The wind had teeth.
Kael pulled his scarf tighter, squinting against the flurries that danced like white fire across the cliffside. The climb had been slow, brutal even, but he was close now. The slopes of Mt. Silver loomed high above him, draped in thick fog and silence. Every footstep felt like walking into the past.
Echo walked beside him, unaffected by the cold. Her silver fur shimmered faintly, snowflakes drifting around her as if they dared not land.
They were looking for something.
Not the peak.
Not a shrine.
A camp.
Galen's final camp.
Morty had given him the coordinates last night in a rare, urgent message—he said the storm would soon make them unreachable. Whatever he wanted to find, he had to find it now.
He rounded a ridge, boots crunching over ice, and stopped.
The overhang was still there.
Half-collapsed, covered in snowdrifts, but unmistakably a shelter. Beneath it: a crumpled tarp, a cracked thermal pot, and the charred remains of a firepit—long dead.
His heart twisted.
"This is it," he whispered.
Echo stepped forward, nose twitching. She dug lightly at the snow, and within seconds, unearthed a metal case.
He dropped to his knees and pried it open. Inside:
A faded field journal
A collapsed solar lantern
A damaged Pokégear, its surface scratched, the screen cracked but blinking faintly
He reached for it with shaking hands and pressed the power button.
It whined, static bleeding through the speaker.
Then—
"Log… fourteen…"
Kael froze.
It was his father's voice.
"…I made contact. I don't know with what. But I saw things. Places that haven't existed. Pokémon twisted… presence… it's feeding on pain."
The words were broken, glitching. But real.
Kael shut his eyes.
Seven years of silence. Of guessing. And now—here it was. Proof. A message meant for him. A breadcrumb from the man who had vanished chasing echoes and myths.
Echo pressed her head into his shoulder.
The recording continued:
"Kael… if you're hearing this, I was right…"
Static.
"…not a Pokémon. Not really… follow the echoes… they'll take you where I couldn't."
Then silence.
A full minute passed before he moved again.
Later, he sat beneath the overhang, the firepit relit with dry twigs and pieces of the old tarp. The Pokégear sat in his lap, still warm.
He opened the journal next. Pages were smudged with water damage and age, but legible.
Sketches. Glyphs. The same crescent eye again and again. Notes in tight, hurried handwriting:
"It doesn't speak. But it remembers."
"The glyph is a lock… the Unown are keys?"
"Sprout Tower, Ruins of Alph, Dragon's Den… all connected."
"Echoes can become real if believed in long enough."
"Found the monolith. It knew my name."
He flipped to the last page.
It was blank—except for one sentence, written in larger, shakier script:
"She will be the one who remembers what the world forgot."
He looked at Echo.
She sat calmly beside the fire, her eyes glowing faintly. The mark on her shoulder pulsed once, then dimmed.
"You think he meant you?" He whispered.
Echo blinked once. "I think he meant us."
The words weren't spoken, not aloud. But he heard them all the same.
He closed the journal.
The storm outside began to build again. Snow swirled in tight spirals beyond the lip of the overhang. He packed the gear into his bag, carefully wrapping the Pokégear and journal in cloth.
"We should go," he said.
Echo didn't move.
He followed her gaze.
At the edge of the clearing, a shape stood in the snow.
A Pokémon.
No… a memory of one.
Flickering. Shadowed.
It looked like an Umbreon, but not entirely. Its rings glowed violet, and its form twitched in the storm, phasing slightly like a faulty transmission. Its eyes locked with Echo's.
And in that moment, Kael understood.
"It's a shadow made from a lost bond," Echo said. "A partner left behind."
The Umbreon stepped forward—but did not attack. It bowed its head once. Then turned and vanished into the snow without leaving a footprint.
He stood frozen.
"What was that?"
"An echo," Echo replied. "Of your father. Of what he couldn't protect."
They descended the ridge in silence.
When the storm cleared behind them, the campsite was gone—covered again by snow, as if it had never existed.
But He had what he needed.
The message.
The journal.
And the truth.
Amaranth was real.
And it was still watching.