He held the breath he had been holding — keeping it in for one more moment, then two, until the last of the urgency drained out of his shoulders and what remained was the quieter, heavier weight of aftermath.
He exhaled slowly.
"Fusion of Life and Death — deactivate."
One by one, the bones separated.
They peeled away from Lukas's frame with the quiet, deliberate motion of something returning to where it belonged — flying outward in slow arcs, converging on the space several meters away where Tommy's giant figure began reassembling itself from the constituent pieces. The familiar silhouette took shape again, bone locking to bone, the enormous frame rising back to its full height with the unhurried patience of something that had never once doubted it would be standing again.
But it was not what it had been before the fight.
