The boy's question, so simple and so full of terror, hung in the air like a physical blow. "Are you… Edward?" It was the question that was now screaming in the back of his own mind. He looked down at his hands, still holding his bloody Sovereign blades, then felt the alien weight of the new limbs on his back. He was a stranger in his own body.
He focused his will, a monumental effort of concentration that felt like trying to bend bars of solid steel with his mind. Slowly, painfully, he forced the four abyssal limbs to retract. It was not a clean or silent process. There was a wet, gruesome sound of shifting flesh and grinding bone as the shadowy appendages telescoped back into his body, leaving four, raw, puckered scars on his back that were already beginning to seal over. The process was agonizing, but the relief from shedding the monstrous silhouette was immense. He was left standing on his own two feet again, a man, not a creature.
