Three days later, he stood in front of the Old Chateau, the key hot in his pocket. The Dowsing Machine wasn't working anymore. Ever since he'd touched the map, the app showed only static—a single, unblinking red dot in the center of the screen, always pointing down.
The door that did not exist was behind a rotting bookcase on the lowest sub-level. It was not wood or stone. It was a sheet of polished obsidian, perfectly smooth, reflecting Lucas's own face back at him. But the reflection was wrong. His doppelgänger was smiling. Lucas was not.
And sometimes, late at night, when he pressed it to his ear, he could hear something whispering on the other side. Not words. Not quite. Just the sound of a world being unmade and remade, over and over, waiting for someone to finally look.
He should have left. Any sensible person would have.
"The place between resets." The man gestured at the red lake. "Every time someone uses the Azure Flute to ascend to the Hall of Origin, every time a trainer captures Dialga or Palkia and forces them to obey, reality fractures. Most fractures heal. Some don't. This is one that didn't. I've been here for three hundred years, give or take. Time doesn't work right."
Today, though, the machine was screaming.
He never did find out what the shard did. He was too afraid to use it, too afraid to drop it, too afraid to show anyone. He simply carried it, always, a hidden item in his own bag, ticking like a bomb.
But he was a collector.