He was no longer the boy who had walked out of this house three weeks prior.
He was something the house no longer recognized.
His hair erupted. The void itself poured through his scalp in a single, merciless surge and hardened into living midnight. Strands longer than his spine now, blacker than the space between stars, each filament writhing with slow, serpentine grace as though the darkness had been given breath and heartbeat.
His eyes were no longer eyes.
They were portals.
Twin gravitational abysses rimmed by hairline rings of glacial white fire that throbbed like the death throes of neutron stars.
Light bent around them in violent spirals—dust motes, candle flames, even the faint glow of emergency lanterns spiraling inward and vanishing as though swallowed by black holes no larger than pupils.
