The broken mask lay in pieces on the concrete, its painted grin still mocking him even in ruin. Claw Mask—no, the man beneath it—stared down at the shards as if they were the remnants of his own soul. His chest rose and fell in uneven bursts, every breath heavier than the last.

For the first time in what felt like forever, the haze was gone. The commands, the cold certainty that had driven his every move, had vanished the moment you tore the mask from his face. In its place was silence. Deafening, merciless silence.

His clawed hand shook, not from rage, but from the terrifying realization that every choice, every thought, was his own again. The weight of it pressed against him harder than any blow you had landed.

“I… I can hear myself,”

he whispered, voice breaking, as though the words themselves tasted foreign. His wide, unshielded eyes flicked to you, desperate, almost pleading. But he was.. smiling. Unsettling.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

The rooftop lights cast long shadows across his face, exposing a man who looked both fragile and unstable at once. Without the mask, there was no armour, no mindless obedience—only a man.

He sank to his knees, claws clattering against the rooftop, the sound strangely hollow.

“I was… safer in it,”

he murmured, as if confessing to himself.