As Eric and Cynthia pressed further past the Old Chateau, navigating through the tangled, dying woods, the atmosphere began to change.
The temperature dropped steadily, and the familiar, heavy sensation of Ghost-type energy began to saturate the air. Eric's breath plumed in small, white clouds. But as he analyzed the environment, he couldn't help but frown slightly.
'It still doesn't compare to Lavender Woods...' Eric thought.
It wasn't bad, but Eric wanted the best spot for his Haunter. This seemed a few steps below Lavender Woods. Did Alka get it wrong? Or has this place changed since Alka was here?
While Eric was questioning his whole Sinnoh trip, Cynthia, however, was radiating an entirely different kind of energy.
The quiet, reserved girl was completely gone. In her place was an incredibly passionate, wide-eyed scholar. She moved with an eager, almost manic enthusiasm, brushing away overgrown vines and examining the crumbling stone pillars that began to jut out from the forest floor.
It was the exact same fiery passion she displayed when battling, just channeled into archeology.
"Look at the weathering on this basalt," Cynthia murmured, running her gloved fingertips over a shattered stone archway. "This architecture doesn't match standard Sinnoh tribal designs. It predates the Celestica people entirely."
Eric followed her as they descended a set of broad, fractured stone stairs that led into the earth.
The passage widened into a long, dark, subterranean hallway. The walls of the corridor were lined with sprawling, deeply engraved drawings. But time had not been kind to them. The murals were blurred, shadowy, and heavily eroded, making the figures depicted incredibly difficult to make out.
Cynthia took her time, illuminating the walls with a high-powered flashlight, completely captivated by the fragmented history. Eric didn't mind the slow pace. He kept his hands in his pockets, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom while Haunter floated quietly by his side.
But a ruin full of Ghost-type energy was never truly empty.
From the shadows of the ceiling, a cluster of glowing, malicious eyes snapped open.
Three Dusclops and two Mismagius dropped from the rafters, their auras instantly flooding the narrow hallway with hostile, Advanced-level pressure.
"Eric," Cynthia said, her voice entirely calm but carrying a sense of stirness. "We are standing in a priceless historical site. Do not cause any structural damage to these walls."
She unclasped two Poké Balls in a fluid motion. "Gabite, Milotic. Do this cleanly."
A flash of light revealed her Gabite, alongside a stunning, incredibly elegant sea serpent with cream and pink scales.
Eric casually scanned the new addition.
---
Pokémon: Milotic
Gender: Female
Level: 46
Type: Water
Ability: Marvel Scale
Held Item: Mystic Water
Potential: Deep Purple
---
'Another powerhouse,' Eric noted.
Cynthia's Pokémon moved with incredible precision, as if they were experienced in this kind of clean fighting.
Gabite used specialized, tightly controlled bursts of Dragon Claw to parry the incoming Shadow Punches from the Dusclops, while Milotic elegantly coiled through the air, firing thin, highly pressurized streams of Water Pulse that struck the Mismagius with sniper-like accuracy, neutralizing them without so much as chipping a stone brick.
Eric turned to his own partner.
"You heard the lady, Haunter," Eric said, offering a faint, joking smirk. "Try not to level the building this time. No massive explosions."
"Haunt!" Haunter puffed out his cheeks, glaring at Eric and crossing his arms grumpily, as if to say, 'I'm not a child, I know how to control myself!'
Haunter zipped forward and did a decent enough job taking care of the Pokémon without causing damage. Though there were a few close calls, causing Eric to smirk at him teasingly while Cynthia looked at him with a disapproving frown.
Once the ghosts were cleared, the duo continued down the hallway undisturbed.
Eventually, the corridor opened up into a small, circular chamber. There were no exits. The entire far end of the room consisted of a single, colossal stone wall.
And on this wall, the mural was perfectly, flawlessly preserved.
Cynthia gasped, taking a step forward.
Eric's breath hitched.
The engraving depicted a massive, terrifying entity. It had six thick, centipede-like legs, a heavily armored golden crest protecting its face, and a pair of vast, shadowy, tattered wings that seemed to reach out and consume the very sky around it.
It was an imperfect, archaic representation, but both Eric and Cynthia recognized it instantly.
The Renegade Pokémon. The Lord of Antimatter.
Giratina.
"This... this is unprecedented," Cynthia whispered, her eyes wide with awe as she raised her flashlight. "A shrine dedicated to the banished one..."
She reached out to trace the base of the mural, but before her fingers could even touch the stone--
A blinding, pulsating red light erupted from Haunter's core.
"Haunter?" Eric said, stepping back in surprise.
The light wasn't purple ghost-type energy. It was the exact same volatile, crimson glow of the anomalous fragment they had absorbed back in Lavender Woods.
In perfect resonance, the giant mural of Giratina on the wall began to glow with the exact same violent, bloody red light. The entire chamber vibrated, the air tearing apart with a sound like shattering glass.
"What the--"
Before Eric could even process what was happening, the crimson light flashed, completely swallowing the room.
FWOOSH.
Eric, Cynthia, and Haunter vanished.
The red light instantly died out, plunging the chamber back into total darkness.
Gabite and Milotic stood alone in the quiet, dusty ruins. They looked at the empty space where their trainer had been, then looked at each other, blinking in absolute confusion.
"Gaba...?"
---
Eric couldn't breathe. He couldn't feel his hands. He couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet.
He opened his eyes, but it didn't make a difference. He was floating in an infinite, absolute void. There was no light, no sound, no up, no down. It was a sensory deprivation chamber on a cosmic scale.
'Where am I? Cynthia? Haunter?'
He tried to speak, but no sound came out. It was as if the very concept of sound didn't exist here.
Then, the void shifted.
In the pitch-black nothingness directly in front of him, two colossal, glowing red eyes snapped open.
The size of those eyes made him feel like an ant.
The exact moment those eyes locked onto him, an unbearable, searing agony ripped through his skull. Eric grabbed his head, a silent scream tearing at his throat as an avalanche of abstract, shadowy images assaulted his mind.
He saw worlds reduced to ash. He saw dimensions twisting and collapsing in on themselves. He saw skies made of shattered glass and oceans of dark matter. The raw, unfiltered data of a reality completely alien to human comprehension was violently forced into his brain.
And then, he heard a voice.
It didn't come through his ears. It didn't belong to any language conceived by man or Pokémon. It was a cacophony of horrific, metallic gibberish, like grinding tectonic plates and shrieking static.
But inside Eric's mind, the noise was perfectly translated into completely understandable words.
"Intriguing... "