Kael stood in front of the shrine at dawn, the snow still fresh on the rooftops of Yukari Village. The fires had burned low overnight, and the air felt colder than it should have. Colder than it had the day before. As if something beneath the mountain had exhaled.
He reached out and pressed his hand to the cracked altar stone. The crescent eye felt smooth beneath his glove. Not worn—polished. By time. Or by memory.
Echo sat behind him, tail curled neatly over her paws. "There's more here," she said quietly. "The monks buried what they couldn't speak aloud."
He glanced back at her. "How do you know?"
"Because I remember them trying to forget."
Kael knelt and brushed snow from the base of the shrine. Beneath the moss-covered stone was a hidden panel—subtle, but not sealed. He dug carefully until his fingertips found a ridge. With a slow breath, he lifted.
Stone groaned.
The panel slid open, revealing a narrow staircase carved into the frozen earth.
He looked to Echo. "Stay close."
She nodded once.
The staircase led to a passage carved in silence. The walls were lined with frozen wood supports, the air damp with forgotten breath. Light flickered from old lantern crystals embedded in the rock—still faintly active, likely powered by lingering spiritual energy. This place hadn't been entered in years, maybe decades.
He descended slowly, boots echoing against the worn stone.
At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel opened into a library chamber.
Shelves curved in concentric circles from the center of the room, like ripples frozen in time. Scrolls, bound volumes, and glass-sealed glyph tablets lined the shelves. A single stone table stood in the middle, its surface etched with symbols matching the ones from Sprout Tower and Dragon's Den.
Echo padded to the table and placed her paw on its center.
The runes lit with silver light.
Kael approached. "What is this?"
"A memory vault," Echo replied. "A record of sightings, dreams, regrets… all linked to Amaranth."
He circled the table slowly, fingers drifting over the scrolls and tablets. The writing was dense—handwritten by monks, scribes, and travelers who had no other place to put their fear.
Some entries were marked with red symbols. He unfurled one.
"Entry 114 – Tower Survivor. Recounted night terrors. Claimed they saw their future self calling them into the fire. Burned arm, no structural damage to tower. Memory deemed fragmented."
He swallowed hard and opened another.
"Entry 138 – Trainer name: Aenor. Location: Ice Path. Encountered corrupted Jynx. Said it spoke in the voice of their mother. Claimed it 'took nothing but memory.' Trainer resigned League journey and joined monastery."
The next entry made him stop.
"Entry 146 – Foreign Trainer, name unknown. Silver furred Eevee seen during alph glyph resonance. Pokémon unaffected by psychic bleed. Mark appeared during fourth pulse event."
He felt Echo come to his side. "That's you," he said.
"Or someone before me," Echo answered. "We don't know how long this has been repeating."
Kael opened one final scroll.
This one was marked with a wax seal—black, with the inverted crescent eye.
He cracked it open.
"Entry 151 – Final Note from Keeper Laiwen.
I can no longer tell if I'm dreaming. I saw my brother last night—he died three winters ago. He told me to go to the shrine and 'wait.' That he'd come for me.
I didn't go.
But someone else did.
He returned without his eyes."
Kael let the scroll fall closed.
He sat heavily at the table, heart pounding.
"They knew," he whispered. "They all knew, and the world just… moved on."
"Because forgetting is easier than fighting," Echo said softly. "And it's harder to fight what doesn't want to be seen."
He stared at the shelves around them. A hundred stories. A hundred warnings.
"Then why are we remembering now?" he asked.
Echo looked toward the tunnel behind them. "Because it's getting stronger. The stories are starting again."
He picked up one of the glyph tablets. The image etched into the stone looked like the monolith Galen had described—tall, cracked, radiating darkness. But there was something new in this one.
A figure standing in front of the stone.
Not a Pokémon. A trainer.
And in the trainer's arms… a silver-furred Pokémon, wrapped in light.
"It's us," he whispered.
"No," Echo corrected. "It will be."
When they emerged from the tunnel, the sky had lightened, but the sun remained hidden behind heavy clouds. The shrine stood silent, unchanging.
At the gate to the village, Elder Saki waited.
Kael met her gaze as he approached. "There's an archive down there."
"I know," Elder Saki said.
"You knew, and you didn't tell anyone?"
Elder Saki looked toward the treetops. "Telling someone is how the stories start again."
He pulled the scroll from his bag—the one with the seal. "This isn't a story. This is a warning."
Elder Saki looked at the scroll but didn't take it. "And now you've read it. So it belongs to you."
Echo stepped forward. "The Threshold they spoke of… do you know where it is?"
"I've only heard its name," Elder Saki said. "But I know this—it's not a place. It's a point in you. The moment you choose to remember everything you've lost."
She turned and walked away, leaving him standing with snowflakes melting in his hair.
That night, he sat by the fire reading through the pages he had copied into his journal. Names, dates, sightings. He charted them on a map of Johto. Then cross-referenced them with Galen's notes.
But it was one red mark—just at the edge of the page—that chilled him most.
Not in Johto.
In Kanto.
He traced it with a fingertip.
"A sighting near Cerulean Cave," he whispered.
Echo stirred beside him. "The stories never end where they begin."
"No," he said quietly. "But maybe they finish where someone finally listens."