Cynthia
I watched him as he slowly walked away, and for the first time in my career as Champion, I felt the cool air of Sinnoh return.
The oxygen of the present, finally freed from displacement by the heavy draft of an ancient storm.
Most trainers I meet are open books—wide-eyed enthusiasts like Ash, or cold, ambitious tacticians like Paul.
But this man, Corvin, was a redacted scroll.
He moved with a heavy, mechanical motion that made Garchomp shift uneasily behind me. Her dorsal fin vibrated with a low-frequency hum, a instinctual warning it usually reserved for challenging opponents and arduous battles.
My analytical mind, usually so disciplined, was a frantic library.
I was pulling files on every archaic dialect and genealogical record I had ever studied. He didn't speak like a modern Sinnohan. He spoke with the cadence of someone…
…old.
Using phrasing that had been dead for a millennium.
He talked about the Pearl Clan wardens not like myths from a dusty, old textbook, but as neighbors whose specific herbal scents he still carried in his clothes.
Who are you? I wondered, my fingers tracing the edge of my black coat.
My gaze remained anchored to the entity floating at his hip.
Kishin.
To the crowd, it was just another mysterious Pokémon from a different region.
But in my eyes, a scholar of the world's ancient history, that was an impossibility.
I recognized it's species, and I knew what a modern Aegislash looked like; I'd seen them in Kalos's grand, historical exhibits. They were ornate, golden, and polished—regal blades meant for kings and ceremony.
But Kishin looked like a weapon of war.
The spirit was housed in a long, slightly curved katana of dark, folded steel. Its scabbard was a void-black obsidian, pitted and scarred by clashes that looked far more brutal than a sanctioned League match.
There was no sunburst cross-guard, only a pragmatic, heavy disc of tarnished golden steel designed to protect a hand in the chaos of a real skirmish.
Even the spectral cloth—the long, flowing tassels that acted as its arms—weren't the vibrant crimson and blues of its pre-evolutions, nor the royal purple of Kalos's Aegislash.
They were a deep, bruised purple, the color of a thunderclouds gathering over Spear Pillar.
As I watched, one of those tassels coiled lazily around the obsidian hilt, a gesture of possessive, bone-deep familiarity.
The central eye of the blade—a piercing, intelligent violet—didn't blink. It even didn't look at my Garchomp with the competitive fire of a modern Pokémon.
It studied us.
Staring with a cold, predatory assessment.
Calculating exactly which of the scales were the thinnest.
I realized, with a jolt of academic hunger, that I was looking at the prototype.
This was the original blade.
One that was forged in an era where "fainting" wasn't a concept. It was a tool of execution that stayed sharp while the world around it changed.
The way Corvin handled it was even more disturbing.
He didn't stand back and shout commands like the trainers I frequently fought. He kept his hand near the hilt, his thumb resting against the guard in a state of perpetual readiness.
They were synchronized.
It was a partnership of blood and steel—an ancient bond.
It was like he crawled out of the fragmented, forbidden scrolls of the Diamond and Pearl clans I spent my life researching.
This behavior reminded me of something I saw mentioned in the letters of a clan leader.
"He called me a 'descendant,'" I mused, my heart slightly hammering against my ribs. "He looked at me and saw the face of Madam Cogita."
"He also looked at you in familiarity… and disgust, Garchomp. Do you think he saw the shadow of someone else?"
"Gar?"
I burst with a soft laugh as Garchomp scratched her head with a claw, confused by her relevance to the situation.
"Nevermind."
My eyes dropped to the ground as my finger rested on my chin, my thoughts spiraling deeper.
I remembered my own family's oral histories—the stories of a woman who sat in the ruins, waiting for a hero who fell from the sky. One who never came.
I remembered a mention of another hero. A man who united the clans against the dangers of the world. How he had paved a path for humans in an era ruled by Pokemon.
The legend of his meeting and befriending of the Nobles and his mythical battle a being Almighty, one revered across the fabric of space and time.
The Ancient Hero.
But there was no stories of a soldier who carried an Aegislash. In fact, there was no references to soldiers wielding katanas, at all.
People of the past took up spears and bows, relying on the range that came with the weapons to keep them safe from the rampant attacks of aggressive Alpha Pokémon.
Distance was survival.
Ugh. How convenient. I thought, watching his retreating back.
As Corvin turned his body slightly, I could see the area on his chest slightly glow a brilliant, haunting violet through the gaps in his bandages.
I physically jolted.
My scrolls and scripts had spoken of that light.
It was the color of the Distortion World.
"You aren't from here," I whispered to the empty air as he disappeared around a bend in the ruins. "You might not even be from this time."
My grin grew.
The words of that mural—All lives touch other lives, to create something new and alive—took on a terrifyingly literal meaning.
If this man truly was a remnant of ancient Hisui, then his presence marked the birth of something the modern world was utterly unprepared for.
He had looked at Paul, a prodigy of this era, and called him an idiot.
He looked at me and seen a lorekeeper.
He was measuring us against the brutal yardstick of the past… and found us lacking.
Garchomp nudged my arm, sensing my rising frenzy. I reached out, my hand resting on the her rough skin, but my mind was still on the dark, curved blade of that Aegislash.
Corvin hadn't just admonished Paul.
He had totally dismantled his pride.
He's not a trainer.
A sudden urge rose in me—to follow him, to demand answers, to uncover the secrets I had spent my life chasing.
But I stopped myself.
A man like that—a shadow—wouldn't be caught by direct pursuit if he didn't want to be found.
"He wants a battle," I reminded myself, a small, fervent smile touching my lips. "He waiting for an answer."
I looked up at the darkening sky, toward the peak of Mt. Coronet. For the first time in my life, the myths felt less like stories… and more like warnings.
If a blade of Hisui had returned, then the world was surely waking up.
"You better be ready, Corvin," I promised the silence. "I'll show you that the future still knows how to swing a sword."