The Yrugua were not soldiers. They were not generals, champions, or elite vanguards in the conventional sense.
Within the cosmology of the Hidden Citadel, a Reniatsus did not merely rule a realm. Their authority was not administrative but existential, woven directly into the laws governing their domain. And the Yrugua were the physical manifestations of that authority. They were direct subordinates born from the Reniatsus' will, each one carrying a fraction of the realm's conceptual dominion.
To face a Yrugua was to face the realm itself, condensed into a single, hostile entity. For Diov, the Reniatsus of the Sinking Void, there were five.
Their presence left ripples through the newly formed air. Each one of them radiated a different void distortion but all shared the same authority that pressed down on the soul. They surrounded the group in a perfect formation.
Shimmer's grip tightened on her weapon. Runner's stance lowered instinctively. Reynolds swallowed hard. Miranda muttered something unprintable under her breath. Phaenora's eyes narrowed.
"Don't underestimate them," she warned. "They're stronger than they look. A lot stronger."
Asenane rolled her shoulders, frost already creeping along her hands.
"Then it's time for the fight."
Miranda looked up at the newly forming horizon.
"I just wanna say I did not sign up for my turtle to become a whole damn continent!"
The Yrugua moved.
In an instant, a colossal wind tore through the battlefield. Space itself bent under the pressure as the group was ripped apart and hurled in separate trajectories, each one flung kilometers away from the others.
Except it wasn't the Yrugua's doing. Luke had intervened.
The terrain beneath them surged and flowed, adjusting their trajectories with perfect precision. Each combatant landed on stable ground, separated but strategically with one Yrugua per fighter. Reynolds and Miranda found themselves together with one Yrugua. The others did not have that luxury.
Asenane landed hard and looked forward. Her opponent stepped out of the distortion.
It was a Voidborn Knight.
It stood taller than her by a full head. Its body was encased in abyss-black armor that seemed grown rather than forged. Void poured off it in heavy waves, warping the air and gnawing at the meadow beneath its feet. In its hands was a massive greatsword.
Asenane inhaled slowly.
A full dragon transformation would make her unstoppable but also obvious. She would be too easy to target in a battlefield still crawling with anomalies. So she chose control.
Her Divine Transformation stopped halfway.
Her wings got larger. Scales spread across her skin in overlapping plates of white, forming natural armor that locked seamlessly over her combat gear. Her hands shifted. Her fingers elongated into sharp. claws. Cold radiated from her in steady waves.
The Voidborn Knight raised its sword.
The first impact shattered the air.
Void met claw in an explosion of sound and frost. Shockwaves flattened grass for hundreds of meters. The ground buckled beneath their feet as the Knight swung with brutal force. Asenane slid backward, using her wings flaring to stabilize before surging forward again. Frost bloomed instantly wherever her strikes landed, spreading across the Knight's armor in patterns.
The Knight roared and brought its greatsword down in a crushing overhead strike. Asenane crossed her claws.
The impact drove her into the ground as a crater formed beneath her feet. She summoned frost in a circular blast that forced the Knight back several steps.
She didn't let it breathe.
Her wings beat once, launching her upward. She dove towards the Knight's chest, tearing through void-armor and leaving deep, frostbitten gouges that hissed violently. The Knight retaliated with a sweeping slash that cleaved a nearby hill in half.
The terrain shattered before it was healed.
The Restoration Runes Vastarael had embedded days earlier activated instantly. Stone, soul and the flora restored themselves in seconds.
Asenane unleashed a concentrated frost beam from her mouth. The beam struck the Knight square in the torso, encasing half its body in crystalline ice so dense it refracted light like a prism. The Knight shattered the ice with raw void pressure and charged again.
The clash dragged on far longer than Asenane wanted to admit.
At first, she told herself she was adapting. She thought that every exchange was data and every near-miss was a lesson. But the truth pressed in with every passing second.
She was losing.
The Voidborn Knight moved with terrifying efficiency. Its defense was flawless. Every motion calculated to negate momentum rather than oppose it head-on. Where Asenane relied on instinct and power, it relied on structure, timing and discipline refined over what felt like millennia.
Her claws struck but were deflected. Her frost was dispersed.
She summoned her halberd in a flash, spinning it into a wide arc meant to force distance. However, the Knight stepped into the attack rather than away from it. The greatsword's flat side turned her halberd aside. His counter came immediately. A pommel strike cracked her ribs, sending a shock through her scaled torso.
She staggered back.
Her scales had absorbed most of the impact, but not all. A thin fracture line glowed faintly with frost where the blow had landed.
"Tch—"
She barely had time to recover before the Knight pressed forward again. Every step it took forced her to give ground. Every exchange ended with her reacting instead of dictating. She knew how to fight. She was a dragon. In the air, she was untouchable but on the ground, she felt… constrained.
The Knight exploited that mercilessly.
It slashed low then high, chaining attacks together in patterns meant to distract her, to pin her wings and deny her lift. When she tried to take off, void pressure surged upward, slamming into her wings like chains. She dropped back down hard.
Her frost breath roared out in frustration but the Voidborn Knight walked through it. The frost hissed and cracked as void energy bled through it, dispersing the temperature differential before it could fully crystallize. The ice formed and shattered under the Knight's next step.
Asenane gritted her teeth.
She was bleeding now. Her breathing had grown heavier. Her wings were trembling not from exhaustion but from indecision. She didn't know how to fight like this.
She tried switching again—weapon to claws, claws to frost, frost to wings—but every transition cost her time, and the Knight punished every hesitation. It was better on the ground than she was. It was better in weapon combat and better at enduring elemental pressure.
She was fighting on its terms.
Another blow slipped past her guard and slammed into her shoulder. She crashed sideways, rolling across the meadow before skidding to a stop.
For a moment, she stayed down.
'This isn't working...'
Her wings flexed weakly, scraping the ground. She stared up at the artificial sky, at the calm blue that Vastarael—no, Luke—had imposed over this place, and felt something dangerously close to panic claw at her chest.
Suddenly, a memory surfaced from her mind.
------
"How do you do it? You fight in the air and on the ground like it doesn't matter where you are."
Adelasta had looked at her as they relaxed in the private hot spring.
"I don't," she had replied simply.
"What do you mean you don't?"
"I don't alternate..Darling can. Narisva can. They shift modes like breathing. I can't..So I stopped trying."
Asenane remembered frowning. "Then how—"
"I focus on one. Or, I change what that one means. When you find yourself overwhelmed, don't fight the situation. Adjust to it."
------
Asenane's eyes widened.
The Knight was already advancing again with greatsword dragged across the ground with void spilling off it like smoke. She pushed herself to her feet slowly. Her halberd dissolved into frost motes instead of reappearing in her hands.
The Knight paused for half a second, confused. Asenane exhaled.
"I get it now."
She had been trying to be two things at once.
Cold crawled along her muscles, compressing power instead of dispersing it. Her stance shifted. She adjusted her wings not for lift but for balance and torque.
She wasn't going to fly. She was going to be a dragon on the ground.
The Knight raised its sword again.