He didn’t disappear. He didn’t transform. He simply… sagged. The terrible pressure in the room eased. The white fire guttered and went out.

The man raised his finger. White fire gathered at the tip. The nuns cowered. Sister Agnes crossed herself.

The first time Anders felt the Fury, he was seven years old, kneeling in the musty back pew of St. Adalbert’s, bored out of his skull. The priest was droning about fire and brimstone. Anders was drawing a stick-figure dragon in the margin of the hymnal.

And he said, in that resonant, floor-and-ceiling voice: “Mercy is a lie. I’ve come for the reckoning.”

They were black . Empty. Two holes punched through the world.