Location: Mt. Silver – Lower Reaches
Timeline: Seven years before Chapter 1
The snow swallowed sound.
Galen tightened his coat around him as the wind cut through the pass like a blade. Behind him, his Pokégear beeped faintly—another dropped signal. He sighed and turned it off. There was no one to call, anyway. The last group he'd passed had been nearly two days ago.
He was alone now.
Just like he wanted.
Mt. Silver wasn't on the official League path. It wasn't part of any badge route or Elite challenge. It was a place for wanderers. For legends. And sometimes, for people chasing ghosts.
He looked out across the ledge. Below, the trees were shrinking. Above, the cliffs grew jagged and hungry. Snow fell in slow, disjointed spirals, and the air was thin, like the mountain didn't want to be breathed.
A single thought echoed through his head:
I'm close.
He pulled out his worn field notebook, flipping to the sketch from Sprout Tower. The symbol stared back: the crescent eye, surrounded by jagged lines.
He'd found it in three places already. The monks in Ecruteak called it a relic of balance, but none of them could explain why the symbol seemed to appear only in places where the veil felt thinner—in ruins, caves, old forests that creaked even without wind.
And now, he'd found a fourth.
Here.
Mt. Silver.
The cave opened without warning.
Just past a half-buried shrine half-eaten by frost, the cliff face gave way to a narrow slit in the rock, almost too small to notice unless you were looking for it. Galen stepped through, lighting his headlamp.
The tunnel was tighter than expected. The walls pulsed with veins of crystal—faintly purple, laced with silver. They hummed softly, vibrating just beneath perception. The kind of sound that made your molars ache.
He took a recording.
"Audio log #13. Cave entrance located. Energy signature is active — possibly psychic. The resonance matches previous glyph sites in Alph and Ice Path."
He paused, listening.
Nothing.
But the pressure was building.
The tunnel opened into a vast chamber.
It wasn't natural.
The walls were smooth. Too smooth. Circular, carved in swirls that spiraled into the earth like a vortex. Symbols covered every surface. Not just Unown—though they were present—but older, cruder glyphs etched by hand or claw. The air was heavy with emotion, though no sound echoed back from the stone.
He stepped in.
Every breath felt colder than the last. And then—he saw it.
At the far end of the chamber stood a monolith. Black stone. Tall as two men. And at its center, carved in deep, shaking lines: the crescent eye.
Galen approached slowly.
The closer he got, the more the humming intensified. It wasn't noise—it was emotion. It buzzed in his chest like a held breath. Sorrow. Regret. Anger.
And something else.
Hunger.
He pressed his hand against the stone.
The world cracked.
He saw a tower on fire.
A boy standing in the snow, lost.
A silver-furred creature, crying in the dark.
A name: Amaranth — whispered like an apology.
He gasped and fell back.
The humming stopped.
His body shook.
What he had felt—it wasn't just a memory. It was a presence. Something alive, hiding between thoughts. It hadn't spoken in words. But it had understood him. And it had shown him things that had not happened yet.
Or had already happened again.
He sat on the cold floor of the chamber and turned on his audio recorder.
"Log #14… I made contact. I don't know with what. But I saw things. Places that haven't existed. Pokémon twisted into things they were never meant to be. A… presence. It's feeding. I think it's feeding on pain."
He stared at the monolith.
"The name it gave me was Amaranth."
He ended the recording and looked down at his gloved hands. They were trembling. Not from cold.
From truth.
Outside, the storm had worsened. Galen barely made it back to his campsite, sheltered beneath a rocky overhang. He started a small fire, wrapped himself in his sleeping bag, and listened to the snow pressing against the tent.
He couldn't sleep.
Because the mountain had heard him.
And something within it had spoken back.
✧
Three nights later, his Pokégear pulsed with one final message. It didn't send. The storm blocked all signals.
But he recorded it anyway.
"Kael… If you're hearing this, I was right. It's here. It's not a Pokémon. Not really. It's the shadow of every feeling we never learned how to hold. It wants more. I don't know if I'll see you again… but follow the echoes. They'll take you where I couldn't."
The transmission crackled. Then ended.