Terapagos walked toward Lucien, raised its small head, and looked up at him with eyes like hidden stars, full of uncomplicated curiosity.
Lucien crouched down to its level and reached out to rest a hand on its head.
"Terapagos. My name is Lucien. It's good to meet you."
Terapagos blinked, seeming to turn the name over. Then it let out a happy sound. "Lucien! Lucien!"
Hoopa shot forward. "I'm Hoopa! Lucien and I were the ones who brought you up from underground!"
Terapagos looked at Hoopa with the same open delight. The Pokémon gathered around the room, Dragonite, Volcarona, all of them, looked at the small, luminous creature discovering the world for the first time in two million years, and the atmosphere in the room was something that did not need to be named.
Through the combined effort of the entire territory, Unova's infrastructure reached completion.
Railway lines extended outward from Lucien City in every direction, connecting every region of Unova into a single network. Power plants were built one after another, and electric lights reached every household. In Unova at night, the darkness no longer meant isolation or fear.
Lucien stood in the castle and looked out at the city: an unbroken expanse of lit windows stretching to the horizon. Through years of steady development, Lucien City had grown into the largest city in the Unova Region. The difference between what he had first arrived to and what stood before him now was not incremental. It was a different world.
Humans and Pokémon farming together, traveling together, cooking together, walking through the markets together. In that moment, Lucien felt something close to what he had always been working toward.
"Your Majesty," Elif's voice came from behind.
Lucien turned.
"The King of the Paldea Empire has agreed to cooperate. Having observed what the Pokémon League accomplished in Kalos, he is willing to establish a League on Paldean soil."
Lucien was not surprised. From his time walking through the Paldean capital, he had seen enough of the King's character to know the answer before the envoy returned.
"Send Trainers and envoys to Paldea," Lucien said. "And send envoys to Hoenn as well. Begin making contact and work toward cooperation."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Elif departed. Lucien turned back to the window and stood for a while with his Pokémon beside him, looking at the lit city below.
Time moved the way it always does: steadily, and faster than it seems.
By year 176 of the Kingdom Calendar, the world had changed entirely.
Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Galar, Paldea. Pokémon Leagues had been established across all of them in succession. Under the League's framework, people everywhere had learned to live alongside Pokémon and work with them.
A new profession had taken hold and flourished: Trainer. Someone who trained Pokémon, faced other Trainers in battle, challenged Gyms, collected badges, and aimed for the Championship. It had become the dream of countless people across every region.
In Lucien City, the twentieth World League Tournament was underway.
Travelers had come from every region by steam train to witness it. The city was more full of people and noise and energy than it had ever been. By comparison, the castle was unusually quiet.
Lucien, forty-four years old in appearance, stood in the castle and looked down at the scene below.
Twenty-eight years had passed since he arrived in this world. Not a short time, and not a long one measured against the eternity Xerneas had given him, but enough to change almost everything. His appearance was unchanged. The same dark hair, the same face. The people who had known him from the beginning had aged, and some had not survived to see this day.
Elif was gone. The old butler had passed away years ago, quiet and steady until the end. The old King in Eindoak was gone as well. Lucien still remembered the day clearly, and the image of Victini pressed against the tombstone, not moving.
The old King and Elif had both urged him over the years to marry, to have children, to give the Kingdom a succession. Lucien had never been able to bring himself to. As someone who would outlive everyone around him, the thought of watching a family age and leave before him felt like a particular kind of loss he could not explain in a way they fully understood.
He had chosen instead to remain as he was, surrounded by his Pokémon, who were his closest companions and would be for as long as they both lived.
But his old human friends were mostly gone now, and the loneliness of that was a thing he carried without talking about it much. His people looked at him with reverence and love, and he returned those feelings genuinely, but it was not the same as being known by someone.
He exhaled slowly.
The world was settled. Every region had its League, its Trainers, its order. The integration of humans and Pokémon had become simply how people lived. There was nothing left that required his direct management, no crisis that needed his presence, no region that still needed him specifically to build something.
It was time for the life he had always said he would live once the work was done.
On a clear morning, Lucien called together the League members and his officials and told them he was leaving Lucien City.
The reaction was immediate and genuine. Several officials wept. Lord Lucien had been the fixed point of their lives, the belief that held everything steady. The news that he was leaving shook them in ways they had not prepared for.
Lucien looked at them all and smiled.
"I trust every one of you. Even when I am gone, I will always be watching over this land. Nothing will change that."
The distress in the room settled slightly.
He departed with his Pokémon: Dragonite, Volcarona, Serperior, Minccino, Golett, Kyurem, Hoopa, Victini, Terapagos. All of them traveling together to the Tree of Beginning, to where Mew waited. There, with wood and their own hands and the help of Pokémon, they began to build a home among the roots of the ancient tree.
The wooden house was built into the sturdiest branch of the Tree of Beginning, anchored by thousand-year-old vines at its base and open to the clouds above.
The air around it was cool and fragrant with living things year-round, and occasionally a beam of seven-colored light would come through the gaps in the branches and fall across the small petals scattered on the ground below, impossibly gentle.
Mew was beside itself with happiness. From now on, there would be no more loneliness. Lucien rested a hand on its soft head and smiled, the most relaxed smile he had allowed himself since the day he had first taken up the work of being King.
No official duties. No territorial questions. No weight of being a symbol to anyone. Here, he was simply a person who wanted to spend time with the Pokémon he loved.
Hoopa produced all its stored snacks and soft cushions through a ring and arranged them into a small mountain inside the house. Dragonite tidied the surrounding branches and built a calm, sheltered space around the house. Volcarona scattered golden-red Shield Dust slowly from its wings, wrapping the wooden house in warmth that would not leave even on the coldest nights.
Serperior curled at the entrance, its presence carrying the faint smell of green grass, keeping watch. Minccino and the others organized everything inside into careful order. Golett laid a smooth stone path alongside the house.
Kyurem settled on an ice platform nearby, its cold blending into the warmth of the place without disrupting it. Victini circled around Lucien bringing the particular lightness it always carried. Terapagos nestled against his shoulder and pressed its small head into his hair.
"Lucien," it said softly, in that small voice, and the word held more than it contained.
The setting sun came through the Tree of Beginning and turned everything the color of tangerines. Lucien sat in the meadow outside the house with his Pokémon gathered around him, one hand resting on Mew's fur, his gaze moving through the layers of cloud and distance toward something he couldn't quite see anymore but knew was there.
Lucien City, lit and busy. The League Tournament in full swing. The people and Pokémon he had spent thirty years building a world for.
News came to him occasionally, carried by Pokémon birds from across the regions. The Paldea League tournament was vibrant and well-attended. The Hoenn seas were calm, the Pokémon there at peace.
Coronet City in Sinnoh remained steady and purposeful. In every region, humans and Pokémon were living well. The Gym Leaders were doing their work. Each League Tournament revealed new young Trainers with genuine promise. Children grew up knowing Pokémon as companions rather than threats, and the world they inhabited as a result was fundamentally different from the one they would have inherited.
Lucien listened to all of this and felt what had been tense in him for nearly thirty years finally, fully release.
He had made the world he had come to make. He had watched it go from desolate to prosperous, from fearful to coexisting, from separated to intertwined. And now he could let it continue on its own, as it was always meant to do.
At night, Mew would lead him through the hidden places of the Tree of Beginning, past the sleeping forms of the ancient Legendary Pokémon that had rested there since before the world was fully formed.
Hoopa would play its small mischievous games until a look from Lucien brought it back into line. Victini would settle beside him when sleep was slow to come, its warmth working against the quiet kind of sadness that sometimes found him in the dark. Volcarona kept the night from being cold.
Sometimes he would slip back into the world with his Pokémon, dressed as an ordinary traveler, and walk through the cities he had built. He would sit on the streets of Lucien City and watch young Trainers pass by, talking about their League dreams with the complete certainty that the future was worth planning for.
He would see the children running with their Pokémon through lit streets, and feel that the years had been well spent.
He visited Eindoak and stood for a while before the old King's grave. Victini stood beside him, no longer weeping the way it had for years after, but still carrying something. Lucien stayed until it was ready to go.
He visited every place his path had taken him. Cyllage City in Kalos. Slumbering Town in Galar. Calyrex's Abundant Shrine. The places where Zacian and Zamazenta kept their watch. The Eternal Forest where Xerneas had given him its gift and then gone to sleep. Every one of these places was alive and well-tended, marked by his passage but no longer dependent on him.
No one recognized the quiet traveler as the person who had unified the regions, built the League, and shaped the era they were all living in. To the world, Lucien was a legend, a name attached to a founding story, a belief.
To himself, he was someone with very good company and a great deal of time to use well.
The house in the Tree of Beginning remained standing, year after year, as Leagues rose and Champions changed and the world went on becoming more itself. He was no longer a king. He was Terapagos's constant, Hoopa's companion, Mew's fellow resident of the most beautiful tree in the world, and a family member that none of the Pokémon around him had any intention of ever leaving.
Mornings came with birdsong and the sounds of Pokémon waking. He spent his days exploring the Tree with Mew, watching Hoopa and Dragonite invent new games, seeing Volcarona dance through the forest in light and fire. At dusk, he sat under the branches and watched the sky change. At night, he slept beneath the stars.
The loneliness that had followed him for years had been gradually, completely, replaced.
As someone who would outlive most things, he would witness more change than he could now imagine. But he would not face any of it alone. Beside him, always, would be a group of Pokémon who had chosen him, and whom he had chosen.
And the land he had built, with its lights in every window and its peace in every season, would go on being what he had made it.