Teo's left hand wouldn't stop trembling.
Three days had passed since the Scorchclaw ambush, and the nerve damage from overusing Ren had settled into a permanent tremor—a soft, constant vibration in his fingers like a phone on silent. He couldn't hold a cup without spilling. Couldn't tie his shoelaces without Yumi's help.
But he refused to stop training.
Instead, he adapted.
Yumi watched from the edge of the lighthouse ruin as Teo moved through a slow, deliberate sequence of steps on the cracked concrete—arnis footwork, adapted from the Filipino martial art his lola's brother used to teach in their barangay garage. Weight on the balls of his feet. Hips low. Arms relaxed but ready.
His left hand hung at his side, twitching.
But his breath—steady. Controlled.
And around him, a thin shell of aura held firm—Ten, perfect containment.
"Again," he muttered.
He flowed into a sikaran kick—a high, snapping motion meant to strike without overextending. As his leg whipped through the air, he channeled a pulse of aura into his foot, not for power, but for precision.
The air cracked.
[ NEN SPECIALIZATION DETECTED: GYOU (ENHANCED TECHNIQUE) — "PRECISION STRIKE" ]
[ NEURAL LOAD: OPTIMIZED — MOTOR COMPENSATION INITIATED ]
Teo lowered his leg, panting. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but his aura hadn't flickered.
Yumi clapped once—quiet, proud.
She stepped forward and signed: Good. Now, defense.
She tossed a small pebble into the air.
Teo didn't look. He felt it—through his aura sense, through the subtle shift in air pressure.
He shifted his weight, raised his right arm, and let the pebble strike his forearm.
It didn't bounce off.
It stopped—hovering for a split second against a microscopic layer of condensed aura before falling to the ground.
The Lucario, watching from the shade, gave a low, approving growl.
Teo smiled weakly. "Still got it."
But the victory was short-lived.
Because that night, as the crimson sky deepened to black, a new scent drifted through the ruins.
Not ash. Not salt.
Antiseptic.
And blood—fresh, metallic, unnaturally clean.
Yumi froze mid-stir of her herbal brew. Her eyes widened.
She signed rapidly: Hide. Now.
Teo didn't ask why. He grabbed his crutch and pulled the Lucario into the deepest chamber beneath the lighthouse—a collapsed storage room filled with rusted chains and broken glass.
They waited.
Minutes passed.
Then—footsteps.
Not the skittering of claws. Not the heavy tread of Kaelen.
These were soft. Measured. Clinical.
A man stepped into the main chamber.
Tall. Lean. Dressed in a tattered white coat that might've once belonged to a doctor or lab tech. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken but sharp behind cracked glasses. At his side floated a Mismagius, its body wreathed in violet mist, chains dangling from its limbs like surgical instruments.
But it was his hands that made Teo's blood run cold.
His left hand… wasn't flesh.
It was crystalline. Translucent, like obsidian glass, veins of glowing purple energy pulsing beneath the surface.
Yumi's hand tightened on Teo's arm. She mouthed a single word:
"Silas."
Silas the Hollow Hand.
One of the Veiled Conclave's hunters.
A former battlefield medic from the Galar region who, according to whispers in the ruins, had lost his entire unit during the Sky Rending—and responded by dissecting his own Pokémon to see if he could "extract" their power before they died.
He'd succeeded.
And gone mad.
Silas tilted his head, sniffing the air. "Ah… the scent of unrefined aura. And fear."
His voice was calm. Almost gentle. Like a doctor delivering bad news.
"You can come out," he said. "I don't want to hurt you. I want to study you."
Teo stayed silent.
Silas sighed. "A shame. I prefer cooperative subjects."
He raised his crystalline hand.
The Mismagius floated forward, its chains unraveling like serpents.
Then—it screamed.
Not a sound.
A frequency.
Teo's skull felt like it would split open. His left eye flared white-hot. The Lucario collapsed, clutching its head.
[ WARNING: PSYCHIC RESONANCE ATTACK — NEURAL DISRUPTION DETECTED ]
[ COUNTERMEASURE: NONE — IMMEDIATE SHUTDOWN IMMINENT ]
Teo fought to stay conscious. He reached for the Lucario, his trembling hand fumbling for connection.
"Breathe with me," he thought, pouring every ounce of will into the link. "In for four. Hold. Out for six."
The Lucario's eyes fluttered open.
And together—they pushed.
A dome of blue aura erupted around them just as the Mismagius's chains lashed out.
The chains shattered on impact.
Silas blinked. "Synchronization… at this level? Remarkable."
He flexed his crystalline hand. "But unsustainable."
He stepped forward. "Let me show you what true control looks like."
His hand pulsed.
And Teo felt it—pulling. Not from his body. From his aura. Like something was trying to unspool him from the inside.
[ CRITICAL WARNING: AURA EXTRACTION DETECTED — SOURCE: EXTERNAL NEN ABILITY ]
[ ESTIMATED TIME TO CORE COLLAPSE: 47 SECONDS ]
"Lucario—now!" Teo gasped.
The Lucario didn't attack Silas.
It attacked the source.
With a roar, it slammed both palms into the ground and unleashed a focused pulse of aura—not outward, but downward.
The obsidian floor shattered.
A geyser of superheated rock and steam erupted beneath Silas.
The medic hissed, leaping back—but not fast enough. His coat caught fire. The Mismagius shrieked, its form flickering.
Teo didn't wait.
He grabbed Yumi's hand and ran.
"Where?" he panted.
Yumi pointed east—toward the drowned ship graveyard.
Acid tide. Deep channels. He won't follow.
They sprinted through the ruins, Lucario guarding their rear, aura blazing like a warning beacon.
Behind them, Silas's voice carried on the wind—calm, chilling.
"I'll find you. And when I do… I'll take your bond apart, thread by thread, until I understand how something so fragile can burn so bright."
Hours later, hidden in the hull of a half-sunken cargo ship, Teo pressed a cold compress to his temple.
His hand still trembled.
But his mind was clear.
Yumi handed him a vial of dark liquid. For your nerves. Last dose this week.
He drank it. The shaking lessened.
The Lucario lay beside him, exhausted but alert.
Teo looked at his partner. "You saved us."
The Lucario nudged his hand—your idea.
Teo smiled faintly. Then winced as a new pain flared in his ribs.
[ STATUS UPDATE: NEURAL SCARRING — LEFT HAND MOTOR CONTROL DEGRADED TO 14% ]
[ EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY RISK: 21% — LUCARIO PSYCHOLOGICAL STABILITY LINKED TO HOST'S PERCEIVED WORTH ]
Teo frowned. "Worth?"
He understood then.
The Lucario wasn't just fighting for him.
It was fighting to prove it deserved to live.
To prove its last trainer hadn't died for nothing.
Teo placed his good hand on the Lucario's head. "You don't have to earn your place with me," he said softly. "You already have it."
The Lucario closed its eyes.
And for the first time, its aura didn't flare with effort.
It simply… was.
[ SYNCHRONIZATION: 56% ]
[ LUCARIO ABILITY UNLOCKED: AURA VOW — "SILENT GUARD" ]
[ EFFECT: DEFENSE +300% WHEN PROTECTING SYNCHRONIZED HOST ]
Yumi watched them, then looked out at the toxic sea.
She signed slowly, deliberately:
The Conclave won't stop. They see your bond as a flaw to correct… or a weapon to replicate.
Teo nodded. "Then we get stronger."
He stood, wincing but resolute.
"I won't let them turn us into lab rats. I won't let them break what we've built."
He looked at his trembling hand. Then at the Lucario. At Yumi.
"This isn't just survival anymore."
He took a deep breath.
"It's resistance."
Outside, the acid tide lapped against the hull.
And far to the west, in the heart of the Shattered Archipelago, the Veiled Conclave opened a new file.
Subject: Mateo Dela Cruz
Classification: High-Priority Anomaly
Order: Capture. Do not kill.
The hunt had truly begun.