·Chapter 1: The end before the beginning.Just nowShareHello everyone, Annihilator here, I was working on something for the last one week, it's a marvel fic, not an amalgamation of DC and Marvel but only Marvel.
Just to clear something before anyone misunderstands something, this does not mean in anyway that I'm going to drop the Alex one, that one is the primary book and my main focus, this one is just something on side and its future will depend on you all, if you all give it a green flag then I'll also start writing this one. I'm not uploading a synopsis of the new book here, you will see it when I upload this on webnovel (if you all like it) for now I'm uploading the first chapter here, it is more like a prologue but tell me what you all think about this.
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It was 8:30 in the morning and, in the heart of New Orleans, the city was wide awake— some had just woken up and some were already on their way to work.
Some were monotonous like they were programmed for their schedule and then there were exceptions like Jacob Smith, who treated each sunrise as an invitation to carve something better out of themselves.
Inside the neighborhood gym, the air was thick with effort and music. The reverberations of bass rattled the mirrors lining the walls, and dumbbells thunked rhythmically against the rubber mats. Jacob was there, right in the center of it, sweating through a set of weighted squats, breaths coming in disciplined bursts. At twenty-one, he was young enough to remember childhood aches with nostalgia, old enough to know that sometimes the heaviness in your body was a promise: you were alive, you still had potential, you could become more.
Jacob took pride in mornings like these. His friends liked to joke that he was the only college dropout in New Orleans with the discipline of an Olympian—the sort of guy who wiped down his equipment and nodded encouragement to strangers struggling at the bench press. Today, his mind churned with thoughts as he slid plates onto the bar, each repetition burning away memories from a restless night. He was determined, a little sleep-deprived, but defiant against the world's chaos.
Sunlight blazed in strips across the gym floor as he finished his final set. Rolling out his shoulders, Jacob let the tension unwind. He checked his phone to see nothing urgent—just a text from his older brother, Mark, a thumbs-up emoji and "Don't forget the stew in the fridge that mum sent last night."
Jacob grinned, tossing the phone in his gym bag, and toweled off. The city waited outside, sultry and golden, promising ordinary errands and small joys.
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He stepped onto the sidewalk, his gym bag flung across his shoulders, a new T-shirt clinging to skin sticky from sweat. The distant clang of something being hammered mingled with honking cars and someone arguing halfheartedly with a parking meter. The air buzzed with the mingled scents of chicory coffee, rain-soaked pavement, and the faintest undercurrent of exhaust.
Jacob walked home with headphones in, moving with the contented swagger that comes only after beating your own records. He nodded greetings at people he knew from the neighborhood—a corner store owner watering plants, a group of teens laughing as they biked towards their school, an older woman shuffling to church.
He barely registered the sudden screech of tires. One moment, he was thinking about leftover stew and new running shoes, and the next—a car swerved out of nowhere, spinning uncontrolled half a block away, its grille catching the sunlight with terrifying clarity.
Everything slowed. Jacob's heart hammered in his chest. Instinct, muscle memory—he dropped his gym bag and leapt towards the curb as the car careened towards him, stomach lurching, pulse roaring in his ears. The world collapsed into sound: screech, thud, the crunch of metal just feet from him.
He landed hard on his side, breath knocked from his lungs, the car finally coming to a stop with a shuddering groan. Shaken but untouched, Jacob scrambled to his feet, distant voices already hollering, phone cameras up, someone running to the driver.
He stood there for a moment, trembling, staring at the machine that—by some miracle—had missed him. His hands shook as he retrieved his gym bag. Adrenaline still surging, he forced his feet to move, desperate for refuge, for the cocoon of home.
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He didn't notice the way his fingers trembled as he unlocked his apartment door. He was too caught in his own head—too busy replaying the barely-dodged accident, the wild impossibility of it all, the scene of his memory belonged to TV, not real life.
He stepped inside the apartment, lost in his thoughts not noticing anything around him. That was when the smell hit—a thick, coppery tang, sharp as a slap.
Jacob looked down. Blood. It smeared the cheap tiles in jagged, meandering prints, tracking towards the kitchen, like a path woven from blood, a scene straight from horror movies.
Jacob froze seeing the trail, the world narrowed to a single point of fear. His mind screamed: Get out, call for help, JUST GET OUT!!!
He moved as quietly as he could, inching toward the door. His hand fumbled for his phone to dial 911— but the trembling of his body made it impossible, it was like something invisible had bound him, not allowing him to move as he screamed in his mind for his body to move.
A man emerged from the kitchen—dressed all in black, face gray with pain, eyes red as blood, leg soaked in blood. He was like a demon straight from hell for Jacob.
For a second, time stilled. They stared at each other, Jacob wide-eyed and uncomprehending, the intruder desperate and cornered.
The next second, the time resumed in symphony, the man's hand flew to a battered duffel, yanking out a pistol and, with wild, trembling motions, fired three shots. The barrel erupted in thunder. The sound of the bullets were like a scream in a closed room, disrupting any motion of peace there ever was.
Jacob felt the blows before he even heard the sound—pain, ice-hot, tearing through chest and side, spinning him backward into the shoe rack. Sneakers scattered, time warping around him. The man fired three more times as Jacob fell down.
Pain became Jacob's whole world. He slumped, sliding to the ground, the red and white colour of his shoes creating a surreal image mixing with the blood in the background blooming underneath him.
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Evan Greeley, the man in black, trembled uncontrollably. His hands looked alien—ghost-pale, stained with something muddy, wrapped in a death-grip around the pistol. He hadn't meant for it to go . Robbing a house was one thing; being stabbed while robbing was another. But murder? This wasn't the plan when he staggered across the block, looking for something—anything—to stop the pain.
Now, there was only silence. The trembling figure on the floor. His own ragged breathing. The heavy, impossible knowledge of what he had done.
He ran, boots smeared with Jacob's blood, creating a trail behind him as he jumped out of the window, desperate to make an escape.
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Jacob fought to hang on, each ragged breath scraping fire across his throat. The world became fractured images: his mother's laugh as she stirred stew on a weekend, his brother's hand ruffling his hair the first day of high school, the way light slanted through his bedroom blinds at dusk.
He tried to move, to plead, but the pain wrapped him, relentless and cold. His world faded to whimpers, prayers lost on carpet fibers, the quiet hum of the city filtering in through windows—life, ordinary and indifferent, carrying on just a wall away.
His heartbeat slowed...slowed...until it echoed once, faint, and was gone.
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The phone rang in the small apartment where Macey Smith was making breakfast. She understood the tone in the policewoman's voice before she understood the words: a violent crime, her address, her son's name. The plate slipped from her hands, shattering on the floor.
She ran—barefoot down steps, keys forgotten, the phone still clutched in a white-knuckled grip, half-dialing Mark with no comprehension of how speech worked. The city blurred past her, a roar in her ears, each breath frantic. Sirens, tape, neighbors whispering—reality collapsing the closer she came.
She recognized Jacob's sneakers before she saw the blood. The memory of his voice—quick to laugh, quick to comfort—was unbearably loud in the sudden silence. She choked on tears, knees giving out, a scream clawing its way out of her throat before a gentle but firm hand rested on her shoulder.
Mark, her older son—Jacob's brother—looked hollow, eyes rimmed red, jaw clenched so tightly it looked like stone. He didn't cry, not at first. He just curled an arm around their mother, pulling her close, kneeling in the sticky aftermath of hope destroyed. He had always been the reliable one, trying to hold his mother together even as the world ended around them. Only later, when night fell and no one could see, did he let his tears fall. They were silent, bitter. For her sake, he remained solid—he held her through sleepless sobs and empty prayers.
The funeral was held three days later—sunlight heavy and golden on a sky strangled by clouds. Friends gathered carefully, speaking in whispers, clutching crumpled tissues and trying not to meet each other's eyes. Mark wore his brother's favorite tie, pressed but slightly crooked at the knot; Macey clung to the photo of Jacob as a toddler, the one with chocolate smeared cheek and smile too wide for his face.
There were not enough words. People leaned into uncomfortable hugs, strangers became mourners, Jacob's absence a wound that throbbed in the air.
His childhood friend read a memory, lips trembling, describing Jacob's kindness and how he made others braver just by being himself. Teachers talked about his tenacity, how he refused to give up even when it was easier to fail. The neighbors spoke of his laughter echoing across courtyards, of garbage bins quietly taken out for the elderly.
Macey stood at the graveside as they lowered her son, tears streaking down cheeks carved deep by grief. Mark stood behind her, his hand a quiet reassurance on her shoulder. As the pastor recited final words, the city hushed—condolences circling like leaves in the wind, the pain raw, human, and almost holy in its depth.
Jacob Smith was gone. What remained was the echo of who he'd been: the strength in his mother's arms, the silent tears of a brother shouldering a family's future, the lives he'd touched with simple, everyday courage.
When evening came and the mourners lingered, reluctant to say goodbye, an uncommon hush fell over New Orleans—a city buzzing with life, now pausing, if only for a heartbeat, for one of its own.
I will delete this from here after 12 hours and then I'll continue uploading this on p@treon for 2-3 days? Don't worry I'm not paywalling this, anyone can read this there as it will be free. It's just that I will only create a book when I already have 15+ chapters on it.
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