The corruption started with the leaves.
Three days after their return to the New Verdant, the silver saplings—once glowing with peaceful faces—began to bleed.
Not blood.
A thick, black ichor that smelled of burnt memory and synthetic grief. The stored pain from the Ascension Bloom, held within the Synkairo's crystalline core, was leaking. And it wasn't just staining the soil.
It was rewriting it.
Teo saw it first through his left eye: the aura of Bathala's heir flickering between gold and sickly violet, its roots recoiling from the tainted earth. The Seedlings, once healing together in quiet circles, now flinched at unexpected touches. One boy woke screaming, convinced his hands were turning to bone.
"It's not just pain," Yumi signed, her face pale as she examined a withered leaf. "It'sbetrayal. The Bloom didn't just hold suffering. It held the Cult's lie—that bonds are weakness."
Rin confirmed it with her Conclave sensors. "The corruption is psychic. It's making them doubt their own connections."
Veyla stood at the edge of the grove, arms crossed, her pre-cognitive Haki twitching. "Giratina warned me. Pain that isn't processed doesn't heal. It infects."
Teo knelt beside the afflicted Synkairo—now half its size, its leaf-fins dull, its core clouded with black veins. Through his bond with Lucario, he felt its distress: "Too heavy. Can't hold it alone."
He looked at Yumi. "You said the Synkairo can't hold the pain forever. What do we do?"
Yumi's eyes hardened with resolve. She walked to her shelter and returned with a bundle of dried reeds—pandán leaves, stripped and cured, the same kind her grandmother used to weave banig sleeping mats in Cebu.
"We don't destroy the pain," she signed, fingers moving with urgent grace. "Weweaveit."
The ritual began at moonrise.
In the center of the grove, Yumi laid out a large, half-finished banig—not for sleeping, but for memory. The Seedlings gathered around it, silent. Rin calibrated her sensors to monitor psychic feedback. Veyla stood guard, her Haki scanning the treeline for distortions.
And Teo?
He sat with the Synkairo, hands on its clouded core.
"Ready?" he asked Lucario through their bond.
Always.
He closed his eyes and pushed—not to extract the pain, but to invite it out.
The Synkairo shuddered.
Black ichor seeped from its core, not as liquid, but as tendrils of memory:
—A trainer abandoning their Pokémon during the Rending.
—An elf child screaming as her bond was severed.
—Rin's original body begging for death.
The memories swirled above the banig, thick with despair.
Yumi didn't flinch.
She began to weave.
Not with thread.
With intent.
Each pandán reed she laid represented a truth:
"Abandonment is betrayal, not destiny."
"Pain shared is not weakness, but strength."
"We choose our bonds, even in loss."
As she wove, she sang—an old Visayan lullaby her lola used to hum during typhoons:
"Dilaw nga alibangbang,
Lupad ngadto sa kahapsay…
Ayaw kahadlok, akong gugma,
Balik gyud ko nimo."
(Yellow butterfly, fly to peace… Don't be afraid, my love, I will return to you.)
The black tendrils responded.
Not resisting.
Integrating.
The ichor darkened the reeds, yes—but the weave held. Stronger. Deeper. The pain didn't vanish.
It became part of the pattern.
[ PAIN-WEAVING RITUAL — SUCCESSFUL ]
[ CORRUPTION CONTAINED — TRANSFORMED INTO PROTECTIVE SYMBOL ]
[ NEW ITEM: "BANIG OF REMEMBERING" — WEARER GAINS +300% RESISTANCE TO BOND-BREAKING ABILITIES ]
As the final reed was woven, the Synkairo let out a soft chime.
Its core cleared.
Not to silver.
To gold.
It had evolved—not in form, but in purpose.
Now, it wouldn't just store pain.
It would transform it.
But the victory came at a cost.
As Teo stood, he stumbled.
Not from exhaustion.
From confusion.
For a split second, he couldn't tell if the thought "We did it" was his… or Lucario's.
Their fused consciousness, once a seamless current, now flickered like a faulty wire.
"You're pushing too hard," Lucario sent, concerned. "The Bloom's pain blurred the boundary."
Teo rubbed his temples. "I know. But we can't afford to fracture now."
He looked east, where Veyla stood rigid, eyes wide.
"What is it?" Rin asked.
Veyla turned, her voice tight. "Giratina's warning just got clearer. The Sower isn't just targeting eggs."
She met Teo's gaze. "They're going to sterilize the Glass Sea—poison the waters so no new life can form. No eggs. No bonds. Ever."
Teo's blood ran cold. "Luminous Atoll is there. It's the last sanctuary for unhatched Pokémon."
Yumi signed urgently: We have to warn them.
Rin pulled up a holographic map. "Atoll's protected by a Luminescent Barrier—only those with pure intent can pass."
Teo frowned. "And the Cult will send someone who believes they're saving the world."
Veyla's expression darkened. "Like Rin's original body. Like me, before I remembered."
Silence fell.
They all knew what that meant.
The Sower wouldn't be a monster.
They'd be a true believer.
And that made them far more dangerous.
That night, as the group prepared to leave, Teo sat alone with Lucario beneath Bathala's heir.
"I'm scared," he admitted, voice low. "What if I lose myself in you? What if 'we' erase 'me'?"
Lucario placed a paw over his heart. "You are not less for sharing your soul. You are more*. And I would rather fade into you than live without you."*
Teo leaned into the touch, tears in his eyes.
Then—Yumi appeared, holding the finished Banig of Remembering.
She didn't sign.
She draped it over his shoulders.
The woven reeds hummed with quiet strength, the black ichor now part of a beautiful, complex pattern.
"You carry us all," she said, her first spoken words since the ritual. "But you don't carry alone."
Teo smiled faintly. "Then let's go save the next generation."
At dawn, they crossed into the eastern wastes, the Banig glowing faintly at Teo's shoulders, the Synkairo now golden at Yumi's side.
Behind them, the New Verdant stood strong—its saplings blooming white flowers where the corruption had been.
Ahead, the Glass Sea shimmered like a wound of light.
And deep within, the Sower waited.
Not with weapons.
With certainty.
But Teo knew the truth.
Certainty without compassion was just another kind of blindness.
And he would make them see.