The old man's body began to change.
Iron scales pushed up through his skin — dark, overlapping plates that spread across his frail frame like a sickness curing itself into armor.
They climbed his forearms first, then sheeted up over his shoulders, layered down his sunken chest, crawled across the backs of his knotted hands, until the harmless stooped grandfather was clad head to foot in living metal that flexed and slid with every small motion.
The hum in the air deepened into a grinding, tooth-rattling roar, and the snow on the flagstones nearest him hissed and melted from the heat the transformation threw off.
Then he moved, and frail stopped being a word that had ever applied to him.
