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Humm—
A soft vibration, like the faint hum of a plucked string, echoed through the air.
It seemed to bypass distance itself, resonating directly inside the minds of everyone present.
Despair.
Terror.
Panic.
All of the emotions that had been tearing through their hearts were erased in an instant.
Not suppressed.
Not dulled.
Simply… gone.
Replaced by an unnatural stillness, like the surface of a bottomless lake.
An invisible force rippled outward across the sky.
The distortion looked slow.
But in truth, it crossed the heavens in less than a blink.
The black sea of wings was swallowed whole.
Time froze.
As if reality itself had been paused.
The crimson madness in countless avian eyes vanished.
Greed faded.
Bloodlust extinguished.
Feathers stiffened mid-beat, turning rigid, lifeless, like wooden puppets cut from their strings.
Even the raging wind halted.
The battlefield became utterly silent.
No screams.
No wingbeats.
No breathing.
Not even the faint rustle of leaves.
Then—
Thud… thud… thud…
The Nightmare flock began to fall.
Bodies rained from the sky.
Feathers.
Blood.
Broken wings.
Thousands of lifeless forms crashed down like a storm made of flesh and bone.
A rain of death.
Fran stood motionless.
Cold sweat slid down her pale cheeks.
Her face had drained of all color.
Just moments ago, that swarm would have stripped her to the bone.
And now—
Nothing remained but corpses.
Her mind failed to process it.
She simply stared.
Eyes empty.
Hands trembling.
If not for the stench of rot and the endless carpet of bodies beneath her feet, she might have believed she had hallucinated everything.
Her thin frame shook in the lingering breeze.
"…What now…?"
"Run…?"
Her shaking hand reached toward Quark, seeking instinctive guidance from the most experienced person nearby.
But halfway there—
It froze.
Because she heard something else.
Footsteps.
Thump… thump…
Heavy.
Measured.
Slow.
From deep within the forest ahead.
They were quiet.
But in the suffocating silence, every step echoed inside their chests.
With each footfall—
Their hearts answered.
Step.
Beat.
Step.
Beat.
Two unrelated rhythms locked together into something dreadful.
Blood roared in Fran's ears.
Her breathing turned ragged.
Pupils dilated.
The pressure in the air thickened.
What descended now was far worse than the Nightmare flock.
A presence.
Dense.
Violent.
Ancient.
The kind of aura that did not threaten.
It declared dominance.
Fran forced herself to lift her head.
Her gaze crawled toward the dark treeline.
There—
Within the shadows.
Something massive was moving.
Closer.
Closer.
Her pupils shrank to pinpoints.
Her entire body convulsed.
What… was that…?
Crash.
The undergrowth exploded outward.
A towering figure emerged.
Two meters tall.
Muscle layered upon muscle like carved stone.
A body built not for evolution—but for slaughter.
Dark-violet skin, faint mist drifting from its surface, as if half-anchored to another world.
Crimson light burned where eyes should be.
No pupils.
No whites.
Only predatory glow.
Not a Pokémon she recognized.
Not anything she had ever seen.
A creature that did not belong.
Violence radiated from it in waves.
The air itself recoiled.
Fran could not move.
Could not scream.
Could not breathe.
Her lips parted uselessly.
When the creature's gaze swept across the field—
Across the corpses.
Across the Trainers.
Across Quark.
And finally—
Stopped on her.
Their eyes met.
Snow-white terror locked with abyssal red.
Her throat released a broken whimper.
Tears welled uncontrollably.
A smile curved across the creature's face.
Slow.
Crooked.
Wrong.
As if a demon had found dessert.
Against the backdrop of thousands of dead birds, that grin became something straight from a nightmare.
In that moment, Fran did not see a Pokémon.
She saw hell.
She saw the deep ocean's abyss.
She saw the embodiment of every nightmare she had ever feared.
Fear beyond Nightmare Pokémon.
Fear beyond death.
Fear beyond reason.
Her mind shattered.
"A—AHHHHH!!!"
The scream tore free.
Then—
Her silver hair spilled across the ground as her body collapsed backward.
Tears scattered through the air.
She fainted before she hit the soil.
Soft.
Lifeless.
Silence returned.
The smile on the creature's face slowly stiffened.
Its brow twitched.
One massive hand rose and scratched the back of its head.
In the middle of a battlefield filled with corpses—
In the aftermath of an apocalyptic display of power—
The figure hesitated.
Awkward.
"…Uh."
Kael felt extremely uncomfortable.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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