The victory tasted like ash.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Three days after the Heartwood Citadel's collapse, the wind still carried fine gray powder from its ruins—fossilized bone, shattered Apex Seeds, the remnants of Veyla's final act. It settled on skin like guilt, on leaves like mourning.
Teo sat at the edge of the grove, shirt off, letting Yumi apply a new poultice to his ribs. The gashes from Veyla's claws hadn't closed. They wept a thin, iridescent fluid that smelled of ozone and old storms—cursed residue, Yumi had signed. Not poison. Memory.
Every time he breathed deep, he felt it: Veyla's grief, Kael's regret, the Seedlings' fear—all echoing in his wounds like ghosts in a hollow bone.
"You're pushing it," Yumi signed, her movements gentle but firm. Her eyes, once soft with quiet wisdom, now held a sharp edge—the weight of Bathala's death, of the Seedlings' survival, of a world that kept demanding more.
Teo didn't answer. He watched Rin drill the older Seedlings in basic aura awareness—teaching them to feel their own energy not as a weapon, but as a compass. One girl, no older than twelve, managed to make a leaf tremble with her will. She laughed—a sound so pure it made Teo's chest ache.
That's when he heard it.
Not with his ears.
With the silence.
The refugees—the humans who'd fled to the grove after the Cult's desertification campaigns—were gathered near the old watchfire. Their voices were low, urgent.
"He's too strong."
"What if he decides we're not worth the risk?"
"He looks at us like we're… fragile."
Teo's stomach dropped.
He knew that look.
He'd worn it himself, back in Manila, when customers screamed at him for outages they caused, when supervisors called his pain "unprofessional." The look that said: Your humanity is a flaw.
"Do they think I'd hurt them?" he asked aloud.
Lucario, lounging nearby, didn't open its eyes, but their shared mind echoed: They don't fear your strength. They fear your loneliness.
And that was the truth.
Power didn't just isolate.
It made others assume you were already alone.
That night, Teo couldn't sleep.
He walked the perimeter, left hand trembling—not from nerve damage now, but from the permanent feedback loop the fused consciousness had created. Every time Lucario felt pain, Teo felt it too. A splinter in Lucario's paw. A bruise from sparring. Even the ache of old trauma.
It wasn't a bug.
It was the price of 100% synchronization.
He stopped at the grave markers—simple stones for Kael, Elara, Jomar, Veyla. No names carved. Just symbols: a sprout, a storm, a gear, a tear.
He knelt before Kael's stone.
"You were right," he whispered. "Loneliness is the rot."
A voice behind him, quiet but clear: "Then stop feeding it."
Yumi.
She didn't sign. She spoke—her first words since Bathala's death.
Teo looked up. "I'm not trying to push them away."
"You don't have to," she said, kneeling beside him. "Just being you… it's enough to scare them. You carry the Maw's memory. You walk with a Pokémon fused into your soul. You erased a Citadel with your bare hands."
She placed a hand on his chest, over the cursed wounds. "You're not human to them anymore, Teo. You're a force of nature."
He flinched. "I don't want to be a force. I just want to protect them."
"I know," she said softly. "But protection without connection is just another kind of cage."
She stood and walked back toward the grove.
Then paused.
"Come see something."
She led him to the center of the grove, where Bathala's heir now stood waist-high, its trunk smooth and silver, leaves shimmering with the faces of the lost. But something was different.
At its base, the soil had turned black—not with ash, but with rich, fertile loam. And from it, new shoots were emerging—not of the same tree, but of dozens of species: kapok, narra, balete, even wild orchids.
"The forest is healing itself," Yumi said. "Through you."
Teo frowned. "I didn't do anything."
"You remembered," she said. "And in this place, memory is soil."
She turned to him, eyes fierce. "They're afraid of you because they think you've lost your humanity. So show them you haven't."
"How?"
Yumi didn't answer.
She placed Bathala's dead seed—the last one—in his palm.
Then pressed his hand to the black soil.
"Give it back," she said. "All of it."
Teo closed his eyes.
And remembered.
Not just his own pain.
The good things.
His lola's hands kneading dough.
His mother singing "Bahay Kubo" during blackouts.
The first time Lucario chose to stay.
Yumi's silent breath syncing with his in the acid estuary.
Rin's hand on his back as the Sunderer touched him.
He poured it all into the soil.
Into the seed.
Into the kapwa that bound them all.
For a long moment—nothing.
Then—a pulse.
Warm. Steady. Like a heartbeat.
The dead seed split open.
Not into a tree.
Into a circle.
Dozens of saplings erupted from the black soil, each one different, each one glowing faintly with the face of someone the grove had lost or saved.
The refugees emerged from their shelters, drawn by the light.
One woman reached out and touched a sapling. It shimmered with her son's face—the boy who'd died in the desertification.
She sobbed.
Not in grief.
In recognition.
Teo stood, tears in his eyes.
He wasn't just a weapon.
He wasn't just a legend.
He was a witness.
And that was enough.
Later, as the grove celebrated with quiet songs and shared bread, Rin found Teo sitting alone beneath the original sapling.
"You okay?" she asked, handing him a cup of bitter root tea.
He took it, hands steady for the first time in days. "Yeah. Just thinking."
"About Region 3?"
He nodded. "The System flagged 'Project Gengar.' Soul-fusion experiments. They're not just making hybrids anymore. They're making undead."
Rin sat beside him. "We'll stop them."
"I know," Teo said. "But this time… I don't want to just destroy. I want to heal."
He looked at the circle of saplings, now glowing softly in the night.
"Maybe that's the real failsafe. Not power. Not memory. But the ability to turn pain into something that grows."
Rin smiled faintly. "Then we're already winning."
Above them, the seven moons aligned.
And the Maw sang—not in thunder, but in gratitude.