High above the burning Williams estate, the sky was tearing itself apart.
The massive spatial rift had expanded into a gaping, pitch-black maw, exerting a terrifying, localized gravitational pull. It was like a localised black hole, hungrily attempting to drag everything within the spatial barrier into the cold void of the Ancient Kingdom's separate dimension.
Seth was at a severe disadvantage.
His Pokémon were fighting a war on two fronts. Mega Salamence's wings were beating furiously, spending a portion of his energy just to anchor himself against the suction. Metagross's eyes glowed with blinding psychic power, creating a telekinetic tether to hold Seth and the rest of the team in place.
The Black Knight, however, had no such burdens.
He and his Pokémon were fighting with absolute, reckless abandon. They didn't care about the suction force. In fact, they were using it to their advantage, allowing the rift's gravity to accelerate their strikes. Their goal wasn't to win a battle of attrition - it was simply to drag Seth into the void alongside them.
And on the other side of that rift, Seth knew, an entire army was waiting in ambush.
"Look at you, Seth Williams. The great prodigy, struggling to hold onto the edge of the cliff," the Black Knight's telepathic voice sneered, perfectly calm amidst the apocalyptic storm of clashing Dragon Pulses and Meteor Mashes.
"You were blinded by revenge," the Knight continued, his dark armour glinting as Mega Latios fired another Luster Purge. "Logically, you should never have erased our tracks from the League's radar. If the Elites were here, we would have retreated. But your arrogance, your desperate, burning desire to exact revenge on the empire... it led you straight into our trap."
Seth didn't immediately respond. He commanded Lucario to deflect an incoming Dragon Rush from Hydreigon with a perfectly timed Aura Sphere, but the impact pushed them back another few meters toward the rift.
The Black Knight was right.
Seth looked down through the translucent, fractured floor of the barrier. He saw the beautiful island he had built reduced to a chaotic, burning warzone. He saw the explosions, the shattered marble, the desperate struggles of the young prodigies.
He thought of Blaire, and of little Belle, caught in the crossfire.
He knew Blaire was strong. He knew Sauras and the bodyguards would fight to their last breath to protect them. But in a warzone of this scale, accidents happened.
'If anything happens to them... it's entirely my fault,' Seth thought, a profound, crushing weight settling on his chest as he snapped out of his obsession.
'Looks like I have created another mess, Lisa.'
He had been a fool. The years of smiling, of acting the eccentric host, had only been a mask to hide the agonising, rotting wound in his heart. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he was alive and Lisandra was dead.
That survivor's guilt had pushed him to play god, to orchestrate this entire isolated confrontation, believing his personal strength was absolute.
Seth closed his eyes. He took a slow, deep breath.
When he opened his eyes, the guilt and hesitation were completely gone. The lingering ghosts of his past were locked away. What remained was the absolute, razor-sharp focus of a man who had accepted his fate.
"Gengar," Seth said softly.
Gengar grinned as he appeared beside Seth, its eyes glowing with sinister light.
Seth unclasped the final Poké Ball on his belt.
"Greninja."
In a flash of light, a sleek, bipedal frog-like Pokémon materialized, its tongue wrapped around its neck like a scarf.
It was at the King level.
Seth looked at the Black Knight, his expression turning terrifyingly calm.
"If that is the trap you've set," Seth's voice resonated with absolute, chilling resolve. "Then I will gladly walk into it."
Seth raised his hand.
"Stop resisting the pull. Give them everything we have."
Mega Salamence's eyes widened, then narrowed into vicious, feral slits. Metagross dropped the telekinetic anchor. Lucario lowered his defensive stance.
Freed from the burden of fighting the spatial rift's gravity, the true, unadulterated power of Seth's team exploded outward. They let the suction pull them backward, but in doing so, they channeled every single ounce of their energy into pure, apocalyptic offense.
"ANNIHILATE THEM!" Seth roared.
The sky tore apart.
Greninja moved first. He became a literal blur of dark and water-type energy as he blitzed past Hydreigon, appearing directly above the Dragapult.
"Water Shuriken! Maximum Output!"
Massive, rapidly spinning stars of hyper-compressed water slammed into the Dragapult at point-blank range, instantly shredding its ghostly aura. Gengar followed up flawlessly, appearing from the Dragapult's own shadow to deliver a devastating Shadow Ball that knocked the already injured Pseudo-Champion completely unconscious.
"Altaria, Moonblast!" the Black Knight shouted, realizing the sudden shift in momentum.
"Lucario, Flash Cannon! Metagross, Meteor Mash!"
Altaria didn't stand a chance against a tag team of two Pseudo Champions. Lucario's Flash Cannon pierced its defensive aura, and Metagross crashed into it like a falling meteor, the super-effective steel-type strikes crushing the dragon bird and sending it plummeting into the void.
"Latios! Hydreigon! End them!"
"Salamence! Giga Impact!"
Mega Salamence roared, cloaked in a blinding, roaring hurricane of Aerilate-boosted flying-type energy. He became a living missile as he crashed into both Latios and Hydreigon.
KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The collision generated a shockwave so violent that the world lost all sound. The sky ignited in a Hydreigon's middle head shrieked as its scales shattered, the beast severely wounded and sent spiraling out of control. Mega Latios took the brunt of the impact, its psychic barrier completely collapsing under the sheer physical torque of Salamence's strike. It coughed up blood, its primal aura flickering dangerously.
The shockwave didn't stop there. It violently tore outward, finally hitting the limits of the spatial lock.
CRACK. CRACK... SHATTER!
The indestructible black barrier separating the sky from the island shattered into a billion glittering, fading fragments.
The Black Knight was also caught up in the attack. The residual blast of Aerilate wind and draconian energy acted like invisible, razor-sharp blades.
"Ngh--!"
He grunted in agony as the shockwave ripped through his obsidian armor. His left arm, caught directly in the crossfire, was brutally mangled, blood spraying violently from the joints of his shattered gauntlet.
He was severely wounded. His entire vanguard was either unconscious or barely hanging on.
But as he clutched his bleeding, useless arm, a dark, victorious smile spread beneath his helm.
Because without the barrier, and with Seth's team having abandoned their anchors to launch the all-out assault, there was nothing left to stop the pull of the void.
The gravitational suction of the spatial tear grabbed them all.
"It's over, Williams!" the Black Knight yelled as he and his wounded Pokémon were sucked backward into the pitch-black maw.
Seth was pulled into the air, the intense gravity dragging him and his Pokémon toward the event horizon of the rift. He didn't struggle. He didn't try to summon another anchor. He simply looked down one last time at the sprawling, burning island below.
'I'm sorry, girls,' Seth whispered into the rushing wind.
'I promise I'll be back.'
And then, in a blink of an eye, Seth Williams, his Pokémon, the Black Knight, and the spatial tear vanished completely.
The sky instantly cleared.
The suffocating pressure, the roaring winds, the apocalyptic aura - it was all gone. The bright, clear sun shone down on the Williams estate as if nothing had ever happened.
Down in the ruined courtyards and the burning garden mazes, the battling forces froze.
The veteran bodyguards, the prodigies, and the invading grunts all looked up at the empty sky.
"The... the barrier is gone," one of the League officers gasped.
"The Lord has succeeded!" an Ancient Kingdom commander suddenly roared, raising his weapon into the air.
Riding on Charizard's back Blaire froze up as she looked at the sky.
Belle tugged frantically at Blaire's leather jacket.
"Big Sis..." Belle's voice was trembling, tears welling up in her large, innocent eyes. "Big Sis, Dad... where is he? Where did he go?"
Blaire didn't answer immediately. Her chest heaved, her breath hitching in her throat. The realization of what had just happened crashed into her like a physical blow.
She turned around and pulled Belle towards the front to hug her.
"Don't worry, Belle," Blaire said, forcing her voice to stay steady, forcing herself to be the pillar her sister needed. "Dad won't... he won't die so easily. He's just... he's just separated from us for a while, okay? He's going to be fine."
"Promise?" Belle sobbed into her jacket.
"I promise."
Blaire hugged her sister tighter, closing her eyes as a single, hot tear rolled down her cheek.
Behind Belle's back, Blaire's fists were clenched. They were clenched so impossibly tight that her fingernails dug straight through the leather of her gloves, piercing her skin.
Drops of blood fell from her palms, soaking silently into the scorched earth.
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