Goldenrod was louder than he remembered.
The trains hissed against the rails like old dragons. Neon signage pulsed above the marketplace. The crowd flowed around Kael like riverwater, voices overlapping — but none of them spoke his name.
Still… some of them looked twice.
Not at him.
At Echo.
She walked beside him, fur shimmering faintly with the glyphs she'd carried out of the orchard. A few children paused to stare — one even whispered, "Is that a Sylveon?" — though she looked nothing like one.
Echo didn't flinch beneath their gaze.
She was becoming used to it.
So was Kael.
They stayed in a hostel above a stationery shop.
The owner didn't ask for Kael's League ID. Just handed him the key and said:
"You've come a long way. The paper remembers the hand before the ink."
Kael didn't ask what that meant.
Because he understood it.
The next morning, they walked toward the southern end of the city, where the buildings curved in strange angles. There, between two disused trams and an old radio tower, stood a narrow building made of unfinished stone and glass.
The plaque above the door read:
The Archive of Could-Have-Beens
Founded by those who chose to listen.
Kael stared at it.
Echo stared too.
"You didn't build this," she said.
"No," Kael whispered. "But someone did."
Inside, the air smelled of woodsmoke and pressed ink.
Not books.
Stories.
Not shelves.
Shelters.
Each alcove was built around a central object — a ribbon, a Pokégear, a crumpled letter — and beside each one was a written account of a life that never quite happened.
A page of someone's mother who almost became a Gym Leader.
A poem from a girl who nearly caught a legendary but gave up to raise her brother.
A Pokédex entry scratched in unfamiliar handwriting:
Name: Kael?
Type: Memory / Voice
Height: Not yet known
Location: Everywhere I almost was
Kael stepped deeper into the archive.
And someone met him at the far wall.
A man in a navy vest, hair like thunderclouds, eyes tired in the way people's eyes get when they've read too many lives.
He didn't smile.
But he didn't blink, either.
"You're later than we expected," he said.
Kael studied him. "You knew I was coming?"
"We didn't know you would," the man said. "But we built this in case you had."
He turned and walked toward a side corridor. "Come. There's something we want to show you."
The room he led them into was smaller.
Circular.
At the center: a table carved from petrified wood. On it, seven books sat closed — each bound in different materials.
Kael recognized none of them.
"Stories?" he asked.
"Attempts," the man said. "Versions of what happened when others tried to carry what you did."
Kael frowned. "You mean there were others?"
"No," the man said. "I mean there were attempts to make you."
Echo stiffened.
Kael blinked.
"…What?"
The man gestured to the books.
"They weren't named Kael. They weren't you. But they were dreamed of."
He opened the first book.
Inside: a sketch. A young trainer with a cloak stitched with eyes.
"A child named Aren," he said. "The monks dreamed him in place of you once. But he burned out too early."
He opened the second.
"Naela. She made it as far as Veilpoint. Then she forgot she had ever begun."
The third was blank.
"Some never even get a page."
Kael stepped back.
"So this archive…"
"…is where we remember them," the man finished. "The ones who could have been. The ones who almost were."
He looked at Kael.
"But you didn't almost. You did. And because you did, the world started remembering differently."
Echo approached the table.
"Why tell us this now?"
The man turned a final page.
Inside was a blank book.
Its cover shimmered like the Hollowing Sea.
"Because someone's about to forget you."
Kael's heart slowed. "Who?"
"We don't know," the man said. "But something's beginning to rewrite you — not just in dreams."
He slid the blank book forward.
"This was your story. But it stopped writing three days ago."
Kael touched the pages.
Cold.
Empty.
Waiting.
"I haven't stopped walking," he said.
"No," the man replied. "But someone stopped watching. And now the story's dimming."
Echo stepped closer. "They're unmaking him."
"No," the man said. "They're trying. But they haven't succeeded."
Kael's voice was steady.
"Then what do I do?"
The man looked him in the eye.
"You write louder."
Kael left the archive at dusk with the blank book in his arms and the city buzzing around him like a dream on repeat.
He didn't speak until they were halfway across a rusted footbridge above the trainyard.
Then he said:
"We're not at the end, are we?"
Echo looked up at him.
"No," she said. "You're not even close."
That night, Kael opened the blank book.
He turned to the first page.
And he began to write again.
Not to be remembered.
Not to preserve.
But to make room for the things still becoming.