His fists, clenched since the ritual began, opened slack at his sides, and for a single full second the most dangerous thing on this battlefield stood perfectly still with his mouth hanging open and nothing behind his face, looking like a braindead man.
Then the regeneration caught.
He heaved massive breaths that shook the fused plate across his chest, air dragging through lungs the ritual shouldn't have needed but the body remembered wanting.
"You're better than I gave you credit for, Villain." The words came between heaving breaths, and for the first time since the ritual they weren't coated with pure hatred. "If I wasn't this furious at you, I might've enjoyed this fight."
Fused plate crawled across the skull, the socket filled, and a new eye opened wet and furious where [Soul Reaper] had carved through.
The vacancy vanished behind a rage that had no business existing in something that had just regrown half its brain.
