CHAPTER 192: EARTH [1]

After finishing breakfast with his wife, Ethan kissed her goodbye before leaving. The taste of her lips lingered as he pulled away, and he could see the mixture of understanding and worry in her eyes.

He was no longer worried about her safety—he had granted her Saint rank before their wedding, despite her initial protests.

"Ethan, this is too much," she had argued, backing away from his outstretched hand. "I don’t need this kind of power. I’m just a researcher."

"You’ll have a longer lifespan with it," he had persisted, his voice gentle but firm. "I won’t lose you to time, Tiana. Not when I have the power to prevent it."

Whilst she didn’t want the overwhelming strength that came with Saint rank, she had eventually acquiesced when he explained that it would allow them a millenia together instead of mere decades. The transformation had been gentler than Ezekiel’s—a warm glow that enhanced rather than overwhelmed, preserving her essential nature while granting her the ability to stand beside someone who had transcended mortality.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you too," she replied, touching his face one last time. "Bring them home if you can."

Then, Ethan disappeared from his place and appeared where everything had started.

On the riverbank.

The transition between worlds was seamless now, space bending to accommodate his will as easily as breathing. The power that had once required conscious effort now operated as naturally as his heartbeat, carrying him across dimensional barriers without the slightest strain.

He stood on the exact spot where his old life had ended, where the original Ethan Brandon had made his desperate choice to drag Jack into the dark water. The river still flowed with the same lazy current, its surface reflecting the overcast sky above. Nothing had changed—the same weathered concrete embankment, the same rusted railings, the same urban decay that had characterized this forgotten corner of the city.

Looking around, Earth seemed to be the same as he remembered. Nothing had changed at all.

Cars moved along the distant highway with their familiar hum of internal combustion engines. The air carried the same mixture of exhaust fumes and industrial smog that had always hung over this part of town. Street lights flickered on in the gathering dusk, casting the same harsh yellow glow across cracked sidewalks and peeling paint.

It was as if he had never left at all.

His heart clenched slightly at the remembrance of his family, and without fail, he made his way towards the house.

The familiar streets passed beneath his feet as he walked—not because he needed to walk, but because something about approaching on foot felt right.

The return deserved the dignity of steps, of time to remember and prepare.

The neighborhood looked exactly as he remembered it. Mrs. johnson’s garden still overflowed with the same chaos of vegetables and flowers. The corner store still had its faded awning and flickering neon sign. Even the graffiti on the bus stop appeared unchanged, as if frozen in time.

Arriving at the house, his face grew more solemn.

It was the same modest two-story building where he had grown up, with its chipped blue paint and the small front garden his mother had tended with such care. The mailbox still bore the faded letters spelling "BRANDON" in his father’s careful handwriting.

But something was wrong.

His parents were not in the house. His senses were incredibly high now and nobody was inside that house. No heartbeats. No breathing. No warmth of living bodies moving through rooms.

Ethan appeared inside without bothering with doors or locks, materializing in the living room where he had spent countless evenings doing homework while his parents watched their old television.

Everything was still in place except for his family.

His mother’s reading glasses sat on the coffee table beside a book marked with a faded receipt. His father’s work boots waited by the door, mud still caked on their soles from some long-ago job. Family photos lined the mantelpiece—pictures of school events, birthdays, the three of them together during happier times.

But dust covered everything. Thick layers that spoke of months, maybe years of abandonment.

"What the hell... happened here?" he whispered, his voice echoing strangely in the empty space.

The house felt like a museum dedicated to a life that had simply stopped. Mail had accumulated by the front door—bills, advertisements, official-looking envelopes that no one had collected. The refrigerator hummed emptily, its contents long since expired and removed.

His parents were gone.

But where?

Ethan no longer held his power back. He had kept his use of power at bay just to experience everything naturally, but with his parents missing and the house being fundamentally abandoned, something was wrong.

Very wrong.

The careful restraint he had maintained since returning to Earth shattered like glass. This wasn’t a time for subtlety or gentle investigation. This was a time for answers, regardless of the consequences.

He disappeared, appearing high in the sky above the city, his eyes closed as his consciousness expanded beyond all mortal limitations. His aura spread across the whole world, covering it entirely like an invisible net that touched every living soul on the planet.

The psychic pressure was immense—a presence pressing against reality itself as he searched for two specific life signatures among billions. His enhanced senses, refined through battles, swept through continents in seconds.

Due to the disruptions of mana, Earth that had not come into contact with such forces started convulsing.

The planet itself reacted to his unleashed power like a body rejecting a foreign substance. Tectonic plates shifted uneasily. Ocean currents faltered. The magnetic field fluctuated wildly, causing aurora to dance across skies where they had never appeared before.

The sky darkened ominously as his presence warped natural weather patterns. Storm clouds gathered with unnatural speed, lightning crackling between them with colors that shouldn’t exist. Multiple natural disasters threatened to occur simultaneously—earthquakes building along fault lines, hurricanes spinning up from calm seas, volcanic activity stirring in dormant mountains.