Something in that exchange—the clinical, detached insult to his training—struck a nerve deeper than his grief. It pierced through the static of his rage and touched something colder: his pride.
Elliot didn't scream this time. He didn't roar.
Instead, he did something far more terrifying. He stopped.
He planted his feet with a deliberate, bone-deep solidity. He drew a ragged breath that whistled painfully through his split lip and bloodied teeth.
In that moment of stillness, the wild, supernova-like bloom of white light around his body began to collapse inward. It stopped flickering erratically and started to compress, spinning tighter and tighter around his limbs until it looked like molten diamond rather than fire.
The air around him stopped hissing and began to hum with a deadly, focused frequency.
HUMMMMMMMMM.
When he moved again, it wasn't the desperate lunge of a grieving boy; it was the calculated strike of a predator.
