Rain hammered the windshield like shattered glass trying to escape. Cael didn't even glance at the road anymore. The red capture ring swirled on his phone screen, just wide enough for a perfect curveball. A single Gastly hovered on the digital map, the only one in the area. He grinned, thumb tensed.
He was sitting in his parked car near a cemetery, the kind that always felt colder than it should be, even in midsummer. He hadn't meant to end up there. He was just chasing the spawn like he always did, chasing the thrill of the hunt like it mattered. Like something would change.
His car's interior light flickered. Thunder cracked above. In the reflection of his windshield, lightning illuminated the cemetery gates. Ornate iron. Rusted to black veins.
The Gastly on screen opened its mouth and flickered. Static licked the screen edge. Weird. His phone buzzed—then the AR view pulsed, glitching for a second. Gastly blinked red, blue, then black.
"That's… new," he muttered.
Cael tossed the ball.
Perfect curve.
Critical throw.
Three shakes.
Click.
The ball stopped moving.
Then the screen went white.
No sound. No animation. Just the faint outline of the Poké Ball… and something else. Something like a second face behind it. Watching him.
He blinked. The screen showed his reflection. No, not his. The face had no eyes.
The lightning came again.
But this time, the light wasn't outside.
It came from inside the car.
From his phone.
From the Poké Ball.
Cael inhaled sharply. He didn't scream. There wasn't time. The light swallowed the car whole in one flash of violet—and then nothing.
No body was found.
Just an empty car.
Phone shattered. Ball icon glowing softly on the cracked screen.
The first thing Cael felt was the weight of a blanket—coarse, tucked too tightly, and oddly warm. Then came the ticking of a wall clock. Steady. Measured. Familiar.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling was old plaster, painted unevenly, a pale yellow that had long since faded. Light trickled in through gauzy curtains. Outside, he heard the chirping of Pidgey—lots of them. Real ones.
He sat up, slowly. His legs were smaller. The bed creaked under his weight—not his adult weight. Not even a teenager's.
Child-size.
He raised his hands and stared. Small. Pale. Fingers slightly trembling.
"…No," he whispered.
The voice was his—but younger. Not cracked or tired, not worn from sleepless nights and too much caffeine. Soft. Breathless.
He turned toward the mirror on the far side of the room. A boy stared back. Maybe nine. Maybe ten. Slight and quiet-eyed.
His own face—reshaped.
Panic welled in him—but didn't erupt. He didn't scream. He didn't cry. That part of him—the weak reflex—had died in the car.
He stood and walked to the window.
It was a town.
Small. Neatly cobbled walkways. Wildflowers clung to stone walls. Red-roofed houses, a few tall trees, fences too short to matter.
And there—rising above it all—was the roof of a white building with a copper weather vane shaped like a Poké Ball.
His stomach dropped.
No. Not a replica. Not a dream. He recognized it.
Pallet Town.
From the games. From the anime. From his childhood and everyone else's.
But this was no screen. No render.
He felt the wind on his cheek. Heard someone yelling nearby.
"Come on, Ash! Hurry up! If you're late again, Gramps won't let you pick!"
Another boy's voice answered, "I'm not late, you're just fast!"
Footsteps. Laughing. Fading down the road.
Cael turned toward the sound, moving to the doorway of his room. The hallway was narrow, papered in flower print. He saw picture frames. A family—his family. A mother. A father. Familiar and yet… not.
Downstairs, he heard eggs sizzling in a pan.
"Sweetheart?" a woman's voice called. "Are you up? Big day!"
His throat tightened. He stepped back from the hall.
Big day.
Today was the day. The day every trainer in Kanto turned ten and chose their starter. The same day Ash started his journey. The same day Gary did too.
His hand brushed against something at his side.
His shadow.
It moved.
Just slightly.
But it did not match his motion.
Cael froze.
He looked down.
The shadow quivered—then stilled.
A whisper brushed against his mind. Not a voice. A feeling.
Familiar. Cold. Playful.
It was watching.
The days passed like quiet echoes—too vivid to be a dream, too strange to believe fully awake.
Cael never told anyone.
Not his mother, who smiled brightly but always seemed tired around the eyes.
Not his father, who had rough hands and a voice like old leather.
Not the town, who assumed he was just a quiet child with a fondness for dark corners and cold places.
He said nothing of the car, the Gastly, the other life.
Instead, he listened. He watched. He waited.
Ash was loud, earnest, and forever two steps behind his own feet. He chased imaginary Pokémon with a stick for a sword. He tripped into puddles and swore he could catch a Pidgey with a rope trap made from shoelaces.
Gary was sharper. Arrogant. Competitive. He once tried to charge Cael five Pokéyen for access to the "good tree" in the forest where bug-types liked to gather.
They didn't understand Cael, but they accepted him. He said little, laughed softly, and always noticed things the others didn't.
When they hunted for Caterpie, Cael pointed out the shed husks beneath the tree.
When they played tag, Cael always knew where Ash would zig before he zagged.
And when they sat in the grass, watching the clouds, Cael sometimes whispered things that made them pause:
"That one looks like a Drowzee."
"What's a Drowzee?"
"It hasn't been discovered yet."
They thought he was weird. But they liked weird. Kids are like that.
And so the years passed.
Until the morning of his tenth birthday.
He woke in the gray hour, before birds. The window was open. He didn't remember opening it.
His room was dark. Not just dim—but wrong. The corners seemed deeper. The shadows longer. He sat up and immediately felt it—a pulse beneath his skin.
Like static. Like pressure. Like something alive inside his spine.
He rose and walked to the mirror. Looked down.
His shadow was wrong again.
It moved a fraction behind him—delayed by a heartbeat.
He raised his hand. So did it.
But slower.
He leaned closer. Squinted.
The edge of the shadow split—just slightly.
Like something had blinked.
He whispered without thinking, "You're still here."
And it purred—not with sound, but through sensation. Like fog curling into his lungs. It didn't scare him.
It comforted him.
He felt… known.
Downstairs, his mother had made him toast with Oran jam. His father gave him a new pair of boots.
Neither said anything about the way the hallway lights flickered when he walked past.
Later that morning, a knock came at the door.
Professor Oak.
Gray suit. Slight smile. Notepad in hand.
"Cael," he said, "you're ten now."
"I know," Cael replied.
"You're coming to the lab tomorrow."
"I figured."
Oak studied him for a moment.
"I'm… curious, Cael. You've never shown much interest in traditional starters. Charmander? Squirtle? Bulbasaur?"
Cael tilted his head.
"I don't think they'd like me."
Oak smiled. "Hm. Perhaps not. Still… we'll find something."
As the professor turned to leave, Cael's shadow stretched up the wall behind him—just a little too far.
Oak paused at the door.
He didn't turn around.
"Strange weather this year," he said quietly. "Feels like a storm is coming."
And then he left.
Cael stared after him, feeling the soft pressure of something coiled behind him—watching, always watching.
The lab doors groaned as they opened.
Ash barrelled in first, stumbling over his own shoes. He wore a ridiculous baseball cap sideways and already had dirt on his face, despite it being only 9 a.m.
Gary entered next, hands in pockets, trying to look casual but scanning every surface like a hawk.
Cael stepped in behind them.
The lab was cooler than usual—sleek metal floors, machines with blinking lights, charts of Kanto's Pokémon on the walls. Oak stood near a low table with three Poké Balls, polished like coins.
A few aides watched from the edges of the room, trying to look uninvolved. One whispered to another: "That the quiet one? The Silen kid?"
Cael ignored it.
Ash dashed to the table. "I call dibs on Charmander!"
Oak raised a hand. "They haven't even been presented yet—"
"I still call it!"
Gary rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'll take Squirtle. Water beats fire anyway."
The tension was light. Familiar. Almost normal.
Cael approached last. His eyes didn't go to the Poké Balls.
They went to the shadows cast by the overhead lights. His own shadow bent strangely near the edges, like fabric stretching over something moving.
Oak's voice softened.
"Cael. Your turn."
Ash stepped aside. "Bulbasaur's not bad. Bit leafy, though."
Gary smirked. "Think he'll pick one at all?"
Cael stood at the table. The Poké Ball containing Bulbasaur sat quietly, unblinking. But Cael didn't move.
Instead, he whispered:
"You've followed me long enough. You can come out now."
The lights buzzed.
The air dropped ten degrees.
A gust of cold air swept from the floor upward—though the doors remained closed. Ash flinched. Gary backed up a step.
Then—from Cael's shadow—a shape rose.
Slowly. Smoothly. Like oil coiling into smoke.
Two gleaming eyes opened in midair. A wide grin formed, half-laughter, half-snarling crescent.
A Gastly.
No Poké Ball. No summoning device.
It simply hovered behind Cael's shoulder and let out a low, distorted chuckle.
Oak dropped the clipboard in his hand.
The aides froze.
Gary's mouth opened. "That's—what is that? You brought your own Pokémon?! That's cheating!"
Cael turned slightly, calm.
"I didn't bring it," he said. "It brought me."
Gastly cackled again. Then floated forward, curling in slow, lazy spirals around Cael's head. Its mist touched nothing. Yet everyone felt it—like invisible hands brushing the backs of their necks.
Ash whispered, "Cool…"
Oak stepped forward, slowly, careful not to move too fast.
"Cael," he said. "That… Gastly. Where did you get it?"
Cael didn't answer immediately.
He looked up into the hovering ghost's eyes. And it looked back—not like a pet. Not like a Pokémon.
Like an old friend.
"…It was the last thing I saw before I died," he said quietly.
Nobody understood.
But the Gastly did.
It blinked, floated down, and bumped its head gently against Cael's chest.
Cael placed a hand on its round, weightless body.
"I'm calling you Nyx," he said. "That alright?"
Nyx spun once in the air, then vanished—instantly sucked back into Cael's shadow like water spiraling into a drain.
The lights in the lab surged—flickered—and then steadied.
Oak straightened, but didn't speak for several seconds.
Then finally:
"…Right."
He cleared his throat, adjusted his lab coat, and scribbled something hurriedly on his clipboard.
"You… may consider the bond formal. Gastly—Nyx—is now your official partner."
Gary glared. "He didn't even use a Poké Ball."
Oak said nothing.
He only looked at Cael again.
His eyes were calculating. Not fearful, but cautious. Deeply, deeply cautious.
The starter ceremony concluded without celebration.
Ash walked out first, already bragging to a Pidgey in the sky about his future as Champion.
Gary left second, shoving his Squirtle's Poké Ball in his pocket without a glance.
Cael stood alone for a moment longer.
As he turned to go, Oak spoke one last time—soft, but direct.
"Cael," he said, "that Pokémon didn't come from me. Or this world."
Cael didn't look back.
"I know."
Then he stepped outside, Nyx's laughter curling faintly beneath his footsteps.
The sun was still climbing when Cael stepped outside the lab. The grass was slick with dew, and the wind carried the smell of fresh earth and something older—mossy, sweet, decaying.
Ash's distant voice rang out ahead:
"I'm gonna catch a Pidgey before lunch!"
A moment later, Gary's voice cut through:
"Only if it trips over your dumb face!"
Their footsteps crunched down the eastern path, laughter trailing behind.
Cael didn't follow.
He stood still, eyes half-lidded, letting the silence wrap around him.
Then Nyx emerged—quietly this time, rising from his shadow like vapor lifting from cool stone. The Gastly rotated lazily in the air beside him, its eyes watching everything. Everything.
"No need to rush," Cael murmured. "We're not racing them."
Nyx didn't respond in words. It didn't have to.
The woods just west of Pallet beckoned. A tangled stretch of shadow-laced trees where most kids never went alone. Oak had said there was nothing out there. That was a lie, of course. Most adults lied out of habit. Cael didn't hold it against them.
He stepped off the path and into the trees.
The forest felt... awake.
Not in the animal way. Not the scampering of Rattata or chirps of Spearow.
It was too still.
Too silent.
Cael reached into his backpack and pulled out a stick of dried meat. He tore a piece, held it in his palm, and waited.
Within moments, a small, pale blur flickered between branches.
Nyx let out a low, amused chortle.
From the canopy dropped a wild Murkrow, ragged-feathered and hungry-eyed. It looked between Cael and the meat.
"Go ahead," Cael said gently.
The Murkrow hesitated. Then took it, snatched it fast like it expected a trap. When none came, it lingered—perched on a branch just overhead. Watching him now.
Not prey. Not friend.
Just… curious.
Most Pokémon ran from humans.
Ghosts didn't.
They watched.
Cael sat down on a log overgrown with moss and pulled out his map. The League-registered route suggested Viridian Forest first.
He didn't care.
His fingers traced another path—unmarked and mostly forgotten. Lavender Town. The Pokémon Tower. A place of rest. Of echoes.
He folded the map and tucked it away.
Back at the lab, Oak stood alone in his private study, a heavy silence pressing the room like weight.
He inserted a small silver key into a drawer and unlocked it with a click.
Inside, a communication device—not a modern one. Old. Analog. Encoded.
He turned it on. Static hummed.
Then he pressed a single button.
The speaker crackled. Then a voice came through, dry as desert wind.
"…Samuel."
Oak's eyes narrowed slightly.
"It's begun," he said. "The child has awakened. It chose him."
Silence.
Then the voice chuckled—thin and hollow.
"Oh, I know."
"Already?"
"You think I wouldn't feel it?" the voice said. "The lab froze when that little wretch let it out. Even the dead turned their heads."
Oak hesitated. "You're not concerned?"
"I'm delighted," the voice said, honey-sweet and toxic. "Let the boy run. Let him find the places I left behind. When I catch him, I'll punish him properly."
The static deepened, and the signal cut.
In the woods, Cael and Nyx sat beneath a tree as the sun lowered behind them.
Nyx bobbed in the air, gaze fixed to the fading gold sky.
Cael whispered, "You think she's watching?"
Nyx tilted its head and grinned.
Then slowly, it sank again into Cael's shadow—vanishing without a sound.
The wind didn't move the branches.
But the shadows did.