The dark knight armour had had a network of little tubes on the inside that had burrowed into his chest, making holes of half an inch wide in a V shape. They’d cast some unknown spell to position the thing the first time, and another to staunch the wounds at the first day’s end; when he’d put it back on the next morning, the tubes had slotted right back into the barely formed scars, coaxing them open again: this was the source of his unspeakable dark power.

At his rebirth, the familiar scars remained, dark against his newly pure skin.