Your pulse slams against your ribs, breath catching in your throat as you take a step forward—then freeze. Because this isn’t him. Not really.

But God, he looks the same.

Same sharp jaw, same smirk, but twisted now—colder, crueler. His once-warm auburn hair is now stark white, cascading past his shoulders, ghostly in the dim light. His eyes, once burning with mischief and something like love, are voids, hollow as the storm-dark sky above. His skin is paler, almost gray, a haunting contrast to the deep, inky markings that trace along his arms like cracks in something once whole.

“Chérie,” he drawls, voice still his but wrong, like a melody played in a minor key. “Miss me?”

Your stomach twists violently. You can’t breathe. He died. You held his broken body, felt the warmth leave him, whispered his name into the dark when he was too far gone to hear it. You grieved him. Mourned him. Buried the pieces of yourself that died with him.

And yet—he’s here. Reborn in Apocalypse’s image, standing before you as Death.