The sea between regions didn't look like water.
It looked like skin.
Teal-green, veined with pulsing bioluminescence, rippling with slow, breath-like tides. The shore of Region 2 rose not as sand, but as interlocking plates of hardened bark—like the carapace of some slumbering leviathan.
Teo stepped onto it, Lucario at his side, and immediately felt it:
Watching.
Not hostile. Not curious.
Judging.
[ REGION 2 DETECTED: "THE VERDANT MAW" ]
[ ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: SENTIENT FLORA — AURA-REACTIVE ]
[ WARNING: AGGRESSION WILL TRIGGER COUNTERMEASURES ]
Yumi knelt, placing a hand on the bark-shore. Her new sapling, Bathala, glowed faintly in her satchel. She signed: It's alive. The whole region.
Rin, now wearing scavenged Conclave armor stripped of its sigils, scanned the horizon. "No cities. No roads. Just… forest."
And what a forest.
Trees taller than skyscrapers, their canopies woven into a single, undulating ceiling. Vines thicker than subway tunnels coiled around trunks embedded with fossilized bones—Dragonite, Salamence, even Rayquaza vertebrae fused into living wood. The air hummed with the low drone of a thousand wings and the distant murmur of… voices?
"Storms talk here," Rin said, remembering Conclave archives. "Not metaphorically. The thunder speaks. The wind argues."
Teo's left eye—still grayscale, but now permanently synced with Lucario's perception—saw more.
Every tree pulsed with aura. Not just life. Memory.
This forest wasn't just alive.
It was remembering.
They hadn't come alone.
Word of the Obsidian Spire's fall had spread like spores on the wind. Survivors followed. Not armies. Not refugees. Witnesses.
A dozen now walked behind them—former acolytes, freed Pokémon, even a scarred Scrafty who'd fought Scorchclaws alongside them. They didn't speak. They just followed.
Because Teo and Lucario had done the impossible.
They'd proven that bonds could be defended.
Now, they sought the source of the next threat: The Transcendence Doctrine.
Their first clue came three days in.
They found a village.
Not ruined.
Erased.
Huts of woven bark stood intact—but empty. No bodies. No blood. Just… absence.
And in the center of the village square, a single human figure knelt, back turned, hands pressed to the earth.
Teo approached slowly. "Hello?"
The figure turned.
Teo froze.
It was a man—mid-thirties, Southeast Asian features, wearing tattered fatigues. His skin was mottled with green scales along his spine. His eyes glowed faintly amber.
But his face…
Teo knew it.
From news clips. From old BPO team photos.
"Jomar?"
The man blinked. Recognition flickered—then pain. "Teo? Mateo Dela Cruz? You… you made it out?"
Jomar had been his shift supervisor at the call center. A quiet man who always brought extra kakanin during graveyard shifts.
"What happened to you?" Teo asked, voice tight.
Jomar laughed—a dry, broken sound. "They called it 'Ascension.'" He tapped his scaled spine. "Garchomp DNA. Spliced into human bone marrow. They said we'd become protectors. Living shields for the new world."
He looked at the empty huts. "Instead, we became predators."
He stood, swaying slightly. "I was the first success. Subject Zero. But when they activated my Haki… I felt everything. The villagers' fear. Their love for each other. And I… I couldn't stop myself."
His voice cracked. "I didn't kill them. The forest did. It consumed them to stop me."
Teo's blood ran cold. "The Ascension Cult did this?"
Jomar nodded. "They're in the Heartwood Citadel—deep in the Maw. Building an army of us. Humans fused with Pokémon DNA. No Poké Balls. No bonds. Just… power."
He looked at Lucario, then at Teo. "You still carry yours. Your bond."
He smiled sadly. "I envy you."
Then he collapsed.
Not from injury.
From choice.
His body dissolved into emerald mist, absorbed by the roots beneath him.
The forest accepted his penance.
[ STATUS: JOMAR — DECEASED ]
[ FINAL ACT: NEURAL DATA PURGED — PREVENTS CULT RETRIEVAL ]
Teo knelt where he'd stood, fists clenched.
This wasn't just experimentation.
It was sacrilege.
The Cult wasn't replacing Pokémon.
They were erasing the need for them.
And they'd started with people like Jomar—people just trying to survive.
That night, under a canopy that blocked out the seven moons, Yumi brewed a tea from Bathala's leaves.
As Teo drank, his aura-vision shifted.
For the first time, he saw color.
Not full spectrum.
But hues—faint blues, greens, golds—overlaying the grayscale.
[ BATHALA SYMBIOSIS INITIATED — TEMPORARY AURA ENHANCEMENT ]
[ EFFECT: EMOTIONAL RESONANCE DETECTED IN ENVIRONMENT ]
He looked at Lucario—and saw not just aura, but intent.
At Yumi—and saw grief, shaped like a tree.
At Rin—and saw resolve, sharp as a blade.
The forest wasn't just alive.
It was feeling.
And it was afraid.
At dawn, the storm spoke.
Not in words.
In pressure.
The wind dropped. The leaves stilled. Then—a voice like thunder wrapped in velvet echoed through the canopy:
"THE FANGED ONES DIG IN THE HEARTWOOD. THEY SEEK TO REPLACE THE SONG WITH SCREAMS."
Rin gasped. "It knows about the Cult."
Yumi signed urgently: It's warning us.
Teo stood, Lucario rising with him, movements perfectly mirrored.
"We go to the Heartwood Citadel," he said. "Not to destroy. To witness."
Because now he understood.
The Ascension Cult wasn't just building weapons.
They were silencing the world's memory.
And Teo—bonded, broken, human—was the only one who could make it remember again.
As they marched deeper into the Maw, Bathala's sapling bloomed a single white flower in Yumi's satchel.
Its petals glowed with the faces of the lost.
And the forest watched.
And waited.