He didn’t think about it. Didn’t weigh the distance, didn’t calculate whether he’d make it in time. His legs just drove him forward, the Lance coming up, his body intercepting the trajectory a half-second before the bolt hit.
The impact was like being hit by a building.
The blast caught him square in the chest plate, a column of white-hot energy that didn’t stop, didn’t dissipate, just kept pushing, kept burning, driving him backward across the torn earth. His boots carved furrows in the soil. The Spiral Lance was braced across his body, the shaft bowing under the pressure, the golden light flickering, dimming, threatening to shatter.
He held.
The energy kept coming.
His arms were shaking. The Lance was going to break. He could feel it in the metal, a hairline fracture spreading along the spiral grooves, the hum of the Golden Dragon faltering in his chest.
I can’t hold this.
The thought was calm. Almost clinical.
I can’t hold this, and I’m not going to let go.
The Lance cracked. A seam of dark light ran up the shaft, and for a single, frozen second, Hikaru felt the Golden Dragon’s warmth flicker out, replaced by something cold and empty.
“Hikaru!” Zaria’s voice cut through the roar of the blast, closer than it should have been. She’d already cut down two Husks in her path without slowing, broadsword still trailing fire, and she wasn’t stopping for a third.
Senna broke off from the line a half-second later, leaving a Husk mid-swing to crumple on its own. “Coming!”
Lyra’s wings snapped wide behind them both. “Hold on, hold on, we’re right here…”
Zaria’s shoulder slammed into his side first, her own blade coming up to brace the Lance’s failing edge. Senna hit a half-second later, both hands wrapping over his white-knuckled grip. Lyra dropped in last, planting herself against his back.
“You guys…” The words came out half question, half something he didn’t have a name for yet.
“Brace.” Zaria didn’t look at him, jaw set against the Lance’s shaking shaft. “Talk later.”
“Sharing’s not just a group activity for people who ask nicely, Gold.” Senna’s grip tightened over his knuckles, still unhurried even now.
Lyra’s forehead pressed briefly between his shoulder blades. “Just this once, let somebody else carry it.”
Let go.
He’d spent his whole life shoving a hand away and calling that strength.
His sisters had spent years reaching for him the same way, arms around his ribs, fingers closing over his wrist, and he’d spent just as many years pulling free of every single one of them, quick and practiced, like affection was something you could dodge the same way you’d dodge a punch. He’d never once let himself sit still inside it long enough to find out what staying might have actually cost him.
Then his team did the same thing, out here, this whole fight: Maci hanging off him in a cockpit before he’d even learned her name. Lyra’s arms locking around his ribs the first day, refusing to let go no matter how hard he shoved. Zaria’s hand closing around his wrist after the spar instead of letting it drop.
Not because he hadn’t wanted it held. Because wanting that felt like admitting he couldn’t do this by himself, and by himself was the only way he’d ever learned how to be strong.
I don’t have to hold this up alone.
His grip on the Lance didn’t loosen. If anything it tightened, four sets of hands instead of one. Something behind his ribs uncurled anyway, one finger at a time, like a fist he’d been making for twelve years straight had finally run out of reasons to stay closed.
I just have to stop pulling away.
“AAAHHHHH”
The Starseed Key in his belt went cold.
Then it went dark.
Then it went purple.
The change didn’t announce itself. It didn’t build. One moment the Key was a dying ember, the gold light guttering out, and the next it was a deep, pulsing violet, the color of a bruise on a starless night. The rim teeth blunted into wide, heavy notches. The coin swelled, thickening in its socket, the gold bleeding away until only a thin burning ring remained at the edge.
The weight came first.
Before the armor changed. Before the Lance dissolved. Gravity thickened around him like a held breath, the air going dense and heavy, the ground denting under his boots. The energy bolt that had been pushing him backward slowed, then stopped, caught in a field that felt like standing at the bottom of an ocean.
Then the armor reconfigured.
Boots and greaves darkened first, purple-black bleeding up through the gold, swelling into something thicker, heavier, built to anchor rather than move. The chest plate followed, the elegant dragon-scale pattern flattening into smooth, brutal mass, designed to absorb punishment rather than deflect it. Gauntlets blunted out, the sharp edges rounding into fists that looked like they could crack stone.
The helmet reshaped last. The dragon snout softened, flattened, reformed into a minimalist bull motif, the eyes set deep and gentle in a frame that was otherwise all blunt force.
No CLICK. No CLANK.
A low, groaning bass note instead, felt more than heard, the sound of something enormous settling into place.
The Gravity Maul condensed into his grip.
The hammer head formed from crystallized singularity matter, a miniature planet of compressed darkness wrapped in cosmic void-silk, the air around it warping as it finished taking shape. The shaft settled into his palms, and the weight of it was enormous, the weight of a collapsed star, the weight of a choice he’d never had to make before.
He stood up.
The energy bolt that had been driving him into the ground hit the Gravity Maul’s field and shattered, scattering into harmless ribbons of light that bled away into the dusk.
Iuba Volvens stopped moving.
The mane’s spin faltered, dropping from full fury to a confused, stuttering whir. The sculpted face tilted, the empty eyes tracking upward, trying to process what it was seeing.
Hikaru stood seven feet tall, purple-black armor gleaming with silver-white starlight seams, the Gravity Maul resting across his shoulder like it weighed nothing. The ground around him was cracked in a perfect circle, the grass flattened, the air still thick and heavy with the field he was generating.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t need to.
Behind him, Thess’s whole body sagged, the breath he’d been holding through the entire blast finally leaving him in a rush. The Herbfolk behind him were staring, their skin brightening from gray back toward green, their mouths open in something that was half wonder and half disbelief.
Zaria hadn’t let go of the Lance yet. Her other hand still gripped her sword, raised but not swinging, and she stared at him the way you’d stare at a wall that was there a second ago and now isn’t.
Lyra stumbled back a step, wings snapping open on reflex, helmet tilting. “What… what is that?”
Senna hadn’t moved back at all. She was already reading the energy signature, her amber eyes tracking the purple-black glow that pulsed along Hikaru’s armor in slow, steady waves.
“I don’t know.”
Iuba Volvens took a step back.
WHAT… WHAT IS THIS. WHAT HAPPENED!
Hikaru adjusted his grip on the Maul. The air around the hammer head warped, bending the light that passed near it, and the ground under his feet settled into a deeper, more final stillness.
He flexed his arms, the purple-black armor groaning with the motion.
Hikaru looked at Iuba Volvens. The beast had stopped mid-stride, its mane stuttering, its sculpted face frozen in something that might have been confusion.
“Like hell you touch them again.”
The purple-black weight around him didn’t lift so much as settle, degree by degree, until his boots stopped sinking into the cracked stone.
Senna hadn’t stepped back farther than that first startled half-pace, her War Fan still open at her side. She just looked, amber eyes tracking the new plating the same careful way she’d once tracked the mane’s spin, cataloging before she’d let herself react to it.
Lyra hovered close, wings settling slow, still not quite believing what had happened under her own hands a moment ago.
“Okay. What is happening right now.”
She circled him once, fast, like she needed the second angle before she’d believe the first.
“You had a whole other form this entire time?”
“I didn’t know either.” Hikaru flexed one gauntlet, testing the strange new weight of his own arm.
Senna’s mouth curved, small and dry. “Guess we found your fourth setting.”
Zaria hadn’t stepped back at all. Her broadsword still smoked faint along the edge where it had bitten into the mane, and she stood close enough that he caught the scorch mark spread across her own chest plate.
“You threw yourself in front of a full power blast with a cracked Lance and no plan.”
“It worked.”
“That’s not the same thing as a plan existing.”
She reached toward the new armor, fingers stopping an inch short of it, like she didn’t trust it to hold the same way the old plating had.
“I thought you were…”
The sentence didn’t finish. Her scales darkened along her collarbones, and whatever had been about to follow got swallowed instead.
“Don’t do that again.”
“No promises.”
She held his eyes a second longer than the argument needed, then turned back toward Iuba Volvens, sword rising, done with the conversation the instant she’d said her piece. Senna fell in on his other side without a word, and Lyra dropped into step behind them both, wings snapping fully open now that there was somewhere left to point them.
The four of them faced the beast together.
* * *
He threw the lance up anyway, catching Nyxara's blade an inch off his collarbone, and felt Iuba Volvens's claws rake across his ribs before he could turn far enough to block both.
The armor held. His body didn't, not entirely, and the breath went out of him in one hard punch.
He staggered back a step, caught himself, and Nyxara was already there again, blade coming in low this time, aiming for his knee instead of his throat.
He barely got the lance down in time. The impact sent a jolt straight up through his wrist, and Iuba Volvens used the half second that cost him to close in from the other side, mane spinning fast enough to blur.
He twisted away from the mane and straight into Nyxara's next strike, catching it on the shaft instead of dodging clean, and the force of it drove him two full steps sideways before his boots found any real purchase.
He swung the lance in a wide arc to buy himself room, and it connected with nothing. Both of them had already pulled back out of range, patient, resetting, giving him nothing to actually hit.
That was worse than either of them pressing him. At least a strike he could answer.
Nyxara's blade found him a heartbeat later, a shallow line across his ribs where the armor had already taken too much punishment to fully turn it, and he answered with a jab of his own that she sidestepped without visible effort.
Iuba Volvens came in low this time, going for his legs instead of his chest, and he barely got clear of it before Nyxara's blade found the gap he'd left doing it.
He caught it again, barely, the impact numbing two of his fingers on the follow-through, and shoved her back hard enough to buy himself half a step of room.
Iuba Volvens took that half step from him instead. Its claws caught his forearm, three parallel lines of heat through the plating, and the follow-through spun him a step closer to Nyxara's next strike instead of away from it.
He was out of good options and running low on bad ones too.
He tried to create distance instead, backpedaling toward what he hoped was open ground, and Iuba Volvens's tail cut off that retreat before he'd covered three steps, forcing him to plant and fight from a spot he hadn't chosen.
He couldn't watch both of them. He'd stopped being able to a few exchanges back, and he knew it, and there wasn't a version of this fight where knowing that helped him do anything about it.
The mane caught him across the shoulder, full force this time, no glancing hit, and it spun him half around and put him flat on his back in the dirt.
He'd never taken a hit like that. Not from Iuba Volvens, not from anyone, and for a second the whole clearing tilted and doubled and refused to sit still.
Get up.
He tried. His arm didn't want to hold his weight, and the ground kept sliding sideways every time he pushed against it, and some old, stupid, familiar part of him was already running the same math it always ran: get up on his own, don't call out, don't make this anyone else's problem.
He'd done it his whole life. Nobody covers for you if you can't hold your own, that was the rule, that had always been the rule, and it had gotten him this far, hadn't it.
Senna had asked him once why he always went in alone, and he'd given her some half answer about not wanting to be a burden. He hadn't told her the real one, that needing people back had never once worked out for him before.
Nyxara stepped closer instead of finishing it. Not mercy. Just patience, like she already knew he wasn't getting up in time to matter.
He got one knee under himself. His arms shook doing it, and the lance felt like it weighed three times what it had an hour ago, and he told himself he had this, the same thing he'd told Zaria not that long ago, and his body called the lie on him before he'd even finished thinking it.
He went back down.
He tried again anyway. Some part of him hadn't caught up yet to how bad an idea that was, and his knee found the ground a second time before his hand did, and Nyxara didn't bother closing the distance to make sure of it. She just watched, arms loose at her sides, like the outcome wasn't in question anymore.
Somewhere behind him, past his own labored breathing, steel met steel in a rhythm that didn't belong to his fight. Wood cracked, close, and closer than it had been a second ago.
He didn't have the attention to spare wondering what it was. Nyxara was still right there, and Iuba Volvens was circling wide to cut off whatever direction he might've tried to crawl in.
A voice cut through the fight, closer than anything else had gotten in the last several exchanges.
"HIKARU."
Zaria. He knew her voice from three rooms away by now, and hearing it here, this close, hit him harder than the mane had.
She hadn't been supposed to be back yet. He didn't have room to wonder why, not with Nyxara's blade already coming around for what wasn't going to be a warning shot this time.
Zaria's broadsword caught it a foot from his head, sparks scattering off the block, and she planted herself between him and both of them like she'd never actually left in the first place.
For half a second, before she turned back to Nyxara, her eyes found his, and whatever she saw there cracked through the composure she usually kept locked down tight.
"You said you had him."
Her eyes didn't leave Nyxara after that, but the words were still for him.
He got the words out through his teeth, still fighting to get his knee back under him.
"I did. Mostly."
"Mostly's not a word I like hearing from you."
"Yeah, I heard that the first time too."
He finally got upright, swaying, one hand braced on the lance like it was the only thing keeping the ground where it belonged. Zaria's shoulders had dropped half an inch doing it, like some weight she'd been carrying the whole run back here had let go the second she'd seen him still standing.
"You came back."
"Course I did."
She said it like it wasn't even a question worth asking, like there'd never been another version of tonight where she didn't.
Nyxara didn't wait for the two of them to finish talking. She came in again, and Iuba Volvens matched her half a step behind, and for a second it was four bodies converging on the same small patch of dirt instead of two.
Zaria caught the worse of it, angling herself to take Nyxara's strike instead of letting it reach him, and the force of the block drove her back a full step into his shoulder.
He almost told her to get clear. The old answer, the one that had gotten him exactly nowhere all night, sat right there on his tongue, ready to go.
He didn't say it.
His voice came out rougher than he meant it to.
"Watch the tail. It goes low before it goes high. You'll see it coming if you're looking for the wind-up."
Zaria didn't ask how he knew that. She just adjusted her stance a half inch, and the next time Iuba Volvens's tail snapped out low, she was already stepping wide of it.
"Took you fighting it twice to figure that out?"
"Yeah. Sue me."
Wings cut the air above them, and Lyra dropped in from the treeline with Senna half a step behind her, both of them breathing hard, both of them very clearly done running.
Lyra's eyes found him first, and for just a second the relief on her face looked like it might tip over into tears before she visibly shoved it back down.
"You're okay. You're actually okay, I thought..."
She caught herself, shook her head hard enough to make her hair whip.
"Workers are clear! Husks are down, all of them, and Senna's got a scratch she says isn't a big deal but it's bleeding a normal amount for something that's not a big deal..."
"Lyra."
"Right. Fighting. Sorry."
Senna landed beside him with none of Lyra's momentum, quieter about it, but her eyes swept over him once, quick, cataloguing every place he was favoring without asking him to explain any of it out loud.
"You're bleeding from at least four places."
"I'm aware."
"I wasn't asking."
She didn't look away from him even as she said it, like she needed to see the confirmation herself more than she needed him to answer it out loud.
"Field treat it when we're clear. Not before."
"Wasn't planning on stopping to bandage anything mid-fight, no."
That got the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth, gone almost as fast as it came, and she dropped into position on his other side without needing to be told where. Lyra took the gap beyond her, and for a second none of them said anything at all, just resetting, just breathing, four bodies filling in the gaps around each other the way they'd never quite managed to when it actually mattered.
Zaria pressed forward the second the four of them settled, forcing Nyxara back a step for the first time since she'd stepped into this fight. Senna's blade found an opening in Iuba Volvens's guard while it was still recovering from the tail dodge, a clean cut across its foreleg that made it stagger.
Lyra came down from above on the follow-through, wings folded tight, driving it back another step before it could recover its balance.
"IMPOSSIBLE." Iuba Volvens's mane spun erratic, more anger than rhythm now. "FOUR AGAINST ONE IS NOT COURAGE, IT IS COWARDICE."
Nobody bothered answering it. The fight kept moving too fast for anyone to spare the breath.
For a handful of seconds, it actually looked like they had this.
He couldn't remember the last time a fight had felt like this, four of them moving together instead of four people who happened to be standing near each other. For the first time all night, it didn't feel like anyone was carrying him.
Then Nyxara stopped giving ground. She caught Zaria's next strike on her blade without so much as sliding back, and answered it with a return cut fast enough that Zaria barely twisted clear.
Iuba Volvens used the opening to lunge past Senna's guard, claws raking for Lyra instead, and Lyra barely got her wings up in time to take the hit on something that could actually absorb it.
Nyxara came at all four of them after that, blade first, fast enough that Hikaru barely had time to get the lance up.
He didn't try to meet it alone. He planted himself at Zaria's shoulder instead, matching her angle, with Senna and Lyra already closing in on the other side.
All four of them stood together against whatever came next, for the first time since the fight started.
I don't have to hold this by myself.
He felt the Key answer before he understood what it was answering to, warmth spreading up his arm from where it sat against his chest, heavier and slower than it had ever pulsed for him before.
Light poured out from it, gold at first, then a deeper color underneath the gold, like the color itself had put on weight.
It didn't move the way his transformation always had, fast and sharp and over in a blink. This one built slower, the light spreading down his arm and across his chest before it reached anywhere else, like it wanted him to feel every inch of the change instead of just wearing the result of it.
His armor thickened with it. Plates that had been light enough to move through without thinking settled heavier across his shoulders and forearms, built for taking a hit rather than dodging one, and the lance in his hands grew heavier in a way that felt less like a burden and more like an anchor driven into the ground.
The head of it had changed too, wider now, less built for a quick thrust and more for something that could take the full weight of a swing without breaking.
His pulse had slowed too, or maybe it just felt that way against the new, steadier weight settling through his chest, like his own heartbeat had decided to stop rushing anywhere.
Behind him, Lyra said something under her breath, too quiet to catch all of it, something that sounded more like awe than words.
He planted his feet, and for the first time since the fight started, the ground didn't feel like something he had to fight to keep.
Nyxara stopped mid-stride.
Even Iuba Volvens's mane slowed, spinning down half its usual speed, taking in whatever had just changed in front of it. It didn't look pleased about it.
Hikaru looked down at his own hands, gauntlets he didn't recognize, and knew he wasn't the same fighter who'd gone down in the dirt a few minutes ago.
Whatever came next, he wasn't facing it with just his own two hands anymore.