She found herself at the Fourth Door, face veiled by ink and shadow.

Chryssa read aloud from the Hollow Men as she paced, trying to clear her throat from the stranger's voice which lived there. It persisted: unfazed by her earlier screams in the archives, it was unrelenting now.

"At the hour when we are

A sign? A summons? A prompt to move ahead?

Form prayers to broken stone."

She could hardly finish a line before it spoke again, matching each stanza with secrets. Chryssa shut the little book of poetry with an annoyed snap, turning to face the door again.

She was stalling. And someone knew it.

"Find the answer, or fail at the threshold." It was her own voice, passive and contemplative. What has three locks, but no key? That had been the riddle on the back of the book. The iron door stared back, its dull surface reflecting nothing back but age and stone. 

Chryssa took a step closer. She leaned in. She spoke the words, and black ink rose up again like a vessel being filled, obscuring her features.

"A human face," Chryssa answered.


Face wreathed in cursed ink, Chryssa pressed it against the iron, feeling her eyelashes flutter, jaw work, lips mash cruelly against the metal.

The final portrait took shape as the ink left her skin, imprinting a cursed, shining visage on the fourth door. It stood out in sharp relief against the metal, drawn magnetically to its surface as it had been to Muir's blade.

It was the face she'd seen in the book, reading alongside her. 

"Who are you?" Chryssa asked, stepping back again. Her voice shook, and she tightened her grip on Muir. "Oh, never mind. It doesn't matter. There's still one more part to this, isn't there?"

She raised the Honedge into the air, closing her eyes. Perhaps the answer lies not with its end, but with its origin. She'd said that to Kaida regarding the egg—why would it come back to her now?

Unbidden, the curved, scythe-like shape on the back of the book rose to mind and something clicked.

"Oh my god," Chryssa said, and then, "I know what I have to do."

^{HONEDGE USED Z-MOVE: CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON}

The ghost blade—no, ghost weapon—settled back in her hand, as if its new, elongated shape had always belonged there.

The scepter Valerio Dachev had stolen was only a construct, a symbol of the confines the Church placed upon its followers.

An iron rod, its crown curved not with Arceus’ four-pronged wheel, but the wavering, organic shape of First Creation. A god unbound by iconography and stained glass, a scepter that evoked Arceus not as it was now, but as it had begun. When the universe was raw with newborn chaos, and the Original One breathed alone.

Back to the beginning.

Muir’s eye blinked, blue and baleful, from the wrought scepter’s heart.

"We get one move," Chryssa said, twirling the scepter around like a baton, then pointed it at the ink-stained door. "Let's make it count."

If the face was a keyhole, then her staff would be the key.

Chryssa sniffed the rocks. Their scent was was indistinguishable from the rest of the smells around them in Meteor Falls—water, earth, and the forbidden trysts of cave-dwelling lovers.

"They smell exceedingly normal," she declared, pulling back, "And there's a bug on that one. You should probably put it back." The tiny Paras clinging to the back side of one of the stones clicked its mandibles at her unhappily.

"You would think it'd smell like space," Chryssa said, breaking from Priam to spin around in Shiinotic's light. Her dress flared as she twirled like a second, less luminous mushroom. "But in actuality, I was told... long ago..." She'd just googled it on her phone, "...that meteorites smell like sulfur. When they're freshly fallen, anyway."

The chances of random meteorites striking single place more than once seemed unlikely, but then again, they said once you were hit by lightning it exponentially increased your chances of getting hit a second time. The world was filled with strange, impossible odds.

Some people called it coincidence. Chryssa called it destiny.

[attr="class","omgen"]

Espeon's Z-Move bathed the Space Center screens with precognitive power, stars completing their passage across the blank field map in streaks of accelerated light. Eyes glued to the crystal display, Chryssa's hands found one another in unconscious prayer as the cat-like creature unspooled the tightly-wound threads of time.

"Yes," she breathed, fingers laced together. "I can see it..."

The tangle the journey through the cosmos brought to light was not so easy to unravel—not to Chryssa, not to anyone. It left a resounding silence, more vast than the hole Arceus had left in space.

Bill Anderson seemed to have not even noticed the celestial body spinning towards them, his eyes were fixed so blindly on what was no longer there. Chryssa's gaze remained steady, unwavering, taking in the readings herself. She did not look to the youth pastor for guidance. On this path of empty stars, the priest was as lost as they.

But was God leaving, like Chryssa had prophesized—or, like THEO BECKETT seemed to think, was he already here?

"It's not," Chryssa said to Lulu Flint , hard-eyed again. "Arceus is gone, just like we expected. That," she dictated, somehow managing to sound disappointed, "Is His apocalypse."

The Pride Parade can't be stopped. The crowd holds its breath, then lets out an audible AWWW at the peace offering between Luka's Clefable and one of the Ace Trainers. Their breath is taken away again shortly after as a ball of Hyper Beam is shot from Razz's Bisharp, wowing the crowd with yet another display of Yellow's Coolness. 

One little Hyper Beam isn't enough to faze Kyle's Lycanroc, however, who curls up adorably at the prow of the proud float. Delighted same-sex couples snap photos of the snoozing dog, who is bathed in ominous scarlet light from the red Gyarados moving next. The Giga Impact is so red it's basically a rainbow, and the quailing Purple Team is cowed both by Mars' logic and his Gyarados' unmistakable power.

Last, the wild card: Zac's Hypno is a well-oiled streak of body positivity. His mad dash through the crowd, showcasing his speed, has elements of both TOUGH and CUTE that appeal to everyone involved. Cheers build with every flash of bare pink skin—cheers that build to include all five contestants as the finish line appears before them. The applause does not falter as the Ace Trainers' Float passes—in fact, some people catch the purple T-shirts and gladly pull them on, even having consented just minutes before to take them off. Hey, anyone can change their minds!

But there's one thing this crowd hasn't changed its mind about.

The bisexual lesbians form a cheering pyramid with Luka and her muscular Clefable at its peak: the perfect combination of Toughness and Cuteness to seal a win in the last round. "Wow! We have a winner!" The announcer does a double-take at the 100% red spectrum pink ribbon in his hand. "I swear this was rainbow before..." he muses aloud, then, "What am I thinking, it is rainbow! Anything can be what you want it to be. Congrats, girl, you earned it! And thank you guys."

He sweeps a hand towards the other proud participants on the float, whether they be ace, gay, bi, furry, trans, or something in between. "You guys are the example: all colors and comrades will always be welcome at Pride. Til' next time, people!"

---

---

F I N A L   S C O R E S  

1. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ luka chêne & CLEFABLE (19)
2. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kyle lopez  & LYCANROC (18)
3. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Martín del Mar   & GYARADOS (15)
3. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Razz Kingsman  & BISHARP (15)
4. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Zac Ramsay  & HYPNO (9)

Chryssa was so busy being dramatic on the floor with her Dewott that she almost missed the final round. "Good thing speed is on our side," she said smugly to cover up her blunder. Drew kicked off the ground with a powerful AQUA JET, propelling herself towards the ceiling of the arena as if launched by a jet pack. 

She looped, she zig-zagged, she drew letters in the air the way children drew with sparklers on a festive summer night. Water droplets showered down from the jet-trail left behind, sparkling beneath the stage lights. "That's it for us! Til next time," Chryssa said as the otter completed the final letter and touched down on stage again in a burst of pressurized vapor. The two struck a pose as the words evaporated above them, captured on camera for a split instant.

"That's a pretty song, isn't it?"

She was close, suddenly, too close. Willowy and strange, Chryssa tucked a lock of fine brown hair behind one ear as she leaned over luka chêne 's shoulder, studying the scrawled symbols from her book of hymns. Darkness slipped from the teenager's lips like ink, tongue stained black with ancient secrets.

"And what an interesting book, too..."

Chryssa raised a hand, expression curious, and flexed her fingers. The shimmering glove of symbols moved with her skin, too-slow, smudging the lines on her palms and fingernails. In contrast, the glow of AUGUR shone from the other girl's throat like strangled moonlight as she flipped desperately through the pages, searching for... something.

Something hidden. Something powerful.

(Something is twisted and crawling and wrong.)

"Separate," she repeated after Luka, sounding distracted. With each word, the darkness spread from her lips, beading on her jawline like black rain. "Yes... you might be right. Perhaps that would be for the best. To find my own way forward." It was the opposite of what Luka had said, but Chryssa seemed strangely disengaged. As if she was thinking very hard.

Or someone else was thinking for her.

The haunting melody of Perish Song persisted in the distance, its notes sour as citrus. Its impending timer brought her back to reality and Chryssa returned the nearby Laina with a practiced flick of the wrist, a beam of light lancing through the twisting boughs to call the cricket back. The possibility that Senga, with her sensitive Espurr ears, might have heard the song as well did not even cross her mind.

As she touched Muir to sheath it as well, ink came away on the blade. She stopped to study the strange, sluggish markings on the metal. 

"Interesting... I wonder..."

Before the wounded Kaida Adachi  followed Luka through the portal of Hidden Power, Chryssa reached out to her egg with the hilt of her Honedge, wondering if she could lift the strange markings which swirled on its surface. They seemed to gravitate towards the ghost blade, spinning, sharp-edged, as if they might cut before it cracked.

"Hide in the woods. Break the eggs."

The words came from her own lips without her willing them, and Chryssa herself seemed surprised. She froze, hesitating.

In her hand she felt Muir activate Protect around the fragile shell, giving it some last blessing before the Koil disappeared. "Thank you," she said to the blade, then to Kaida, uncharacteristically, "...Sorry."

Unnerved, she brought her hand back. She sheathed her sword.

She did not follow.

Muir thudded dully on the ground as Chryssa retraced her steps through the forest of warped bookshelves, leaving the serpents and their keepers behind. Carved circles with beady pupils stared at her from the tree trunks, warning her not to stray from the path. Chryssa ignored them. Only one thing was on her mind. Intro to Iron.

Riddles. Curses. Cures. Solutions. She had to read it. Of course she had to read it. It was a book. It was the Book.

So why did she feel afraid?

Chryssa's hands shook, then steadied as she gripped the heavy text. It's now or never. If iron actually removes the cursed ink, I need to know how to use it. Her own intuition could only take her so far.

Something told her there was no going back.

Chryssa turned the Tome over and found a new symbol freshly inked on the back cover, shining with the same luminous blood as the AUGUR marking on her hand. An eye stared at her with baleful indifference, cradled in the crook of a shimmering rod.

^{Find the answer, or fail at the threshold.}

Steeling herself, Chryssa stopped near the entrance to the archives and opened Intro to Iron.

There was no paper.

The pages were engravings, etched in thinly-hammered sheets of shining metal. She flipped through them, expression neutral, realizing this style of book was meant to preserve a rubbing, a charcoal reproduction for ancient archivists to copy. It held no ink. What words she could make out were backwards, including the riddle from before. 

"Something is different..."

The voice came unbidden from her own mouth and Chryssa jerked back, fingers loosening unconsciously on the tome. It dropped to the floorboards with a clang, falling open to a smooth, unmarked page and reflecting her own face across its mirror-bright canvas.

Her own, and  SOMEONE ELSE'S.

Darkness burst at the sound of her scream, and the terrified mask in the mirror eclipsed itself as the swirling ink covered her face entirely.