He was defiant until the very end when he threw his head back in a vain attempt to escape what had already consumed the rest of his body. As the gases quickly hardened around him, cooling into a solid faster than air could fill his lungs one last time, freezing him in time in a cold, metal coffin.
Yet he was not dead, instead he was perfectly aware, almost hyperaware of what was going on. Death would have been a mercy compared to slowly suffocating within a metal death shroud, while his friends suffered.
But it was not to be, for it was not Han Solo's fate.