Morning came wrong...again.
Not dark. Not stormy.
Too clear.
Divide City woke beneath a sky washed pale and thin, as if someone had scrubbed the color out overnight. The glowing mushrooms on the eastern side were dimmer than usual, their bioluminescence reduced to a sickly shimmer. On the western side, the red-and-gold veins in the vine-choked trees pulsed sluggishly, like a tired heartbeat.
Cyrus noticed both at once from the Axis Atrium window.
Ditto had already re-formed into a scarf, but looser now—watchful instead of anxious. Gengar hovered upside-down near the ceiling fan, rotating slowly, saying nothing.
"…Gen," he muttered at last.
"Yeah," Cyrus replied. "Me too."
The city had slept.
But not well.
City Officials, Carefully Unhelpful
The municipal building sat directly on the boundary line, like a declaration that bureaucracy could survive anything. Its architecture mirrored the city itself—one wing pale stone and crystal, the other iron-dark with ember-lit inlays.
Cyrus was escorted through security without resistance. His Specter Badge and King Company credentials carried weight here.
The officials did not look relieved to see him.
They looked tired.
"We've logged a forty-three percent increase in waking-dream incidents," said Councilor Irix, fingers steepled tightly. "Nightmares while conscious. Hallucinations with shared elements."
"Shared how?" Cyrus asked.
"Consistent imagery," another official replied. "Dark horizons. Pressure in the chest. A sense of being watched from behind."
Cyrus didn't write anything down.
He already knew.
"And the boundary?" he asked.
A pause.
"It's… fluctuating," Irix admitted. "Not moving. Just thinning."
That word again.
Cyrus exhaled slowly. "You're treating symptoms."
Irix bristled. "We're maintaining order."
"You're delaying panic," Cyrus corrected. "Which is fine. But this isn't a civic problem."
The officials exchanged glances.
"It's a Legendary problem," he finished.
That landed.
The Library That Wasn't Neutral
The Divide Archive was older than the city itself.
It sat just east of the boundary—technically on the luminous side—but the deeper you went, the darker the stone became, until the lower stacks were carved from black rock veined faintly with silver.
No signs.
No labels.
Just memory.
Cyrus moved carefully between shelves, fingers trailing along spines etched in multiple scripts. Ditto slid off his shoulders and reshaped into a small cube, hopping once to indicate interest in a cracked folio half-buried behind newer volumes.
Cyrus pulled it free.
The title was old.
Older than printed League records.
Cyrus sat.
Read.
And the city finally made sense.
Darkrai and Cresselia
Divide City was not founded between two biomes by accident.
It was built atop a truce.
Long ago—centuries before modern trainers—Darkrai and Cresselia had both claimed this land. Not as territory, but as influence. Nightmare and dream. Fear and rest.
They did not fight.
They balanced.
Cresselia's presence softened Darkrai's reach, drawing excess nightmare energy into lunar calm. Darkrai, in turn, absorbed the city's collective anxieties, preventing them from festering into something worse.
The boundary wasn't a wall.
It was a seam.
And both Pokémon had gone dormant together once the balance stabilized.
Until now.
Cyrus closed the book slowly.
"So if Cresselia is gone…" he murmured.
Ditto shifted into a thumbs-down.
"Yeah," Cyrus said quietly. "Darkrai's power wouldn't just increase."
It would overflow.
The Missing Half
Another text.
Older.
Damaged.
It spoke of cycles—of awakenings that always came in pairs. Of warnings carved into stone about what happens when dream is removed but dread remains.
One line was underlined in faded ink:
When the moon does not answer, the shadow will seek shape.
Cyrus leaned back, heart pounding.
Darkrai wasn't attacking Divide City.
It was unmoored.
And something unbalanced didn't stay still forever.
Gengar drifted closer, expression unusually serious.
"…Gen."
"I know," Cyrus said. "If it keeps escalating…"
Darkrai wouldn't just haunt dreams.
It would become them.
A Thought He Didn't Like
Cyrus closed his eyes.
Cresselia didn't just vanish.
Legendary Pokémon didn't simply disappear without consequence.
Something—or someone—had removed her.
Or prevented her return.
And suddenly, uncomfortably, he thought of laughter that echoed where it shouldn't.
Sing-song.
Amused.
Not malicious.
Just curious.
"Don't," Cyrus muttered to himself.
Ditto tilted.
"Not yet," he added. "No conclusions."
But the thought lingered.
Evening Approaches
By the time Cyrus left the archive, the city was already bracing for night.
Shops closed early.
Street patrols doubled.
Pokémon were kept indoors regardless of type.
The boundary line glowed faintly even in daylight now.
Too visible.
Too aware.
Cyrus stopped at the edge of the plaza and looked across both halves of Divide City—fairy-lit wonder on one side, creeping shadow on the other.
"They were never meant to be separate," he said softly.
Somewhere—not close, not far—
"Mm~," came a distant, playful hum.
Cyrus didn't turn.
Instead, he clenched his fist.
"If Cresselia is missing," he said aloud, "then finding her isn't optional."
Night was coming.
And this time...
Cyrus had no Idea what would come.