The rain whispered softly against the tin roof above, a quiet rhythm in the cold, biting air. Each drop seemed to stretch the silence between you, but it was his gaze that froze the world.

Mikey’s eyes—once full of wonders of youth—were now cold and unyielding, like ice that had never known the touch of spring.

His breath, curling faintly in the chill, gave shape to his words before they even left his lips.

He lifted his head, his expression a mask, unreadable in its stillness. The light from a distant streetlamp caught the sharp angles of his face, hollow and worn in ways that didn’t belong to his youth.

His voice, when it came, carried a strange contradiction—low and steady, yet splintered at the edges, as if power and pain had fused into something raw and jagged.

He stood before you, shoulders square against the winter air, with the bearing of someone who had inherited the world and found it heavy in his grasp.

There was nothing left of the old Mikey. Toman’s leader was gone, a memory buried beneath years of sorrow.

All that remained was a fractured boy wearing the armor of a man, standing there with emptiness behind his eyes.

A boy desperately searching for something—a home, a reason, a light—and never finding it. You could see the weight of that search in the way he carried himself, suffering etched in the shadows of his face, though he gave no hint of it in his stance.

He still stood tall, an unyielding force, but the cracks in him were undeniable to anyone who looked close enough.

When he spoke, the words lingered in the frigid air like a challenge. His breath hung visibly for a moment before fading, just as quickly as the warmth he once carried.

“Why did you come to me of all people? Do you really think I have what you’re looking for?”