Lavender Town didn't stir.
Even as the sun rose above the jagged rooftops, even as the fog began to lift, no one emerged from their homes.
Doors remained shut. Curtains closed. Silence deeper than night sat over the streets.
And underground…
The real story began to stir.
Beneath Pokémon Tower, deep below where the floors were supposed to end, Skylar and Misty moved slowly through a descending corridor now revealed behind a fractured wall of stone and glyphs.
Their breaths came cold in their chests.
The tunnel pulsed faintly—not with light, but with something worse.
Memory. Regret. Fear.
Even Gardevoir trembled.
The stairs ended in a wide circular chamber. Its stonework was old—far older than the tower above.
In the center, cracked and humming with strange energy, stood a black obelisk, covered in runes.
Misty whispered, "It looks… like the one under Mt. Moon."
Skylar nodded slowly. "But this one isn't just alien."
He stepped closer.
Etched near the base of the obelisk was a symbol he hadn't seen before: a crescent moon pierced by chains.
"This wasn't built by the invaders," Gardevoir said, her voice quiet in their minds."This was built to hold something."
The runes along the floor flickered once—
And then shattered.
A thunderous pulse of dark energy cracked the air.
The obelisk's top split.
And from within the shadows, a shape emerged.
It didn't roar.
It didn't speak.
It simply shook the ground with its presence.
Darkrai.
But not the silent guardian of dreams spoken of in myths.
This one twitched, wrapped in writhing shadows that weren't its own. Its body flickered in and out of focus—almost glitching, like broken data.
Its single blue eye—once calm—burned red with fury.
Misty gasped. "Skylar… he's not in control."
Darkrai hovered higher, shadows peeling off of him like smoke.
And then he attacked.
—
A lance of darkness fired straight at them.
Gardevoir launched a shield of psychic force just in time.
Skylar dove to the left.
"Don't retaliate yet!" he shouted. "He's not fully gone!"
Another blast of nightmare energy surged toward Misty. Starmie intercepted it with a spinning light burst, deflecting it into the wall.
The corrupted energy scorched the stone like acid.
Skylar grit his teeth. "Gardevoir—Psychic pressure only. Push him back, don't break him!"
Gardevoir nodded, floating upward, arms aglow.
But Darkrai shrieked—a sound like a hundred voices whispering at once—and lashed out again.
Misty reached Skylar. "We need to know what we're dealing with!"
They dove behind the remains of a collapsed statue.
Skylar's fingers brushed ancient carvings on the base.
His eyes widened.
They weren't random.
They told a story.
—
Long ago, a powerful trainer—his name lost to time—defeated a raging Darkrai that had filled the region with eternal nightmares.
But the trainer did not destroy him.
He built a tower on top of the weakened Pokémon and used his aura, along with ancient glyphs, to seal Darkrai beneath it.
The people were told it was a tower for remembrance.But it was a tower for containment.
Skylar looked up, voice trembling.
—"They feared him."
Misty stared at Darkrai, still battling Gardevoir's pressure midair. "They feared his power so much… they sealed him alive."
—
Gardevoir grunted—Darkrai was resisting, violently now. Not just lashing out, but desperate. A corrupted scream echoed through the chamber as he staggered, his own energy crashing back into him.
Skylar closed his eyes.
Reached for the aura around him.
And this time… he felt it.
A second presence.
Buried deeper within Darkrai's aura.
A smaller voice.
Scared.
Trapped.
—"He's still in there," Skylar whispered. "The real Darkrai."
Misty's eyes locked with his. "Then that thing wrapped around him—"
Skylar finished, "It's the corruption. From the meteorite. From the same place as Mt. Moon."
They both looked at the dark obelisk, which pulsed faintly behind Darkrai, still leaking sickly light into the room.
Misty's voice lowered. "Then the seal didn't just break… it was infected."
—
Suddenly—
The shadows surrounding Darkrai twitched.
Twisted.
Then reached outward—and attached themselves to the wall.
Eyes opened along the cracks in the stone.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
And from them, shapes began to crawl.
Alien Pokémon. Corrupted. Like those in Mt. Moon.
Skylar stood.
—"No more running."
He reached for his Key Stone.
—"Misty, we save Darkrai, or we lose this town."
Gardevoir returned to his side.
Starmie hovered higher, glowing brighter.
Arcanine leapt from his Poké Ball in a flash, landing with a roar.
Misty stood beside him.
She extended her hand.
—"Together."
Skylar smiled.
And as the walls screamed and the corrupted Pokémon charged—
They launched into battle.