Jason Collins had forgotten how to cry.
He hadn't forgotten what pain felt like. The world had made sure of that. Pain was all he knew—cold, steady, constant. The boy who once laughed at the scent of grass and whimpered when scraped knees bled now only breathed because he had to. Because there was nothing else to do. Nothing to fight for. Nothing to feel.
He had been blind for years.
The doctors called it degenerative. The kind of curse that takes your sight, then lets you remember it just long enough to ache every time you can't see the sunset. Then it takes your memories, and then, if you're like Jason, it takes the will to care.
His parents were murdered when he was ten.
Police said it was a robbery gone wrong. Jason heard the whispers later—corruption, cover-up, elite families, silenced leads. No arrests. No justice. No closure.
And that was the last time Jason cried.
Until the Ring.
He found it in the worst place imaginable—a knockoff game convention in the backlot of a mall that reeked of grease, nerd sweat, and expired soda syrup. It was a mess of broken booths, indie devs begging for attention, and bargain bins full of cosplay gear that had seen better centuries.
Jason had stumbled through it, blind cane clicking over discarded pop cans and sticky tiles, uninterested. He didn't know why he wandered into that booth. Maybe instinct. Maybe a whisper from fate. Or maybe the Ring had found him.
It was sitting in a shattered glass box, labeled "Lantern Replica – Clearance – $2."
His hand hovered over it, trembling. The Ring was dead metal to the world, scratched and scuffed and long since drained of purpose. But to Jason—it glowed.
Not visually. He was blind.
But Jason could see it.
A grey-violet light swirled within it, soft and formless, like fog in a dream. It pulsed with the rhythm of something vast and long forgotten. He didn't question it. He didn't speak.
He simply slid it on his finger.
And the world… stopped.
No sound. No smell. No touch. Jason stood still as his breath caught in his throat. The Ring dug deep, embedding something into him—not just into his finger, but into his soul. Memories spilled, flooding from his heart like a dam bursting.
Mom's voice singing lullabies.
Dad's laugh echoing through a Sunday kitchen.
Blood. Screams. Sirens. Cold floors.
The empty courtroom.
The silence after.
And then—
The hollow.
That endless, crushing, bitter hollow.
Jason wept.
A single tear escaped and slid down his cheek. It was not a tear of pain. Not rage. Not sadness.
It was nothing.
Pure, empty grief.
The Ring drank it in.
Jason's legs buckled as the last spark of emotion left him. A small part of him screamed as he collapsed, whispering "not again," but even that voice died. His body stopped breathing. Heart ceased. Flesh rotted, then stilled. The Ring did not let him go.
His soul remained. A husk in limbo.
The multiverse churned around him.
Worlds bloomed like galaxies and died like embers. He saw Krypton explode in infinite variations. He watched Saiyans scream into gods. He saw timelines collapse, rebirths spiral, and Earths rewritten a thousand times.
And Jason drifted through them all. Dead in body. Trapped in soul.
Until he found him.
A footstep echoed across the void.
It wasn't space. It wasn't time. It was outside of both.
The old man walked slowly, long tattered robes brushing the edge of nothingness, his sandals stepping across memory and echo. His beard was black, but his eyes were silver, like polished scars. He was not light. He was not dark.
He was Anti-Force.
"Another fragment," he whispered, voice gravel wrapped in velvet. "Or perhaps a mistake."
He reached down.
Jason hovered before him, a translucent silhouette of the boy he once was, the Ring of Ennui embedded in his chest like a dying star. It pulsed faintly. Weak. Yet ancient.
Anti-Force frowned. "You should not exist."
He turned, ripping a path through the void, each step cracking reality like ice under weight.
At the end of the path stood a garden made of words. Truths whispered by creation itself. There sat The Presence, the highest power in the DC realms, a being of radiant thought, his face unseen but his presence undeniable.
Anti-Force knelt.
"I bring you a soul. Trapped by a Ring even I do not understand."
The Presence looked—then recoiled.
"I… do not recognize this Ring."
Anti-Force stood, smiling coldly. "Then that means something new has entered our board."
He returned to Jason.
He did not pity the boy. He did not mourn him. He merely placed a hand on Jason's spirit and whispered:
"I grant you… a mind. Blank. Clean. You were never meant to be emotionless. But now you may decide."
And with no further fanfare, no prophecy, no cosmic trumpet...
He threw Jason into a universe.
The sky was blue.
That was the first thing Jason saw.
He was an infant again—small, fragile, warm.
He lay in the soft grass of a front lawn, wrapped in an old grey blanket. The Ring was not on his finger, but burned faintly against his soul. To anyone else, he looked like a baby. Just a baby.
The wind passed. Days did too.
No one came. No one noticed.
Until the family did.
A car pulled into the driveway. A woman laughed. A man groaned about traffic. And a boy—young, about six—ran ahead, bursting through the door and tossing his backpack to the porch.
"Mom! There's a baby out here!"
"What?"
The man—tall, broad-shouldered, moustached—froze in the doorway. His wife joined him a second later, eyes wide.
"Oh my god," she whispered.
The boy crouched beside Jason, tilting his head.
"Can I keep him?"
Jason cried. Not because he felt fear. It was instinct. A sound of life.
And the man… gasped.
He had seen that color before.
The faint grey-violet glow at the base of the baby's chest.
The Lantern Ring.
But not like this. Not any he knew.
Not green. Not yellow. Not red, blue, indigo, or orange. Not even black or white.
Something else.
He masked his reaction.
The woman knelt, scooping the baby gently. "Who would leave a child like this?"
There was no note.
Not until she lifted the edge of the blanket.
A torn scrap of paper fluttered out.
"His name is Jason."
She frowned. "They didn't even leave a phone number. Just a name. Irresponsible—this poor baby!"
The man held Jason next.
And Jason… stopped crying.
Eyes, dim and unfocused, locked on him.
And for a moment—just a moment—the man felt it.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Hope.
A warmth fluttered in his chest. Strange. He hadn't felt butterflies in decades.
He cradled the boy.
Jason yawned and passed out against his chest.
"…Nolan?" his wife asked gently.
He looked at her.
Then to his own son, Mark, now curiously poking the grey blanket.
Then back to Jason.
"I think… we keep him."
"Are you sure?"
"No. But... maybe this won't be so bad."
He looked at the boy again. At the strange, soft light embedded in his soul.
Nolan Grayson had faced planets.
But this boy—he was something else.
Not a weapon.
Not a mission.
Just a boy.
And for once, Nolan thought maybe… just maybe…
he could teach someone to be more than what they were made for.
To be human.
...
Nah that's crazy.