At that moment.
Chernobyl, inside an abandoned underground nuclear shelter.
Gravik shot upright in bed.
"Huff... huff..."
He gasped for breath, his body drenched in cold sweat.
He had dreamed again.
It was the fifth time that week.
The dream was always the same: the Earth man draped in the Stars and Stripes fired two crimson beams brighter than a star, effortlessly slicing Gravik and all his fellow Skrulls apart. They turned to ash in the terrible heat.
"Damn it..."
Gravik rubbed his face hard, trying to drive the lingering fear from his mind.
A week had passed since the interstellar broadcast that had shocked the world.
Those ten days had felt like an endless punishment to Gravik.
He was afraid.
He had once believed that, with the Skrulls' shapeshifting abilities and their nearly complete Super-Skrull technology, Earth was theirs for the taking.
To him, humanity's superheroes had been little more than unusually strong savages.
But the sight of Homelander blasting the Celestial apart had shattered his arrogance.
No tactic or scheme could overcome such an absolute gulf in power.
Worse, Gravik's followers were losing heart.
Deep down, the Skrulls were still refugees who had lost their home. Years of wandering had left them desperate for security.
The power Homelander had displayed on the broadcast had broken many Skrull warriors' nerve.
Every day, someone quietly suggested compromising with Nick Fury and choosing Talos as their leader again. Perhaps their people could still survive that way.
If they kept following Gravik, then when the killer they called Homelander returned to Earth, their people would surely be wiped out.
Despair spread among the Skrulls like a plague.
Even several of Gravik's trusted followers had suggested leaving Earth.
Gravik had refused, of course. Leave Earth? Where could they go? Kree patrol fleets were