I didn't lower my guard.
Experience was a cruel teacher, and the lessons of the Hisuian wilds were etched into my soul with the permanence of a scar. In my world, a child standing deep in the woods with a Pokémon was often more lethal than a seasoned bandit with a rusted blade. My hand hovered inches from Kishin's hilt, prepared to draw him if needed.
Beneath the makeshift layers of my tunic, the purple light from the Rift-Eye in my chest began to bleed through the linen bandages, casting long, flickering shadows against the gnarled bark of the trees.
"Names first," I commanded, my cracking voice came out as a warning rasp. "Identify yourselves before I decide if you're a threat."
The boy in the red cap didn't flinch. Instead, he blinked, his initial terror giving way to a stubborn, reckless curiosity. A look I had seen far too often in the eyes of the Diamond Clan's youth before they did something incredibly brave—or incredibly stupid. He stood his ground with a defiance that felt naive, while his Pikachu crouched low, its yellow fur rippling as arcs of white electricity crackled through the air, with the smell of scorched ozone.
"I'm Ash Ketchum, from Pallet Town," he said, puffing out his chest slightly. "And this is my partner, Pikachu!"
"I'm Dawn," the girl added. Her voice was thin, vibrating with a visible tremor, but she kept her eyes locked on mine. "And this is Brock. We're just travelers, okay? We saw the lightning strike the forest from the trail and came to see if someone was hurt. We didn't come here for a fight."
The names were hollow echoes. Pallet Town? I searched my memory, scouring the maps Professor Laventon had painstakingly drawn of the Obsidian Fieldlands, the Cobalt Coastlands, and the Alabaster Icelands. I knew of no such settlement in the sovereign territories of Hisui. I took a slow, deliberate breath, feeling the silver-stitched muscle of my heart thrumming with an alien rhythm.
"Corvin," I said, the name feeling heavy on my tongue. "I'm Corvin of the Galaxy Expedition Team's Survey Corps Division, operating under direct jurisdiction of Professor Laventon."
I watched their faces with the intensity of a hawk, looking for a flicker of recognition, a sign that the Survey Corps still patrolled these borders or that the Galaxy Team's mandate was still the law of the land.
Instead, I was met with nothing but blank, uncomprehending stares. It was as if I had just claimed to be an officer of the heavens themselves, or a ghost haunting a world that had moved on from its nightmares.
"Galaxy Expedition Team?" Brock muttered, his brow furrowing as he shifted the weight of his massive rucksack. He looked at the others, sharing their expression of deep confusion. "I've never heard of an organization by that name. It... sounds historical. Like something out of the old legends of the Sinnoh colonization period or from a dusty textbook."
My grip tightened on my forearm, my fingernails digging into the skin. Legends? The word struck like a physical blow. I looked past them, my eyes narrowing as I scanned the thicket and the shifting shadows of the trees for the rest of their party.
In Hisui, no child—no matter how talented or headstrong—would ever be permitted this deep into a wilderness known for its Alphas without a full escort of Security Corps soldiers, or at least the protection of a high-ranking Warden.
"Where are your parents?" I asked, my voice dropping an octave as I looked for the hidden guards I assumed were waiting in the brush. "Who allows children to wander the forest alone? Where is your escort? Your security?"
Ash stood frozen, staring at me as if I had just spoken in a foreign language. "Escort? Parents?" he echoed, his brow furrowed, his confusion turning into genuine bewilderment. "We're on a journey! I'm competing in the Sinnoh League, and we've been traveling across the whole region for months! We don't need parents to watch over us to walk through the woods. We're Trainers!"
"A journey… a League… Trainer?" I repeated the words, my tongue struggling to shape the unfamiliar syllables. They felt like a foreign curse, a mockery of the daily struggle for survival I had known my entire life.
To survive in Hisui was to earn every breath through blood and sweat; to hear it spoken of as a game made my blood boil. "You wander these untamed wilds for… for sport?!" I hissed, a sliver of venom in my tone.
My gaze drifted down to the Pikachu. In my time, a creature of its kind was a skittish, but erratic bolt of lightning—a dangerous pest whose fur was matted with mud and whose body was lean and corded with muscle from the constant, desperate struggle to avoid being devoured by larger predators.
But this one was different, a grotesque parody. It was well-fed, its yellow fur groomed to a soft sheen, entirely devoid of the jagged scars, the mangy patches, or the scent of fear that defined a wild beast. It was a fighter, certainly—I could see the spark of combat readiness in its stance—but it was a fighter that knew the luxury of a full belly and a warm place to sleep. A creature reduced to nothing but a pet.
I looked at my own hands that were shaking with a seething tremor I couldn't fully suppress. They were a reminder of a much darker world, stained with the dried, metallic silver of a god's blood and the clinging, oily soot of the void. The contrast between our existences was sickening. The boy standing before me had eyes that didn't just sparkle; they blazed with a fiery passion and excitement, a terrifying innocence. He was a soul either lucky enough to have bypassed every single horror of reality, or one so profoundly ignorant that the world had simply decided to be kind to him.
The gap between us wasn't just a distance—it was a chasm of centuries that no bridge could ever hope to cross. Our lives, our very definitions of 'living,' were too different, too disparate. To him, the world was just a massive playground, one where decisions had no consequences and dreams came true.
"This is not the world I left," I whispered, the realization hitting me with more force than the fall from the sky. My voice was a hollow rattle, intended more for the ghosts of my fallen comrades than the children of this bright, alien future. "This isn't Hisui. The world… my world is gone."
My breathing hitched, coming in shallow, jagged bursts as the atmosphere of this 'Sinnoh' felt too unnatural, too heavy for my lungs to process. The drumming of my heartbeat, once a steady rhythm, began to boom in my ears like the war drums of the Diamond Clan, shaking my very frame.
Before I could demand another answer, the silver rift carved over my heart gave a violent, agonizing spasm. It felt as though Giratina's cold iron spear was being driven through my sternum all over again, the metal freezing and burning me simultaneously.
The violet light flared with blinding intensity, spilling out from between the cracks in my bandages and illuminating the trees in a sickly, pulsating glow. The air in the clearing suddenly reeked—a suffocating mixture of high-voltage ozone, burnt fabric, and the ancient, nauseating scent of death.
My vision fractured. The world broke apart into a thousand jagged shards of gold and obsidian, spinning in a kaleidoscope of sensory overload. The ground beneath my boots felt like it was liquefying, turning into the same stagnant pools of the Distortion World.
"Corvin! Hey! Stay with us! Brock, do something!" Ash's voice reached me, but it sounded muffled and distorted, as if he were shouting at me from the bottom of a deep, dark well or through a thick, suffocating wall of freezing water.
The strength left my legs as I collapsed, my bones felt as if they turned to ash. The world tilted as my consciousness slipped into the darkness. The soft earth of the future rising up to claim me.