Kairos instinctively braced for a fight.
But the looks he was getting weren't hostile. No malice, no aggression. What he saw instead was curiosity, surprise, and in some faces, something that looked almost like excitement.
Whispers started moving through the crowd.
"Wait, is that actually a newcomer?"
"Someone can still get in these days?"
"Who is this guy? I've never seen him before."
"Wasn't the Dragon Bro asleep? How did he just let someone through?"
"Seriously, it's been forever since we've seen a new face."
They were watching him the way people watch a rare animal that's just wandered into town.
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
So his instincts had been right. These people had full freedom of movement, no signs of being controlled, no invisible leash. They were going about their lives, and the arrival of a newcomer seemed to be less of a crisis and more of a curiosity, maybe even entertainment. That was nothing like the picture Marshadow had painted.
He'd just opened his mouth to ask what was going on when the crowd shifted on its own, splitting down the middle to clear a path.
A tall, lean young man stepped through and walked straight up to him.
He looked to be in his early twenties, with golden hair that moved lightly in the breeze and an easy smile that said he wasn't in a hurry about anything. His clothes were simple but well-made, white and casual, and he was holding some kind of red fruit, mid-bite.
He looked young. But his eyes didn't match. There was something in them, a kind of depth that came from living a long time and going through things that leave a mark. Like someone who'd seen decades more than his face let on.
Young on the outside. Ancient underneath.
"Hey there. New friend."
He swallowed his bite.
"How'd you get in?"
Kairos didn't answer right away. He took a moment to read the guy.
Friendly enough, sure. But in a place this strange, friendly wasn't automatically the same as safe.
He pointed to the black mark still visible on his chest.
"Through this," he said. "It's a mark from Giratina. The one you're all calling Dragon Bro."
The crowd practically exploded.
Every head turned toward the mark on his chest, and once the crowd got a good look at it, the chatter went from loud to chaotic.
"Hold on, why does he have the Dragon Bro's mark on him?"
"Is that real? That level of mark?"
"He looks so young. What did he even do? When I showed up back in the day, I gave everything I had and never ended up with anything like that."
"Is this the 'chosen one' thing? I'm genuinely jealous."
Kairos stood there, genuinely thrown off.
Dragon Bro.
They were calling Giratina Dragon Bro.
Was that not just a little too casual?
And the mark, a brand, arguably a curse, and they were looking at it like it was something worth being envious of?
He glanced around at the wide eyes and animated faces, then back at the golden-haired guy smiling in front of him, and had absolutely no idea where to start.
The golden-haired man caught Kairos's expression and laughed out loud.
"You have no idea why we're reacting like this, do you?"
He raised a hand to settle the crowd down a little, then kept going.
"First time here? Based on that look, I'd guess yes. What world are you from?"
"It's not my first time," Kairos said.
He thought back to his earlier visit and answered directly.
"This is my second time in. The first time, I didn't actually make it into the city. I was out past where all of you are. Back then, Giratina said a few things to me and sent me back out."
The whole area went quiet.
The golden-haired man's smile stopped moving. His face shifted all at once.
The crowd, which had been buzzing a second ago, went still. People were looking at each other with these strange, layered expressions: shock, confusion, disbelief, all running together at once.
Kairos watched them and felt genuinely confused.
What had he said?
Had he put his foot in something without realizing it?
Before he could work it out, the golden-haired man drew a slow breath, locked eyes with him, and asked in a voice that wasn't quite steady:
"What did you just say? The Dragon Bro woke up?"
That threw Kairos off again.
The Dragon Bro woke up?
What did that mean? Was Giratina asleep most of the time?
He thought it over, then nodded.
"If you mean Giratina, then yes. I saw him today."
Kairos gave a rough rundown of how everything had gone. He left out the details about the game project and anything involving Moltres, and kept it to the basics: how he'd accidentally picked up the mark, how he'd been pulled into the Reversed World, and how he'd been sent back out again.
As he talked, the faces around him kept shifting. By the time he finished, the golden-haired man's easy demeanor had pulled back into something sharper. He was looking at Kairos differently now, like he was recalculating something.
"So the Dragon Bro woke up and asked you for help?"
He said it carefully, with a weight behind it.
"Do you know what exactly he needs help with?"
Kairos nodded. He didn't see much reason to hold back. The guy didn't seem hostile, and being upfront would help him make sense of what was actually going on here.
He took a breath, organized his thoughts, and gave a broad overview of the task Giratina had laid out: the seal, the situation with Spiritomb, how Giratina had asked him to help push back the ghost Pokemon in the Ghost World that had been infected by Spiritomb's miasma, and to retrieve a fragment of the Reversed World from Spiritomb.
When he finished, the last of the murmuring in the crowd died out completely.
Then people started looking at each other. Not the confused looks from before. These were the looks of people putting pieces together.
"That's what it is."
"No wonder the Dragon Bro woke up and gave this kid a mark that high."
"A fragment of the Reversed World. Yeah. That explains everything."
The golden-haired man let out a long breath, the tension dropping from his shoulders. He gave a small, slightly tired shake of his head.
"Figured it had to be something. The Dragon Bro's not the type to pull someone in without a reason."
"If it's about that fragment, then yeah, it makes complete sense."
Kairos watched the reactions around him and figured he had a decent read on the situation. These people clearly knew a lot about Giratina and how this place worked.
He took the opening.
"Going by your reactions, is Giratina actually asleep most of the time?"
Before the golden-haired man could answer, a stir moved through the back of the crowd. The packed group parted, opening a wide path down the middle.
A tall figure walked through.
A woman.
Strikingly beautiful, the kind of beautiful that made it hard to look away. She looked to be around thirty, with a tall, composed bearing and a walk that had its own quiet rhythm to it.
She was wearing a deep crimson gown that moved softly with each step, like the petals of a red rose.
Her elegance wasn't put on. It was the kind that settles into a person over years, the kind that comes from living with intention for a long time.
Her eyes were the most striking thing about her. Deep and quietly magnetic. When she looked at you, it pulled you in without you quite realizing it was happening.
What actually caught Kairos off guard, though, was what was drifting beside her.
A pink Pokemon with triangular, wing-like features hovered gracefully at her side.
Latias.
His eyebrow went up.
He'd crossed paths with legendary Pokemon before, but seeing one here, beside a Trainer, still landed differently.
Latias wasn't quite in the same tier as Arceus or Dialga, but she was firmly in the upper ranks of legendary Pokemon. No question about it.
That was a lot to take in. Mythical Pokemon in the Reversed World was one thing. But Latias too?
The woman moved through the group, let her gaze sweep the room, and then settled it on Kairos.
A faint smile crossed her face. Her voice had a warmth and texture to it, the kind that was just pleasant to listen to for no particular reason.
"Welcome," she said. "New friend."
"Yes, to answer your question: Lord Giratina is asleep most of the time."
She nodded, picking up the thread of Kairos's earlier question without missing a beat.
"Keeping the Reversed World running takes an enormous amount of his energy. So the vast majority of the time, he's in a state of deep sleep."
The golden-haired man spotted her coming and greeted her with the casual ease of someone who'd known her a long time.
"Hey, what brings you out today? You're practically a stranger out here. I don't think I've seen you come out for one of these in a while."
She raised an eyebrow.
"What, you're not happy to see me? I heard the commotion and figured I'd come check. And honestly, the Dragon Bro waking up is a big deal. I wanted to confirm it myself."
He shrugged with total, cheerful innocence.
"I never said I wasn't happy to see you. You're reading into it."
"But since you're here, perfect. Saves me from having to go through it twice."
He gestured toward Kairos and gave her a quick rundown: how he'd gotten in, the mark on his chest, what he'd said about Giratina waking up, the whole Spiritomb situation, and the matter of the fragment.
The woman listened without interrupting, nodding here and there, her eyes staying on Kairos the whole time.
When the man finished, her expression shifted slightly and something genuinely interested moved through her eyes.
"So young, and already noticed by Lord Giratina..."
She said it quietly, and there was real admiration in it, not performance.
"Congratulations, friend."
"If you actually manage to help us get that fragment of the Reversed World back, we'd want you to stay with us."
Kairos stayed calm.
"I'll be honest, I don't really understand what's happening here."
"Before I came in, I assumed Giratina had brought all of you here to absorb your faith energy and power himself up."
"But that's clearly not what this is."
He looked around at the people nearby. Relaxed. Going about their business. Nobody looked like a prisoner.
"So I'd like to know: what's actually going on?"
The woman blinked. Then she laughed, quietly, like she'd just heard something that genuinely caught her off guard.
"Faith energy?"
She shook her head.
"Lord Giratina doesn't need anything like that."
She tilted her head back, eyes drifting up toward the dim, strangely colored sky overhead.
"His power comes from this world. He's the one who holds it together. This place is part of him, not separate from him. He has no reason to go looking for faith energy the way other legendary Pokemon might."
Kairos took that in.
If that was true, then why had Giratina gone to the trouble of pulling so many people into the Reversed World? It couldn't have been just because he liked having company.
He was about to push further when the woman, as if she'd already guessed where his thoughts were going, kept talking.
"I think you've genuinely gotten the wrong idea about something."
"He did bring us here on purpose. But he did it to help us."
She turned and gestured toward the golden-haired man standing a few feet away.
"Take him, for example."
"He came from a world that had been torn apart by war. He was on a battlefield, about to die with nothing left to even bury. Giratina pulled him into the Reversed World and gave him a way to keep living."
The golden-haired man took another bite of his fruit and went quiet for a moment, something distant moving behind his eyes.
"He's right. If it weren't for the Dragon Bro, my Swampert and I would both be gone by now. But here we are."
The woman turned and pointed to a dark-haired young man in the crowd who looked barely past his early twenties.
"And him."
"In his original world, he had a terminal diagnosis. The doctors said he'd be lucky to make it to thirty-five, and that whatever time he had left wouldn't be easy."
"But look at him now."