Aiden had stayed in Thistira for four days. Four whole days. Long enough for his clothes to lose the smell of road dust and faint blood. Long enough to learn the names of three children who played near the river, to memorize the rhythm of the baker's morning whistle, and to recognize the chirrups of the Swablu nesting in the clinic's rooftop trellis.
It was hard to leave a place that gave without asking anything in return.
The town's hospital—though not branded with the clinical gleam of a Pokémon Center—had become his shelter. Nurse Elira, silver-haired and soft-spoken, had offered him a spare room upstairs on his first night. No charge. "You and your Pokémon need peace more than payment," she'd said, brushing off his awkward protest.
The room was small: a futon, a window that overlooked the river path, a single shelf that held pressed flowers in a clay vase. Yet it felt more like home than any inn he'd paid for in years.
Each morning, he'd wake to the scent of herbs being steeped downstairs, the low rustle of Roselia's vines trailing across the windowsill as she greeted the sun. Each evening, he'd descend to the main room where injured locals sat beside their Pokémon, all tended to with equal care—no hierarchy of species, no rush. Just healing.
On the second day, he'd found himself helping Nurse Elira mix poultices. On the third, he'd read aloud to an old man with failing sight while Riolu sat curled in his lap. By the fourth, he no longer felt like a traveler passing through.
He felt like someone the valley was trying to keep.
But valleys, no matter how sacred, could not hold forever those fated to climb.
And Mt. Thorne waited.
On the morning of his departure, the sky was a canvas of faded gold and wind-swept clouds. It looked like the kind of morning Celebi might walk through without leaving footprints.
Aiden packed his bag slowly, with a kind of reverence. Not for the items, but for the silence between each movement.
Downstairs, Elira brewed him one final tea. "You'll need this before the ascent," she said, handing him a flask of warming root infusion. "It keeps the cold from your bones. At least for a while."
Roselia nestled in the crook of his arm as he said goodbye to the longhouse's other residents. A young girl pressed a sprig of dried lavender into his palm. An older boy saluted Riolu and called him a "little monk." Even Golbat, now strong enough to fly again, nuzzled gently against the clinic rafters before flitting into his Pokéball.
They didn't make a scene. That was the Thistiran way—kindness without spectacle.
Nurse Elira walked him to the town's edge, past berry trees heavy with spring's promise, past windchimes made of bone and bell and silver leaf.
"Do you remember what the old woman told you?" she asked as they paused beside the final post. The bell. The charm that marked a traveler's leave.
Aiden nodded. "Celebi protects the land."
"No," she said softly. "Celebi reminds the land how to protect itself. The kindness here is not magic—it is choice, practiced every day."
Aiden stared out at the path ahead. "I'm afraid I'll lose that. Out there."
"You won't," she said. "You've carried something heavier than memory. You've let the peace settle in. Keep it. Let it sharpen you, not soften you."
They exchanged no further words.
He rang the bell once—clear and high—and stepped beyond the last tree of Brambleshade's southern edge.
He released only Sneasel beside him. The others remained in their Pokéballs—not hidden, but resting. Not every place needed a parade.
Sneasel walked with the ghost-silent tread it had mastered long ago, eyes scanning not for threat, but for movement, rhythm, patterns in the brush. Aiden felt its mind at work beside him, and took comfort in it.
The first stretch was easy. Grasslands woven with the breath of early summer, dotted with wild amberroot and buzzing Cutiefly. The trail was well-worn but untamed, broken in by pilgrims, not machines.
Midway through the morning, he paused beside a dry streambed. Something rustled in the tall reeds. A flicker of black fur.
A wild Poochyena stepped out—small, alert, tail raised high. Behind it, two younger ones nosed through the weeds.
Aiden didn't move. Sneasel waited, claws flexing slightly but without aggression.
He knelt, slowly, and withdrew a small berry from his pack. Rolled it toward them across the dust.
The Poochyena watched him. Then, carefully, it took the offering and vanished again.
"Even here," he murmured, "the valley's touch lingers."
It was near midday when he reached the first bluff—a red-rock ledge that overlooked the sloping burnlands that would lead him to Mt. Thorne's southern foot. There, he found a traveler.
A man, younger than him, clad in a woven cloak and holding a sketchpad. He was drawing a roost of Staravia along a branch ridge.
He looked up as Aiden approached. "Climber?"
"Heading to Florecial. You?"
"Just mapping nests. Want a quick match before the mountain?"
Aiden considered. Then smiled.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's stretch the muscles."
The stranger called his Pokémon with a practiced flick. "Let's go, Graveler!"
The heavy-bodied creature slammed into place, rocks shifting underfoot.
Aiden didn't hesitate. "Ponyta."
The Fire-type burst from her Pokéball in a ring of heat and steam. Her mane blazed, brighter than before.
"Graveler, Rollout!"
Aiden held firm. "Agility, then pivot. Flame Wheel."
Ponyta shimmered like a mirage, weaving around the tumbling rock-body, then spun into flame. Her hooves barely touched the ground as she circled wide, then struck.
"Double Kick—legs low."
Two clean strikes. The Graveler stumbled, rolled, righted itself.
"Now," Aiden whispered. "Push the rhythm. Flame Charge."
Ponyta screamed down the bluff like a wildfire given form. Her mane extended behind her like a comet's tail. When she struck, the flame that followed didn't just scorch—it shaped itself. Controlled fury.
The Graveler collapsed.
"Whoa," the man said, sketchpad half-forgotten. "That Flame Charge... she didn't just learn it. She claimed it."
"She needed it," Aiden said. "To climb."
They parted ways with a handshake. The man promised to send a copy of the sketch to the Thistira hospital, "for the rafters."
By late afternoon, the trail turned harder. Pebbled switchbacks. Shadowed cliffs where Golbat might have nested once. He kept Roselia at hand now, occasionally letting her out to scent the air. Once, they found a crushed Oran shell and a Scyther track.
Still, the forest was oddly still.
Sneasel paused once, ears flicking.
From above—a shimmer of green.
Not wind. Not bird.
Light.
Familiar.
Then gone.
He didn't speak of it. Not even to himself.
Near the mountain's base, the world changed again. The wind lost its warmth. The trees thinned and took on a silver sheen. The soil grew dry, yet somehow still smelled of root and life.
He crossed a final bend and saw it:
Mt. Thorne.
A fortress of stone, ribs of granite exposed like old bones. Clouds clung to its middle like an unfinished cloak. Somewhere behind it, nestled on the far side, was Florecial Town—the place he'd chased for weeks.
He'd arrived at the foot of something sacred. Something tested by centuries of travelers. Some failed. Some returned different. Some never returned at all.
He could feel his team's weight—not in the bag, but in the air.
Riolu, learning still how to breathe with the rhythm of the world.Golbat, now disciplined enough to fly without frenzy.Roselia, stronger than her evolution implied, radiant in restraint.Ponyta, whose fire now obeyed her more than instinct.And Sneasel, always beside him—never ahead, never behind.
He set camp just short of the mountain's rise, beneath an overhang of flint.
Not out of fear.
Out of respect.
He warmed the last of Elira's tea by a small fire and fed each Pokémon in turn. Let them stretch. Let them settle. Then recalled all but Sneasel, who curled beside the coals.
Above them, the stars blinked through the thinning mist.
Tomorrow would be the climb.
Tomorrow, the last silence would break.
But tonight, just for one more breath of peace, he sat with the memory of Thistira in his chest—
—and a green shimmer lingering at the edge of his dreams.