Short-cropped white hair, golden irises that glowed like molten ore, deep-brown skin corded with muscle and marred by jagged scars that wound across his arms... the kind left by battles too brutal to heal cleanly.
The scars twisted and flexed as his grip tightened, his sword-hand flicking the last clinging strands of sludge aside with a contemptuous snap.
Face was youthful but stern, lips pressed into a hard frown... but the expression was familiar.
So achingly familiar.
Keiser's breath caught.
It was the same face he had seen staring back at him in fleeting reflections... on broken steel, on rippling water, in dreams that haunted more than comforted.
But it wasn't the same.
The man's eyes weren't weighed down by time. His body carried no deep gouges across his chest, no void punched straight through his heart, no weathered years carved into his features.
This was him... without the scars. Without the gaping absence.
Younger. Whole. Alive.
