"Darkseid will soon be dead by my hand. He won't live to claim his bounty," Clark said to the bounty hunter.
Upon hearing this, Lovo anxiously bit down on his cigar, but ultimately abandoned his plan to capture the last Kryptonian on Earth.
On November 30, 2011, Soren traveled to Costa Rica and found the bounty hunter's lost Kryptonite ring inside one of Lex Luthor's warehouses.
After waiting in ambush, the God of Mischief appeared before him, tapping his scepter against Soren's chest.
With the power of the Mind Stone, Loki seized control of Soren's mind.
And so time rewound itself there, restarting 136 times.
Soren, locked in a mental battle against the Mind Stone, plunged into the ocean.
The Mind Stone gradually gained dominance over his consciousness, but deep beneath the sea, a pair of steady, broad hands gently cradled his waist.
Soaked through, he woke on the surface of the water, his mind now completely under Loki's command.
Dripping wet, he made his way to the Batcave.
On December 2, 2011, at an airport in Italy, Soren was trapped in a labyrinth of memories conjured by one of Loki's illusions.
Time and again, he was forced to relive those bloodstained memories of pain and loss, his bare feet shredded by shards of liquid mercury glass.
Clark entered Soren's memories.
Within this dark maze, he encountered Professor X.
The striking professor, with his brown hair and piercing blue eyes, immediately recognized him.
"…You're not the Clark Kent I know," Professor X said, frowning.
Clark nodded slightly and smiled bitterly. "I'm just... someone here to seek redemption."
Professor X tilted his head, regarding him closely, before letting out a nearly imperceptible sigh.
"You must have traveled a long way to get here."
Clark lowered his gaze. "It's a long, long story."
In the radiant, sunlit illusion that Professor X had created, Clark walked toward Soren.
His aged face regained its youthful vigor, and his red cape billowed brilliantly behind him.
He gently and tenderly cradled his star, gazing deeply into those baby blue eyes under the Smallville sun, whispering, "Soren..."
The overwhelming joy nearly knocked him off his feet, leaving him dizzy, his arms trembling as he held the boy.
—No one knew that he had waited billions of years for this one embrace.
On September 27, 2015, Doomsday descended upon Earth.
On this day, Clark Kent walked toward the gallows.
Humanity lost its City of Tomorrow.
And Clark Kent lost everything.
Misfortune stripped him of hope, passion, compassion, happiness... and his life.
It was on this day that he set foot on a path of no return, a road that would lead him to utter ruin.
…Time restarted here 30,684 times.
Even after billions of years of waiting and grinding, he still couldn't stand idly by and witness the destruction of Metropolis.
Every cell in his body was splitting, urging him to stop this nightmare.
Again and again, he ran through the flow of time, desperately trying to wrest back everything that had once been whole from the hands of fate!
The world restarted infinitely, and the dust of the yellow sun shone deep into the universe.
Planets across the cosmos began to fall before his eyes.
On the 30,684th restart, he arrived once again at that day, stepping out from the corridors of the Garden of New Earth.
Finally, he had exhausted all his strength across countless restarts.
Tears streaming down his face, he clung to the corpse of his beloved.
Carrying Soren's soul once again, Clark stumbled across the universe, making his way to the Prometheus star system.
He was utterly exhausted, weathered by time, his face lined with age.
Endless restarts had always brought him back to the same beginning.
He had lived through billions of years, now white-haired and frail.
Yet when Soren awoke, he was still wearing his uniform, youthful and full of life.
Tears filled Soren's eyes as he looked angrily at Dr. Manhattan and demanded, "Why didn't you stop him? You've been watching me all this time... You've always been right by my side!"
Dr. Manhattan remained silent.
Soren had always sensed it.
He had always felt someone near him.
But he thought it was just Dr. Manhattan who is monitoring whether he completed his task.
He never realized that the one by his side was the sun he had loved since he was a child.
Soren said he wanted a new body.
He no longer desired his old one.
Dr. Manhattan asked, "Have you decided to abandon your past?"
Soren, a bit puzzled, looked at him and replied, "I've never had a past."
"...Perhaps, you will," Dr. Manhattan said after a moment of thought.
—In that forgotten, unspoken past that Soren had long buried.
There had always been someone silently protecting him.
He had never been a person without a past.
His past had been guarded countless times.
On this final journey, Clark no longer wished to take Soren along.
He had carried this diamond across the universe many times, and he could no longer bear to see Soren endure everything he had in the Injustice timeline…
All of those heart-wrenching, unbearable memories.
Clark headed toward the Source Wall.
But the star in his hand burned and glowed brighter each time.
It was Soren's soul, eager to return to Earth.
Clark lowered his gaze to the diamond-like star, tears streaming down his face as he asked, "Why do you have to go back... Soren, why do you want to return… you could have, you could have just left it all behind."
The brilliant white diamond didn't answer his question.
It only shimmered softly in his palm, reflecting light.
On February 15, 2018, Clark finally brought Soren back to Earth.
The black-haired, blue-eyed boy opened his eyes inside the ice coffin.
The godlike figure, now adorned in a white cape, had flown from Washington to Eastern Europe in mere moments after hearing the name "Soren."
He found the lover he had lost for three long years.