"From the ashes of what was, rise to build what will be" - Unknown.
Death always comes too soon.
For Devin, it came on a Tuesday.
Just another shitty day, really. Bills piling up on the counter. A dead-end job he'd stopped pretending to care about. Friends he kept meaning to text back but never did. His mom—God, when was the last time he'd actually called her? Twenty-two years old and he already felt ancient. Hollowed out.
He wasn't thinking about any of that when he stepped into the crosswalk, though. Just trying to get home. Then came the headlights. The screech of brakes that came way too late. The sickening crunch of impact—and that weird, awful moment of floating before everything cut to black.
And then… nothing.
No pain. No sound. Just darkness.
Until a voice cut through it.
"Do you want to stay dead?"
Not the kind of question you expect in the void. No warm light, no angels with harps. Just this... presence. Old. Vast. And completely unbothered by whether he lived or died.
Devin tried to respond but couldn't find his voice at first. Maybe this was just his brain misfiring. One last hallucination before the lights went out for good.
But the voice waited.
Not patiently—just... endlessly.
"I'll ask once more: do you want to stay dead?"
His throat shouldn't have worked. He shouldn't have had a throat. But somehow he felt himself starting to nod. Then he stopped.
"...No."
The word came out before he knew why. Maybe it was thinking about his little brother, who still thought he was cool. Or his mom with his kindergarten drawings still on the fridge. All those people he'd never told he loved. All that time he'd wasted just... existing.
"I want to live," he said, voice stronger now. "But not like before. I want—" He paused, searching for the right words. "I want my life to matter."
Silence. Heavy. Watching.
"Then we have an accord. I will return you to life—not your own, but one where your choices will shape the fate of thousands."
"...What's the catch?"
"In exchange, you will not flee from pain, fear, or death. You will stand between destruction and those too weak to face it. Even when no one thanks you. Even when they hate you for it."
The presence seemed to shift closer.
"You will not remember who you were... not immediately. But the moment you choose truth over comfort, action over fear—you will remember everything."
Devin didn't hesitate long.
"...Deal."
Reality snapped off like a TV unplugged.
The smell of eggs woke him up.
His body felt wrong immediately. Too small. Too light. He was tangled in sheets covered in Star Wars characters—the prequels, judging by the Darth Maul print. Toys littered the floor. Action figures. Legos. A Guardians of the Globe poster hung crookedly on the wall.
His heart hammered against ribs that felt thin as bird bones.
He looked down at his hands. Small. Brown. Trembling.
A kid's hands.
He practically fell out of bed stumbling toward the mirror. The face staring back at him couldn't have been older than seven. Black hair sticking up in every direction. A little scar on his chin. Freckles scattered under wide, terrified eyes.
"Mark?" A voice called from downstairs—deep, warm, with that particular dad-firmness to it. "Dinners ready!"
And just like that, memories flooded in. Not his memories—Mark's memories. They crashed through his mind like a breaking dam, too fast to process but impossible to ignore.
Mark Grayson. The name clicked into place like a key turning. Viltrumite. Invincible. Omni-Man.
Oh God.
Oh God.
This wasn't his Earth.
This was the world of Invincible.
He was in Mark Grayson's body. Seven-year-old Mark Grayson.
His pulse pounded in his ears.
"Mark!" Nolan's voice again, closer now. Footsteps on the stairs. "Come on down, son. I want to talk to you about something."
Devin's—no, Mark's—stomach dropped.
He knew this scene. The fake history lesson. The sanitized version of Viltrum. The lie that would set everything in motion.
He wasn't watching a show anymore.
He was in it.
He was Mark Grayson now.
And somewhere deep in his chest—deeper than bone, deeper than blood—he remembered the promise he'd made in the dark.
He didn't know what was coming. Viltrumites. Conquest. Thragg. All those horrors he'd read and watched safely from his couch.
But he knew one thing:
He'd been given a second chance.
And this time? He wasn't going to waste it.