Iron-Scale closed his hand, and the miniature cyclone instantly dissipated into a gentle breeze. Before he could fully process the power of the new emerald core spinning in his chest, footsteps pounded across the wooden planks of the pier.

Aaron sprinted toward him, his face visibly pale beneath the grime of the battle. The knight completely ignored his bandaged shoulder as he skidded to a halt, looking frantically around the docks.

"Commander!" Aaron gasped, gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword. "We need the medics out here immediately! Half the Vanguard just collapsed!"

Iron-Scale stood up slowly, surprised by how light his own body felt. The ambient wind seemed to naturally support his movements, easing the lingering ache in his fractured ribs. "Calm down, Aaron. Who collapsed?"

"Everyone!" Aaron dragged a hand through his hair, pointing back toward the ruined gates. "Elder Syra dropped mid-sentence while interrogating a prisoner. The scouts fell out of the rigging. It is some kind of delayed magical attack from the Conqueror!"

"It is not an attack," Iron-Scale corrected smoothly. He brushed a speck of dust from his armor, feeling a profound sense of reverence wash over him. "It is a blessing."

Aaron blinked, entirely confused by the Kobold’s calm demeanor. "A blessing?"

"The Sovereign promised us the power to conquer the desert," Iron-Scale explained, watching the knight’s eyes widen in absolute disbelief. "He is fulfilling that promise. The others are not dead or cursed. They are simply taking their trials, just as I did."

While Iron-Scale tested his new elemental limits in the waking world, another trial was just beginning deep within the spiritual void.

Gulag groaned and pushed herself off the featureless white floor. She expected the agonizing, tearing pain of her berserker backlash, but her physical body felt perfectly fine here. Her armor was intact, and her mind was surprisingly clear of the feral haze that had nearly killed her on the docks.

"Where am I?" Gulag muttered, cracking her thick knuckles as she scanned the empty horizon.

The white mist directly in front of her began to churn and solidify. Instead of taking the shape of a former enemy like Ghizlan, the mist gathered into a towering, featureless humanoid made entirely of rough, compressed granite. It stood twice as tall as she did, radiating an aura of impossible weight.

The golem did not speak or offer a polite explanation. It simply raised a massive stone fist and brought it down like a falling meteor.

Gulag grinned. This was a language she understood perfectly.

She planted her boots, roared, and threw a devastating right hook to meet the descending strike head-on. Her fist collided with the granite knuckle.

The impact sent a shockwave echoing through the void, but the result was immediate and humiliating. The golem did not budge a single inch.

Gulag, however, was launched backward like a thrown ragdoll. She skidded across the invisible floor, her arm totally numb from the sheer, immovable density of the creature.

’I can’t break a mountain with just bone,’ Gulag realized, spitting onto the white floor as she forced herself back up.

The golem advanced, its heavy footsteps causing the entire void to vibrate. It swung a horizontal backhand aimed at her ribs.

Gulag instinctively reached for that familiar, feral rage. She wanted to burn her life force, to push her muscles past their breaking point just to match the monster’s strength. But Iron-Scale’s voice echoed in her memory, reminding her of Gorak and the child waiting at Onyx Hall. Burning herself to ash was a coward’s way out.

She needed to hit harder without destroying herself. She needed mass.

Gulag stood her ground and closed her eyes. She stopped trying to draw power from her own blood and instead reached outward, feeling for the conceptual weight of the world itself. She visualized the deep-core mines where Gorak worked, picturing the unbreakable bedrock and the crushing pressure of the earth.

She willed that density to coat her own skin.

When the golem’s stone fist connected, Gulag did not fly backward as she had expected. Instead, a thick, layer of dark earth had materialized over her forearms, absorbing the kinetic impact perfectly. She opened her eyes, feeling a deep, rumbling core of amber magic ignite within her chest.

"My turn," Gulag growled.

She channeled the new earth magic into her right fist, compacting the dirt and stone until it formed a massive, oversized gauntlet of pure bedrock. With a terrifying battle cry, she lunged forward and drove the earth-shattering punch directly into the golem’s center of mass.

The golem shattered into a thousand pieces of harmless dust, leaving Gulag standing victorious in the void.

Meanwhile, Elder Syra found herself standing in a realm of blinding, absolute luminescence. There were no shadows to hide in and no corners to exploit. A phantom entity made entirely of radiant light hunted her relentlessly, firing searing beams that scorched her silver scales.

Syra dodged a blast of pure energy, realizing her physical agility was useless here. She was the Minister of Intelligence. Her entire existence revolved around remaining unseen and gathering secrets from the dark. She closed her eyes against the blinding glare and stopped trying to find a physical shadow.

Instead, she conceptualized the darkness within her own soul, projecting it outward to consume the light.

The void instantly dimmed. Syra melted into a puddle of inky blackness, slipping entirely beneath the phantom’s notice before materializing behind it with a blade forged of pure shadow. A dark, pulsating core ignited in her chest as the entity dissolved into mist.

Across the fragmented spiritual plane, a thousand distinct trials unfolded simultaneously.

Sludge and Bog-Rot found themselves in perfectly sterile white rooms. Stripped of their alchemical pouches and toxic herbs, the Mud-Skippers were forced to generate their own lethality.

By reaching deep into their conceptual ties to the swamps, they manifested magic that warped the pristine void. Sludge awakened a volatile core of bubbling acid, while Bog-Rot conjured a silent, spreading miasma of virulent neurotoxins.

Old-Shell transformed his carapace into an impenetrable fortress of glowing kinetic barriers, while the Grey-Fin pikemen forged their weapons out of high-pressure water currents.

The human members of the Vanguard were not left behind. Despite lacking the natural physical advantages of Red’s monstrous races, the veterans proved exactly why they had earned the faction’s crest.

Novus faced a horde of phantom beasts. He awakened a volatile core of explosive fire that perfectly matched his aggressive frontline tactics, incinerating the illusionary monsters with a single sweep of his broadsword.

Hawl darted through a maze of falling debris, channeling crackling lightning into his legs to achieve impossible speeds.

Gustav stood against a collapsing ceiling, manifesting solid pillars of earth to protect his imaginary militia.

One by one, Red’s chosen mortal warriors claimed their power, bridging the gap between humanity and the supernatural.

While the soldiers fought for elemental supremacy, a very different kind of trial began to take shape far away from the frontlines.

Elian opened his eyes. He expected to see the familiar stone walls of his royal study back in the capital. Instead, he found himself standing in the center of an endless, pristine white expanse. He wore his simple formal robes, completely unarmed, holding only the golden ledger he used to manage the faction’s logistics and faith distribution.

He looked down at his hands, feeling a strange absence of gravity.

"A spiritual domain," Elian murmured. His sharp mind immediately analyzed the featureless horizon, recognizing the divine intervention. "The Sovereign is testing us."