The world slowed.
Time no longer moved in seconds but heartbeats. The golden Dragon Pulse coiled and burned, forming in Hydreigon's mouths like three miniature suns.
Ren stood paralyzed.
His lungs wouldn't fill. His arms wouldn't move. The only sounds were the broken breathing of Lia and Maia, both unconscious
And the hum.
A deep, rhythmic pulse like a heartbeat coming not from him, but around him.
Aura.
The world dimmed around the edges, and his senses narrowed.
He saw Berric's ashes nothing left but blackened earth and a shattered bowstring.
He saw Shiftry's last, sorrowful gaze before being erased from existence.
He saw the battered bodies of his Pokémon.
He saw himself, a trembling boy gripping a blade he could barely lift.
I'm going to die.
They're going to die.
And then
A flash.
---
A memory.
A quiet forest. Late afternoon. Leaves rustling softly above.
He was eight, alone in the woods outside Riverleaf, holding out a piece of dried meat to a ragged little Riolu with a torn ear and guarded eyes.
"...I won't hurt you," he'd said. "Promise."
It had taken hours, but eventually, the Riolu stepped forward.
A bond began.
---
Another memory.
The first day at the academy.
He stood behind a row of nobles in embroidered uniforms, his heart pounding. Whispers followed him.
"Commoner."
"how did he even pass the entrance trials?"
But he looked down at his hands, clenched tightly. Riolu pressed its paw against his arm in reassurance.
---
Then, Seris, during one of their early lessons on Aura.
"You don't just have potential, Ren. You have weight. When you focus your Aura, it doesn't just ripple it resonates. You don't bend Aura. It bends around you. That's not control it's presence."
"One day," she said, "that presence might become a shield, or a sword, or something far greater."
---
He opened his eyes.
The world burned in golden light, but something had changed. The pulse in his chest wasn't fear. It was resolve.
The blast fired.
And his body moved before his mind could catch up.
He stepped forward.
BOOM.
A column of pure Aura erupted around him, cracking the earth with its force. The Dragon Pulse collided with the Aura barrier midair and split. The light refracted off, striking trees and stone, carving molten lines into the ground.
Lucario's Poké Ball shattered from Ren's belt, light streaking into the sky. Lucario landed beside him, eyes glowing like twin stars, its form flickering
and then shifting.
Its body elongated, legs sleekened, its paws flaring with even deeper, darker energy. Aura sensors extended from its head, twitching like antennae. Spikes jutted from its forearms.
Lucario had changed.
Ren didn't realize it.
But he felt it.
A tether. A rhythm. A harmony.
Like their heartbeats matched.
Lucario looked back at him and for the first time, spoke through Aura.
I'm with you.
Ren gripped his sword. He wasn't trembling anymore.
The Hydreigon paused in midair, its heads shifting. It could feel the change too.
Now or never.
Ren dashed forward, the air around him shimmering with energy. Lucario followed, their motions synchronized fluid, effortless.
The moment they moved, the battle changed.
Lucario leapt into the air and delivered a Bone Rush that cracked down onto the Hydreigon's central head. The beast reeled, roaring.
Ren followed up, sliding beneath its tail and slashing across one of its wings with his blade, which now glowed blue, enveloped in Aura. The sword didn't just cut it burned.
The Hydreigon retaliated with Dark Pulse, its three heads firing simultaneously.
Lucario spread its arms wide and absorbed the blasts into a shimmering dome of Aura a pulse that shimmered with strange symbols. Runes, almost.
Ren blinked. What was that?
Lucario's fur shimmered with silver lines of energy. Its transformation wasn't just cosmetic it was metamorphic.
A whisper of something old. Something legendary.
Ren didn't question it.
"NOW!" he shouted.
Lucario dashed forward in a blur, fists glowing, as it struck the Hydreigon in the jaw with an uppercut so powerful, it sent shockwaves through the trees.
Ren charged after, leaping onto a boulder and flipping off it, swinging his sword as he fell. He landed a direct hit across Hydreigon's shoulder, golden light cracking around the wound.
The Hydreigon shrieked. The first true sound of pain it had made.
Its face wasn't so smug now.
Golden light crackled around its mouths again charging all three for a Triple Dragon Pulse.
Ren clenched his jaw. "Lucario, shield them!"
Lucario leapt backward, forming a dome of Aura around Lia and Maia's unconscious bodies.
Ren raised his blade as the triple blast came.
But instead of dodging
He thrust his hand forward.
"Reflect it!"
And for a second
The blasts stopped mid-air. Caught between Lucario's counter-energy and Ren's focused Aura.
Then, in a cascade of light and thunder they shattered outward in all directions, detonating like fireworks.
The forest trembled.
The Hydreigon screeched, recoiling, its wings flapping hard. Its body now smoked from the shoulders and neck. Its divine glow was flickering.
But Ren dropped to one knee. He was drained. Sweat poured down his face, blood still trailing from earlier burns.
Lucario stepped forward, teeth bared, panting. Its form flickered unstable. The transformation wouldn't hold much longer.
Ren forced himself up, sword shaking in his hand.
This wasn't over.
But they had turned the tide.
And the monster knew it.
The battlefield was scorched and still. Smoke rose from shattered stones and torn earth, painting the air with the scent of burning bark and charred blood.
Ren stood, barely.
His arms shook with the effort of lifting his blade, now glowing bright silver-blue, crackling with his remaining Aura. It hummed like it could barely contain itself, flaring along the metal like fire along oil.
Beside him, Lucario panted heavily. Its sleek, transformed body was beginning to flicker its spikes dimming, its sensors twitching erratically. It was holding on through sheer will. Its paws trembled, but it began gathering energy anyway.
"One last strike," Ren said between gasps, his vision blurred. "Let's end this."
Lucario glanced at him. No words were needed.
They understood.
Ren took his stance. Deep breath. Everything he had left.
Lucario crouched, Aura Sphere forming between its palms no, not forming. surging.
It grew, and grew, until it dwarfed Lucario's own body. A massive swirling orb of light and power, pulsing with rage, resolve, and desperation.
Ren's sword flared white-hot. Aura wrapped around the blade like ribbons of plasma, the weight of it nearly knocking him off balance. But he held fast.
The Hydreigon snarled, smoke trailing from wounds across its chest and wings. The three heads roared as one.
It charged.
Ren and Lucario moved.
"NOW!"
Ren leapt forward, blade raised, screaming with everything left in his lungs. Lucario launched the Aura Sphere at the same instant, the sheer force kicking up dust and sending a shockwave across the clearing.
The Hydreigon realized too late.
It tried to dodge, to flap higher
Too slow.
The Aura Sphere slammed into its chest, detonating with a blinding burst. Simultaneously, Ren's blade connected with its side, slicing clean across one of the necks.
BOOM.
The shockwave leveled the trees behind them.
Lucario was thrown backward, tumbling end over end until it hit the ground and skidded to a halt. The Aura glow around its body shattered into shards of light, its mega form gone. It lay still, heaving.
Ren flew backward from the blast too, crashing into a fallen trunk. His blade flew from his grip and embedded into the earth meters away.
The air was still.
For a second, Ren thought they'd done it.
Then he heard it.
A low, rasping breath.
He forced his head up.
The Hydreigon still stood.
Burned. Bleeding. Its wings half-melted. One of its heads hanging limp, half-severed.
But its center head still alive was charging another Dragon Pulse.
"No…" Ren rasped.
He couldn't move. He couldn't stand. Lucario was unconscious. Lia and Maia were out cold.
The golden light gathered in its mouth.
But then, something changed.
The Hydreigon jerked.
Its head flinched.
The golden glow flickered and began leaving its body, drifting off like smoke in reverse.
The beast froze, eyes wide.
Then it screamed.
A raw, guttural, unnatural wail of agony.
Ren clutched his head, covering his ears, the pain piercing. The sound tore through the trees, echoing across the mountains.
Golden light peeled away from the Hydreigon like shedding skin. Its form twitched, convulsed. The three heads thrashed wildly. Its wings shattered midair. Its body pulsed with unstable light.
Then
Crack.
The light exploded outward in a wave of energy that flattened the grass.
The Hydreigon collapsed. Its eyes wide and empty. Lifeless.
The golden glow was gone.
Only silence remained.
Ren stared.
And finally… his body gave out.
His knees buckled. The ground rushed to meet him.
He saw the blurred forms of the mountain trees.
He saw Lucario lying in the dirt, unmoving but alive.
He saw the sky.
And then nothing.
---
Somewhere
On the top of a hill far across the range, a man in white and gold robes watched the fading light.
His long slicked-back hair shimmered under the moonlight. His lips curled faintly as the last echo of the Hydreigon's death cry drifted across the winds.
"So it couldn't hold after all…" he murmured.
He didn't look angry.
He looked… amused.
"That boy… he's more interesting than I thought."
A gloved hand rose, snapping fingers with a crack.
Beside him, a Darkrai cloaked in black shimmered into visibility, its eyes glowing with distortion.
"Pull back the others," he said. "Let them rest. We've learned enough."
The wind carried his next words away, whispered to no one:
> "But the true vessel hasn't awakened… not yet."
In a shimmer of light, he vanished.