His shoulders squared by several degrees, each movement precise and mechanical. His spine lengthened, elongating his frame until he seemed to tower over the wreckage.
In that singular moment, the easy, slightly rumpled young man who had spent hours sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea disappeared entirely. He was gone, erased from existence.
In his place stood something ancient and terrible, someone who seemed taller than the ceiling had ever been, someone whose very stillness possessed a crushing physical weight.
His eyes, visible through the unmasked half of his face, went cold. It wasn't the cold of anger; anger was human, and anger was fleeting.
This was the cold of a glacier, the cold of the void between stars. The air itself seemed to thin and starve.
A few of the nearest candles that had miraculously survived the collapse flickered violently before their flames simply died, snuffed out by the sheer absence of life in the room.
