[ SYSTEM: SYNCHRONIZING MEMORY DATA... ]
Suddenly, Enzo wasn't Enzo.
He was cold. He was metallic. He was a consciousness floating in the vacuum of deep space.
He was seeing through the eyes of Deoxys.
There was no sound. Only the infinite silence of the universe. But Deoxys wasn't alone.
The space ahead of him trembled. Not like an earthquake, but like reality itself was bowing its head.
A light shone in the darkness. It wasn't a star. It was a form. White skin. Golden hooves. A magnificent, glowing wheel of light circling its torso, looking like it held the physics of the universe together.
The Authority.(Arceus)
Enzo felt the instinctive terror of a mortal standing before a God. But Deoxys' mind felt no fear; it only registered a command. A new law being written into its core.
"Observe," the voice echoed. It wasn't sound; it was gravity.
The vision shifted. The Authority was showing him an image. A threat.
A tear appeared in the fabric of reality. A parallel dimension where logic didn't exist. And inside that distortion, a massive shadow rose.
The Distortion.
Enzo understood instantly. The Authority was showing him the enemy. The Distortion didn't want to conquer the world. It wanted to undo it. It wanted to turn order back into chaos.
"It seeks a path to enter," the instruction echoed. "It seeks to rewrite history."
Then, a second image appeared. Smaller. Closer. This wasn't in another dimension. It was already on Earth.
A dark stain moving through the sleeping cities below. A figure made of living nightmare, with a jagged red collar and black smoke where its legs should be.
The Nightmare.
"The Scout," Deoxys' mind classified. "The one who infects the dreamscape so the Distortion can enter without resistance."
Enzo felt the plan forming in the alien's mind. Something was the army. Darkrai was the spy. Darkrai was softening the world, corrupting the collective unconscious to prepare humanity for the collapse.
And then, the "Authority" turned its divine gaze back to Deoxys—and by extension, to Enzo.
"Choose one," the light ordered. "One who can contradict the fate."
Deoxys' mind began to scan the planet below. It wasn't looking for the strongest trainer. It wasn't looking for the fastest. It was looking for an anomaly. Someone who didn't fit the pattern. A glitch in the system.
It found Enzo.
The final piece of information came as a practical warning, a weapon handed over before a war:
The vision collapsed. The vacuum vanished.
Enzo gasped, waking up in the hotel room in Cerulean as if he had just drowned. Sweat poured down his face. His head throbbed with the sheer weight of the information.
He hadn't just watched a movie. He had received a direct mission from the "God" of this world.
He looked down at his hand. The item [ Memory of Deoxys ] was gone, absorbed by the System.
[ SYSTEM UPDATE — NEW PROTOCOL INSTALLED ]
Protocol: NIGHTMARE RESIDUE DETECTION
Function: Identify individuals exposed to Darkrai influence.
Status: ACTIVE
Enzo pushed himself upright. His legs didn't want to cooperate—weak, jittery, like his body was still catching up to what his mind had just survived.
He crossed the room and stopped at the window. Cerulean lay below, dark and quiet, lights scattered along the canals like nothing in the city had changed.
But something had.
"Darkrai…" he whispered, not to the room, but to the idea of it—an enemy that didn't need to show its face to win.
And the thought settled into place with a cold clarity.
The System wasn't here to make him stronger.
It was here to prepare him—for the real war that was coming.