The wind was colder past Mahogany Town.
Kael pulled his jacket tighter around him, breath fogging in the morning air. The path ahead narrowed into a trail of frost-covered stone and jagged ridgelines. Snow dotted the pine trees, and in the distance, the mountains rose like sleeping beasts. Somewhere beyond them lay Mt. Silver — and answers.
Echo walked beside him without complaint. Her silver fur seemed almost designed for this terrain, glinting with crystalline sheen as she moved silently through the snow. The mark on her shoulder — the crescent eye, faint but visible — pulsed softly like a heartbeat.
They weren't alone.
He noticed it first as a feeling: that crawling sensation along the back of the neck, as if something just behind you was watching... but refusing to blink.
Then Echo stopped, her body rigid.
"Something's wrong," He said.
They had reached the mouth of the Ice Path, a deep cave carved into the side of the ridge. The entrance glowed with eerie blue light, faint and flickering. Inside, wind howled unnaturally — like it wasn't passing through rock, but something hollow. Something alive.
He looked to Echo. She didn't flinch.
"Let's go."
The Ice Path was colder than expected — not just in temperature, but in atmosphere.
Frost slicked every surface, and the usual hum of wild Zubat or Delibird was missing. It was too quiet. His boots crunched over old ice, and Echo's paws made no sound at all. He stepped carefully around frozen ledges and old climbing ropes from previous explorers.
Then they found it.
The first signs.
Claw marks.
Deep gouges along the cave wall, not from an Ice-type's natural moves — but something thrashing. Trying to get out. Trying to escape something... or themselves.
They continued down until the cave opened into a wide, frozen cavern. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like crystal teeth, and in the middle of the room stood a lone Pokémon.
A Froslass.
Or at least, it had been.
Now its body was cracked with black energy pulsing beneath its icy shell. One eye glowed violet. The other flickered like a dying ember. Its arms moved in slow, twitching patterns, and its form… flickered, like a video with static.
He froze. "That's—"
"Amaranth has touched it," Echo said.
Kael jolted. It wasn't that she made a sound — she spoke.
Not out loud. But in his mind. Clear. Calm.
"You— you can talk?"
Echo didn't look away from the Froslass. "I'm not speaking. I'm resonating. The tower opened the path. This place amplifies it."
He stepped back. "What is it doing to her?"
"Froslass is grief given form," Echo whispered. "She was already close to Amaranth. But now… she's lost."
The Froslass let out a shriek — not a cry, but a distorted echo. A scream with no breath. It rushed forward.
"Echo—!"
She was already moving.
The battle was chaos.
Froslass vanished into mist, then reappeared behind Echo in a blink, launching a Shadow Ball wreathed in black lightning. Echo dodged, sliding over the ice and countering with a Quick Attack so fast it left a trail of light behind her.
But the Shadow Ball stuck to the wall. It didn't dissipate. Instead, it pulsed and formed a second image of Froslass — a broken mirror of her body.
"She's splintering," Echo warned. "She's becoming a fragment — like Amaranth."
Kael's heart pounded. "Can we stop her?"
Echo hesitated. "We can't purify her. But we can sever the link."
She crouched low. Her eyes glowed — not just silver now, but with flecks of gold.
'Bite'.
Kael felt the move before she executed it — as if he were commanding it from inside her own mind.
Echo lunged at the original Froslass, ignoring the shadow clone. Her fangs connected, not with skin or ice — but with the pulse of dark energy at the Pokémon's core.
There was a flash — a sound like glass shattering in water.
The shadow clone vanished. The Froslass dropped to the ice, her body dimmed, the crack across her mask shrinking.
She looked up at Echo — confused, unsure — then vanished in a flash of white light as the cave pulsed once, and silence returned.
He knelt, breathless. "What was that?"
Echo sat beside him, her breathing calm. "Amaranth doesn't create. It twists. She was already mourning. He offered a way out — and trapped her in it."
He clenched his fists. "He's doing this to others."
"Many," Echo replied.
A crack in the ice revealed a broken charm — a tag like the ones from Sprout Tower. Froslass must've once belonged to a monk. She hadn't always been corrupted.
Kael picked up the tag and pocketed it.
They moved deeper into the cave, Echo walking beside him, her glow now constant — a low pulse of silver-white.
Hours later, as they reached the far exit of the Ice Path, snow began to fall.
The sun was setting behind Mt. Silver's jagged crown. Somewhere up there — buried in ice and shadow — was the truth. About his father. About Amaranth.
And about Echo, whose evolution was no longer physical, but spiritual.
He exhaled, his breath curling like smoke.
"We keep going," he said softly.
Echo didn't need to answer.