This is the final design.

I pulled the face motif into the shield, but brought the corruption wax into the design more and more as I went on, playing off the molten Relic at the head.

Initial exploration, I decided to move forward with 2, and tried the variations below.
I tried pushing the character into a couple other directions after choosing 2. Mainly, a more spectral (B,C) and grounded (E,F)