CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN — SIMURGH

The Simurgh hovered above Earth's atmosphere, her vast wings unfurling in slow, methodical motions that defied physics. Her platinum-white hair drifted weightlessly, framing an expression of perfect serenity—an image at odds with the devastation she was about to unleash.

Her gaze swept across the battlefield. Below, Earth’s defenders scrambled to deploy their countermeasures. Above, the being before her stood unwavering, a figure who had defied all expectations: Superman.

He lunged. 

The vacuum should have swallowed all sound, but the force of his movement rippled through the electromagnetic spectrum, a blur of light breaking past the speed of sound before sound could even exist. He struck out, fists moving faster than most sensors could register.

The blow should have shattered her. Instead, she bent with it, twisting into the strike, absorbing its force and redirecting it into a pulse that fractured the space around them. Gravity wrenched sideways. Superman corrected instantly, heat vision lancing toward her, carving a burning path through the void.

The Simurgh was already elsewhere, wings flaring, their span distorting the space around her.

Then, she began to create.

She reached into the vast sea of information available to her—futures she had yet to witness but had already seen, the minds of humanity’s greatest Tinkers laid bare before her.

A weapon took form.

Something that distorted local reality, a sphere of impossibility that folded space inward. She released it.

Superman easily evaded as the void where he had stood collapsed in on itself, a localized singularity that vanished as soon as it formed. He surged forward, even faster, fists striking with force enough to sunder planets.

The Simurgh did not block. She did not need to.

Tiny drones, invisible to the naked eye, unravelled from the strands of her hair, forming a shifting lattice that bent the fabric of space around her, warping reality at a quantum level.

Superman’s next blow landed—but the force dispersed harmlessly against an energy field, a repurposed design stolen from a long-dead Tinker.

The Simurgh tilted her head, observing.

Then she countered.

More weapons manifested in her wake—stolen, repurposed, perfected. Some crackled with energy beyond human comprehension, others formed from barely realized ideas. They did not fire at random, but in a precise sequence meant to guide, to corral, to shift probabilities.

Not to kill. Not yet.

To test.

Superman exceeded projections. He weaved between blasts, disassembled constructs mid-flight, barreled through the ones he had no time to avoid. His mind processed events faster than any human’s; every movement calculated against a million possible outcomes.

Every attack refined his responses, every feint narrowed his inefficiencies. He wasn’t just reacting—he was learning, adapting, and evolving in real-time.

Superman was a variable she could not fully predict.

A flaw in the pattern.

A disruption in causality.

For the first time in countless cycles, the Simurgh felt something akin to intrigue.

She sang.

No air, no medium to carry sound—but the effects of her song didn’t need air. Its frequencies burrowed into the mind, rewriting thought, threading suggestions and falsehoods into perception so seamlessly that reality itself seemed to waver.

Even Superman, for all his willpower, for all his alien nature, could not keep it out.

Because it did not control.

It did not compel.

It only lingered—an echo of something vast and unknowable, turning instinct against reason.

Superman stilled. A fraction of a second’s hesitation—

And she was inside his guard.

A wing, impossibly sharp, carved through his suit, scoring the skin beneath. The wound was shallow. Inconsequential.

But it was the first.

The test was complete.

She had what she needed.

And now, the real battle began.