The vast lake stretched endlessly in every direction, its azure waters still and glassy, reflecting Jacob's image like a perfect mirror.
Jacob stood quietly on the surface of the lake. He was not sinking — his heels pressed only about a centimeter into the water, as if the lake itself was holding him up. The surface was clean and clear, supporting his weight like solid ground, yet beneath it there was nothing. No Pokémon. No movement. No life at all.
Besides the blue water, the world felt empty.
He shifted his foot slightly. The moment he lifted it, ripples spread outward across the still surface, and droplets fell from his shoe, sending faint rings of water in every direction. It all looked real — felt real — and yet something about it made his skin crawl.
The entire Secret Realm felt wrong somehow.
Jacob looked toward the distance. There, rising above everything else, was the Dragon Spiral Tower. It was enormous, stretching so high into the sky that its top disappeared into the clouds. No matter how hard he looked, he could not see where it ended.
Only the body of the tower was visible — and it glowed with a deep emerald light that reflected off the lake below.
Jacob reached down and touched the Poké Ball at his hip. He pressed the button and released Metagross, watching the Steel- and Psychic-type Pokémon materialize with a low kreeee on the water beside him. Good. The Poké Ball worked normally. Jacob let out a quiet breath of relief.
He climbed onto Metagross's back and pointed him toward the tower.
Metagross surged forward at full speed, his massive body cutting through the air. The force of his movement churned the lake surface below, sending ripples fanning out in wide arcs behind them.
As they drew closer, the tower's shape came into sharper focus, and a heavy, ancient pressure settled over Jacob like a weight. It was not just the size of the tower. There was something deeper to it — something old.
Up close, he finally understood the source of that emerald glow. It was not the tower itself that was glowing. Thick vines and green branches had wrapped themselves all the way around the structure, twisting tightly up its body like a living shell, merging with the stone so completely that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
Around the base of the tower, dozens of stone pillars rose from the lake's surface, arranged in rows stretching out like a grand gateway. They were cylindrical and ancient, carved with symbols of lightning and electricity — perhaps old marks of Thunderbolt, or Spark, or something older still. Ideal and reality, lightning and flame, all bound together in stone.
But the pillars had not been spared by time. Many were cracked and worn, their surfaces crumbling and discolored. Some had broken apart entirely, their pieces floating on the still water.
Closer still, Jacob spotted a massive tree growing right at the base of the Dragon Spiral Tower. Its roots ran deep into the stone, and its enormous branches stretched upward, weaving through the tower's body and disappearing into the clouds along with it.
Leading to the tower's entrance was a path of flat stone plates laid across the water. On either side of the path stood more of the lightning pillars — though these, too, were dark and crumbling.
Jacob guided Metagross toward the beginning of the path.
The moment they got close, an invisible force crashed into them like a physical blow. It felt like Gravity — a crushing downward pressure that pressed on Jacob's chest and made it hard to breathe. Metagross lurched, his body tilting involuntarily as the force dragged him downward. They dropped fast, plummeting toward the lake's surface, and only when they were just above the water did the pressure finally ease.
Jacob's eyes narrowed as he stared at the tower ahead.
What was that?
"Metagross — try again," he said. "See if you can get into the air."
Metagross gathered his strength and pushed upward. He rose a few meters — then stopped. It was as if he had run into a wall. His body slowed sharply, like he was caught in quicksand, and then gravity yanked him back down to the surface.
Something near the Dragon Spiral Tower was preventing any Pokémon from flying. It was as if the tower itself had declared the skies forbidden.
Even Metagross, whose strength was on the level of a quasi-Champion, could not fight through it. He would have to walk.
Jacob stepped off Metagross's back and stood on the stone path. A quiet unease moved through him. He had faced strong Pokémon before — more than most trainers his age — but this was different. This was his first time standing at the threshold of a Legendary Pokémon's domain.
The strongest he had faced before was Cresselia. Her divine power had shaken him to his core, and he still had not forgotten what that felt like.
But Zekrom — the Dragon of Ideals — was something else entirely. It was safe to say Zekrom was far beyond Cresselia.
Two words rose in Jacob's mind: supreme power.
That was how the world described Legendary Pokémon of that tier. No detailed records, no battle data. Just that — supreme power. It was the only phrase anyone had ever managed to put to it.
Jacob drew a slow breath, looked down at the stone plate beneath his foot, and stepped forward.
BOOM.
Thunder cracked across the sky. The lightning pillars on both sides of the path lit up all at once — blazing to life from their crumbled, dark state, erupting with brilliant flashes of electricity that lit up the lake around him. The sound rolled over him in waves. The light was blinding.
Jacob flinched. His heart jumped.
Then, from across the lake, he heard voices. He turned his head and saw distant figures appearing at the far edge of the water. Several people. Maybe more.
They had followed him in. The Secret Realm Gate he had opened to reach this place had let others through as well, and now they were racing toward the tower.
"Someone's already there!"
"Move, quickly!"
Jacob turned back to the path, his expression tightening.
He could not afford to hesitate. Not now. He had worked too hard to get here. If he stalled, everything he had done to unlock this Secret Realm would end up being a gift to someone else.
He stepped forward again.
BOOM.
Every stone plate he touched set off the pillars beside it. Each step forward brought another flash of gold and white lightning shooting upward into the sky, one after another, like a line of torches being lit in sequence. It was almost as though the tower was greeting him — acknowledging each step he took.
Jacob kept moving.
He reached the end of the stone path. As his foot landed on the final plate, the sky above darkened all at once. Dark clouds rolled in from every direction, and a deep, unified crack of thunder shook the air.
The entire Dragon Spiral Tower erupted with golden lightning. The ancient tree wrapped around it blazed with light alongside it — every branch, every vine, every root glowing in the same blinding brilliance. The whole scene pulsed like something alive, like the tower itself was responding to his arrival.
Jacob stared at it for a long moment.
The entrance to the Dragon Spiral Tower stood before him — a swirling portal, dark and eerie, turning slowly in the air like a whirlpool. Before he could prepare himself, an enormous pulling force seized him and Metagross both. There was no resisting it. They were dragged straight into the portal.
BOOM.
The thunder snapped Jacob back to awareness. He blinked and looked around.
He was inside.
An open clearing stretched before him, ringed by stone walls. Light rain was falling from above, though there was no clear sky — just a misty grey ceiling from which the drops fell steadily. The ground was paved with flat stone plates carved with deep purple patterns. Bronze objects — old, weathered, their purpose unclear — were scattered across the area. Beyond the stone floor, tall weeds swayed quietly in the rain.
It did not feel like the inside of a tower. It felt like a separate place entirely.
A Secret Realm inside a Secret Realm?
Jacob had barely finished the thought when the ground gave a small shudder beneath him.
At the center of the circular clearing, a dimensional rift opened — tearing through the air slowly at first, then splitting wide apart.
Two Pokémon burst through it.
Jacob looked at them carefully, and the words from the records he had studied — the ones kept by the family that had documented this tower — came back to him immediately.
Bronzong and Claydol are the most devoted guardians of the Dragon of Ideals and Reality.