her throat.
Clark was everything.
And she loved him.
Not in the way she had once convinced herself she did. Not in the childish crush that had faded into deep admiration.
No.
She loved him.
Loved him in a way that was so deep, so real, it made her chest ache.
She had known for so long that he was important to her. That he meant more to her than anyone else ever could. But this—
This was something else entirely.
Clark had lost everything.
His mother. His father. The last ties to his humanity.
He thought he was alone.
But he wasn't.
She was still here.
And she wasn't going to let him go.
Tears blurred her vision as she staggered to her feet, her body weak but her resolve unshaken.
Clark might think it was over. That his last tether to this world had been severed.
But he was wrong.
Because Chloe Sullivan was still here.
And she wasn't ever going to let him get away.