"Didn't you say there'd be a surprise? What surprise could possibly be waiting on the back mountain? It's not like we haven't been here before. This place has nothing going for it except being close to the edge of town. Please don't tell me we're having our training camp here."
Miles grumbled as he trudged up the narrow mountain path, the rest of the School Team filing along behind and ahead of him toward the summit.
The back mountain sat at the far edge of the school grounds. Imperial Capital No. 1 High School was already positioned on the southernmost side of Imperial City, practically kissing the city limits — and this mountain marked the line where the school property ended and the untamed wilderness began. Because of that, the rear gate that opened onto the mountain trail was almost never used. Security measures were tight: chain-link fencing, electric netting strung along the perimeter, and a small team of guards posted at the base of the trail at all hours. Wild Pokémon rarely wandered in this direction, most likely put off by all of that.
David and a handful of others were exceptions. During their first year, drawn in by the ghost stories that circulated around school, the group had snuck out here on their own — armed, of course, with their families' Pokémon. They weren't reckless about it. If the back mountain had held any genuine danger, something that not even an Elite-level or Champion-level Pokémon could handle, they would have turned back without a second thought. But the grand ghost stories hadn't delivered much in the way of thrills. The place had turned out to be a perfectly ordinary, bare stretch of hillside, completely devoid of Pokémon. Its only redeeming feature was the view from the summit: a wide sweep of the wilderness beyond the city boundary, where Pokémon actually lived.
That memory was exactly why Miles was complaining now.
"Okay, fine — I don't think Teacher Dominic dragged us all the way up here just for a laugh," Miles conceded, though his tone was still unconvinced. "Maybe he's planning some kind of outdoor wilderness training?"
"Could be," David said, walking steadily beside him. "Though honestly, I don't think it's that simple either."
He said it partly to settle Miles down, but he meant every word. He'd spent enough time around Dominic to know that the man wasn't the type to waste anyone's time with pointless outings. There was always a reason.
Miles fell quiet after that. Partly because David had spoken, and partly because the climb itself demanded a certain amount of focus. Despite its modest height, the back mountain's only trail was narrow and uncomfortably steep, winding upward through a stretch of dusty, scrubby ground that offered very little shade. The whole walk from the school building to the summit took the better part of an hour under good conditions.
If not for the physical conditioning Miles had built up training alongside his Pokémon over the past semester, he'd have been gasping at the halfway mark. The old Miles — before all of that — almost certainly would have collapsed before the trail even leveled off. Complaints or not, he was making it.
And if the group had been smaller — just the two or three of them — David suspected he might have called out his Salamence and had them airlifted straight to the top. But with the full School Team present, that was hardly an option. He wasn't about to leave everyone else behind and fly up alone. Besides, with his current fitness, the climb barely registered.
"We're most of the way there," David said, glancing up toward the summit, which was now clearly visible above the treeline. "Let's save the questions for when we arrive."
He said it calmly, but in truth, his attention had been elsewhere for the past several minutes. David kept his Aura Power extended as they walked, letting it sweep quietly through the terrain around him. And the more he probed, the more certain he became that something was genuinely different this time.
When he and Miles had snuck up here in their first year, the mountain had read as exactly what it appeared: bare, still, and empty. But now, with his Aura awakened and his perception sharpened well beyond what it had once been, the picture looked nothing like that. The ground beneath their feet was saturated with energy — rich, dense, almost surprising in its abundance. A place like this should have been teeming with plant life and wild Pokémon. Logically, the conditions were ideal. So why was it so barren?
The answer came as they drew closer to the summit.
The energy wasn't staying put. Every current that rose from the earth was being pulled upward and inward, all of it flowing steadily toward the highest point of the mountain. It reminded David of being caught near a Whirlpool — not violent, but relentless. The energy was being drawn somewhere, absorbed before it had any chance to settle into the soil or the air. Whatever was at the center of the summit was consuming it continuously, leaving the rest of the mountain hollow and dry as a result.
"Finally," Miles wheezed dramatically as the group crested the top. He immediately zeroed in on Dominic, who was already standing at the summit with an unusually relaxed expression — the closest thing to a smile most of them had seen from him. "Teacher Dominic. Okay. We made it. What exactly are we here for?"
Dominic's smile widened just slightly. "Didn't I tell you? There's a surprise."
"You did say that." Miles crossed his arms. "But we've been up here before. We were here before you even started teaching at Imperial Capital No. 1 High School, actually. There was nothing. Just a very long walk."
"That's because you didn't find what was actually here." Dominic's tone was patient, unhurried. "So let me ask you something. What's the most famous rumor about this back mountain?"
A beat of silence, then several voices answered at once.
"The secret realm."
Everyone knew the stories. The theories surrounding the back mountain at Imperial Capital No. 1 High School were almost as old as the school itself. Some said the barren hillside was the aftermath of a clash between Legendary Pokémon, a battle so powerful it had scorched all life from the land. Others suggested some kind of research experiment gone wrong. But the story that had circulated the longest, and gotten the most traction, was a different one entirely: that a secret realm had been integrated into the mountain somehow, and that its presence was slowly draining the surrounding environment — leaving the ground lifeless as a side effect. No student had ever actually found it, but that had never stopped the rumor from spreading.
All eyes turned to Dominic.
He nodded.
"That's right. The rumor is true. There is a secret realm hidden here."
The energy in the group shifted instantly. Miles's expression went from tired skepticism to wide-eyed interest in about half a second.
"So we're going inside the secret realm for our training?"
"All in good time." Dominic raised a hand, cutting off the flood of questions he could clearly see coming. "You'll see for yourselves soon enough. Follow me."
He turned and walked toward the center of the summit — the exact point where David's Aura had been registering that steady, inexplicable pull.
David and the others exchanged glances and fell into step behind him.
David kept his Aura extended, sweeping carefully across the ground ahead. Moments earlier, when he'd probed this precise location, he'd detected nothing — a complete blank where the energy concentration should have been strongest. He had chalked it up to the natural flow of energy, but now he understood. The blank spot wasn't natural. Something was blocking Aura perception, a shielding device of some kind built specifically to keep ability users from sensing what lay beneath.
Dominic stopped at the center, reached into his coat, and did something David couldn't quite follow. There was a low, subtle vibration beneath their feet. Then the ground shifted.
The surface that had looked like bare rock and packed earth faded away, pulling back like a curtain to reveal an opening — a passage descending straight down into the mountain, lit faintly from somewhere below.
No one spoke for a moment.
"Stay close," Dominic said quietly, ignoring the stunned looks around him. He stepped forward and descended without hesitation.
One by one, the team followed him into the passage, the last figure disappearing below the surface. A moment later, the ground trembled once more, and the opening sealed itself shut behind them — smooth and seamless, as though it had never been there at all.