Cynthia checked out the following morning.
Lucien did not think much about it. After living as long as he had, his disposition had settled into something that could not easily be disturbed. Being recognized was being recognized.
What else was there to do about it? AZ had never particularly bothered to hide his identity either, and Lucien had taken his lead from AZ in more ways than one when it came to the question of how to live quietly in the open.
AZ was currently in Lumiose City in Kalos, running an inn with Floette. That same person, having weathered as many centuries and seen through as much as anyone could see through, had found his place and his peace in a warm building on a busy street, spending his days with Floette, entirely unconcerned with the larger world.
Lucien had seen that life and understood immediately what it offered. No official duties, no conflicts to manage. Different travelers arriving each day with their stories, and his Pokémon peacefully beside him. He had opened Loving Home with that picture in mind.
Thinking of AZ, Lucien realized it had been some time since he had visited.
The inn was quiet. It was not peak season, and besides Cynthia there had been only one other guest. He turned off the new booking notifications on the app. Since things were slow, there was no reason not to go.
"Hoopa, open a ring to AZ's inn," Lucien said.
"Okay!"
Hoopa conjured the ring without ceremony. Through it, the busy streets of Lumiose City were visible, and at the entrance of a warmly decorated building, the delicate shape of an Eternal Flower Floette moved through the lobby.
They stepped through.
AZ was behind the bar, wiping glasses, and looked up at the sound of arrival expecting a guest. His expression shifted when he saw who it was.
"Lucien." A note of genuine surprise in his voice. "It's rare for you to come on your own initiative. Has the owner of the Lucien City inn finally run out of things to do?"
"Nothing so dramatic," Lucien said. "I simply thought of you and came to visit. How have you been? Where is Floette?"
"Very well. The inn keeps me busy and the days are peaceful." AZ's voice carried the particular ease of someone who has finally found exactly the life they wanted. "You, on the other hand, you've been hiding for quite a long time. Haven't you been found out yet? I've heard archaeologists have been coming to Lucien City lately, looking for traces of your old history."
"One just left," Lucien said with a smile. "But it's fine."
AZ understood the implication immediately and laughed quietly. "A perceptive one, then. Good. Some things don't need to be kept secret forever. Those who understand will know how to hold it."
They sat down together. The conversation moved between the quiet rhythms of their daily inn lives and the more interesting stories that had accumulated over the years, the contrast between the two creating a warmth that only people who have known each other across centuries can produce.
A thousand years had long since worn away whatever sharp edges either of them had once carried, leaving something more settled and more valued: the specific comfort of a companion who had been there through all of it.
After a while, Lucien looked out the window at the busy Lumiose streets.
"Team Flare has started moving through the major cities of Kalos," he said.
AZ looked at him. "As you expected." A pause, the curiosity in his expression genuine. This person always seemed to know things before they became visible to anyone else.
Team Flare was not difficult to notice if you were paying attention, red suits moving through the city, a philosophy of self-interest so complete that other people's wellbeing simply did not factor into their calculations.
AZ's own investigation had shown that the organization's technology had embedded itself throughout Kalos's commercial infrastructure, generating substantial revenue. But the technology was not the point. There was something else underneath it.
"What are they actually after?" AZ asked.
"Stubborn idealists," Lucien said. "The worst kind."
Lysandre had started from a genuinely compassionate place, a person who could not reconcile humanity's capacity for selfishness and conflict with the beautiful world he believed was possible.
His solution was the one that people arrive at when compassion curdles into contempt: eliminate the problem at its source. Use the power of Xerneas and Yveltal to activate the Ultimate Weapon, wipe out the unworthy, and inherit a clean world. The logic of someone who had given up on people while still claiming to act for their benefit.
Lucien had lived long enough to recognize the pattern without difficulty.
The darker corners of the world had not disappeared simply because the League existed. Human nature was complex, and different people pursued incompatible visions of what the world should be.
The classic villains of the era had appeared in various forms: Giovanni in Kanto had built Team Rocket into something closer to a genuine criminal organization than what Lucien remembered from the records he had carried. In Hoenn, Team Aqua and Team Magma had formed along predictably extreme environmental lines, one focused on expanding land for human habitation, the other on ocean preservation, both willing to cause catastrophic damage in pursuit of goals they considered righteous.
Sinnoh had been different. Team Galactic's would-be leader, Cyrus, was currently running a sushi restaurant in Sunyshore City with a Rotom, living a life that appeared to suit him considerably better than the nihilistic path he had taken in another course of events.
Team Plasma in Unova had never materialized. Ghetsis's whereabouts were unknown. N had not appeared. The only figure associated with that organization who had surfaced was Colress, who had joined the Unova League as a researcher and was being received with the mixed feelings that accompanied most genuinely brilliant scientists.
Kalos, however, had proceeded more closely to the original course. Perhaps because Lucien had intervened less directly there. Lysandre and Team Flare had found records of the Ultimate Weapon in the Kalos League's historical archives and had begun working toward activating it.
"Should we step in and stop them?" AZ asked.
"No," Lucien said. "Let the young people handle their own affairs."
Beyond which, the Ultimate Weapon had already been completely destroyed — he and AZ had seen to that long ago. Whatever Lysandre found in the historical records, he would find no working weapon at the end of the search.
AZ nodded and said nothing more.
After a while, Lucien stood and left the inn.
He did not return to Lucien City. Instead, through Hoopa's ring, he traveled to the Eternal Forest.
The forest was where Xerneas slept.
Deep within the dense wood, in a clearing fragrant with flowers, a tree of great age stood in silence, as though it had fallen into a sleep without a designated end.
After Xerneas had shared eternal life with Lucien, it had fallen into a deep sleep and had not woken since. For the past two years, Lucien had visited regularly, sitting beside the ancient tree and telling it about the changes in the world, the way one might speak to someone who cannot reply but is present nonetheless.
Now Team Flare had begun moving. By his understanding of how things were likely to unfold, the day Xerneas awakened was approaching.
Lucien sat beside the tree and recounted the events of the past years quietly, until the sky had darkened and the stars had come out. Then he stood, said his farewell to Xerneas, and turned to go.
A voice came through his mind before he had taken a step.
"I see you, Lucien."
He stopped and turned back to the tree.
"Xerneas. You're awake."
"Just now," Xerneas's voice came. "My power has not fully recovered yet. I can only reach you this way for now."
"That's enough," Lucien said, and meant it.
Xerneas was quiet for a long moment, a faint ripple moving outward from the tree as though something vast was slowly sensing the world again after a long absence.
"Lucien," it said finally. "You did it. I can feel it. This world has changed."
"As I promised you and Kyurem," Lucien said softly.
The satisfaction that moved through Xerneas needed no expression. Its earlier decision with Zygarde, the gift it had given, had been right.
Outside the window, the sky over Lucien City had darkened fully, and the streetlights had come on one by one. Under the Unova League's long administration, the city moved through its evening with the unhurried ease of a place that had not known real conflict in a very long time.
Inside the inn, Lucien sat by the fireplace. Hoopa and Terapagos were curled on the cushion nearby, working through the last of the day's donuts with complete contentment. For those two, the world was in good order as long as they were beside Lucien and the supply of donuts remained adequate.
Lucien watched them and felt something shift in his chest.
Two thousand years had passed since his time. For Pokémon like Hoopa and Mew, whose lifespans approached infinity, two thousand years was a stretch of time they could hold without difficulty. For the ordinary Pokémon who had been beside him in the early year, Dragonite, Serperior, Volcarona — two thousand years was something else entirely.
He looked at the lit windows of the city outside and felt, for a moment, as though he had stepped back through time to the early days of Lucien City: standing on the castle grounds with Dragonite beside him, looking out at what they had built together.
Terapagos noticed the change in him. It crawled closer and looked up at him with those star-bright eyes.
Lucien reached down and lifted it.
"Are you thinking about Serperior and the others?" Hoopa asked carefully.
"Yes." Lucien put a hand on Hoopa's head.
Hoopa did not know what to say. It was quiet for a moment, which was rare. Then it straightened up beside him and said, with great conviction: "Terapagos, Mew, and Kyurem will always be with Lucien!"
"I know," Lucien said gently. "Thank you."
He closed his eyes, took a slow breath, and let the feeling pass through him without fighting it.
The important thing now was this: the peaceful life he and his Pokémon had made. Team Flare and Lysandre's obsessions were not his concern. The Ultimate Weapon was gone, and the power of Xerneas and Yveltal was not something that determined idealists could simply pick up and use on their own timeline. This world had its own momentum now.
Young Trainers would go on their journeys, face their own challenges, and protect the things they cared about. He and AZ had done what they came to do. What remained was simpler and better: keep the companions close, run the small shop, let the years pass in warmth.
"Lucien!" Hoopa held up a donut. "Eat this. It helps."
Lucien laughed and accepted it.
He could not argue with the results. The particular peace of a donut at the end of a long day was something that two thousand years of accumulated wisdom had not improved upon.
He sat with the firelight and Hoopa beside him and Terapagos settled in his lap, and looked out the window at the city lights, and felt the turbulence in him gradually subside.
Two thousand years of building and striving and loss and renewal — and here at the end of it was a warm room, and companions who had chosen to stay, and nothing that urgently needed him to be anything other than what he was.
He leaned back in the armchair and closed his eyes.
Hoopa curled into its empty donut box and went still.
Outside: the distant complications of Kalos, Ash somewhere on his journey, the slow turning of a world that no longer needed him to turn it. All of it kept out by the walls of this small inn.
Inside: just Lucien, the innkeeper. Nothing more, and nothing less.
"All right," he said to the Pokémon. "Time to sleep."
He felt the nostalgia for old friends move through him one more time, acknowledged it, and let it go.
"Tomorrow we go to Galar and visit Calyrex, Zacian, and Zamazenta."
Hoopa's eyes opened immediately. Its expression became the particular brightness of someone who has just remembered something they have been looking forward to.
"Yes!" Then, almost to itself: "I wonder if Zamazenta still remembers the kitchen."
The next morning, Lucien closed the Loving Home door quietly and stepped through Hoopa's ring.
Galar had changed beyond what maps could capture.
Thousands of years had passed since the days of Paty IV and Slumbering Town. Trainer culture flourished here now, and Dynamax battles had become the region's defining form of competition, beloved by Trainers across the world. Under Chairman Rose's Macro Cosmos Group, substantial investment had poured into the region's development, and Galar had become a serious contender for the most powerful and prosperous region in the world.
The current Champion, was considered the finest active Trainer alive, with a record that approached perfection.
And through all of it, Calyrex had never been forgotten. Chairman Rose had built the Power of Abundance into the very foundation of Galar's prosperity, honoring the King of Abundance as the region's protector and ensuring that the faith connecting the people to Calyrex had only grown deeper across the centuries.