The warm light of the fireplace filled the lobby, the soft crackling of wood the only sound. Cynthia walked slowly across the room and sat down on the sofa near the fire. Something had settled on her face that was not her usual composure, a quiet, complicated sadness.
She looked at the innkeeper sitting nearby.
"A substantial harvest," she said. "I found a handwritten manuscript in the Ancient Documents Area of the Grand Library. Written by the King himself."
Lucien's eyes, resting on her steadily, did not show surprise. He simply listened.
Cynthia recounted what she had read, her voice measured and unhurried.
"The two-thousand-year-old Sinnoh legend of the King from a Foreign Land is entirely true. The person who traveled to Hisui, led the reconciliation of humans and Pokémon there, and built a city from nothing, that was the Unova King, Lucien.
The Dragon God that befriended him was Kyurem. The Pokémon capable of transporting supplies across vast distances and crossing between two places in an instant, that was Hoopa."
Hoopa, hearing its own name, looked up with wide eyes.
Lucien gave it a small gesture: calm down and stay quiet.
He smiled at Cynthia. "It sounds like you found quite a lot."
In fact, she had found considerably more than that. The full picture had assembled itself across the hours she had spent in the library, moving from one document to another.
That great king who had led humanity and Pokémon to coexistence had begun as something much smaller: a lonely youngest prince of the Eindoak Kingdom. The old King had three sons. The eldest and second had married early and built their own foundations, and both carried ambitions for the throne. To keep his youngest child safe from the schemes of his brothers, the old King had sent him away to a distant and desolate land, the place that would one day become Lucien City, but at that time was a snow-covered wasteland at the edge of nothing.
Everyone had expected the young prince to disappear there. To freeze, or to live out an unremarkable existence and be forgotten.
Instead, through intelligence and resilience, he had built a home in that unfamiliar land, gathered the people around him, earned the recognition of the Legendary Dragon Kyurem, and when his brothers seized power and the Kingdom fell into chaos, he had led his forces back to end the civil war with the least possible bloodshed, and then had refrained from punishing his brothers harshly.
Loyal, compassionate, decisive, and without cruelty. The kind of person who appeared rarely in the historical record.
The firelight moved in the grate, warm and unsteady, and illuminated the inexplicable sadness that had settled in Cynthia's eyes. She looked at the gentle-faced man across from her and spoke the smaller, quieter history that the ancient texts had preserved.
"The world knows about his unification of Unova. What they don't know is that he began as the least valued of three princes in the Eindoak Kingdom." Her voice had softened without her intending it. "As a child, he was pushed aside and manipulated by his ambitious elder brothers. To protect him, the old King brought him to what was then an empty wasteland buried in snow. Everyone assumed he would not survive."
She paused.
"He survived. He gathered refugees in desperate circumstances, built strongholds, earned Kyurem's approval. And later, when the civil war came, he ended it with minimal casualties and showed mercy to the brothers who had driven him out."
She looked at the fireplace for a moment.
"Loyal, righteous, compassionate, but with complete decisiveness when it was needed. Such a person is genuinely rare."
Hoopa, which had been listening with its head tilted and its eyes growing wider with every sentence, had one small claw pressed to its mouth. It did not dare to speak. Its bright eyes slid sideways to Lucien.
Lucien sat quietly through all of it, his expression distant and still, a look in his eyes that was recognition held entirely inward.
The warm light fell across his face, and Cynthia looked at him, and something made her pause.
She did not say what the something was.
"What happened after that?" Lucien asked, quietly.
Cynthia collected herself and continued.
"But that king, after establishing a complete order for humans and Pokémon to coexist across the unified continent, simply vanished. No farewell, no last words, no indication of a chosen heir. He disappeared entirely into the current of history." She looked at the fire.
"Later scholars speculated endlessly. Some said he attained a kind of transcendence and departed to another world with his Legendary Pokémon. Others said he was severely wounded in the final campaigns and secretly buried. Others said he grew weary of kingship and withdrew to the mountains."
She looked up at Lucien.
"None of the answers are conclusive." Her eyes carried the particular expression of a scholar who has been living with an unsolved question long enough that it has become personal. "You've lived in Lucien City for many years. Have you ever heard any folk legends about what became of King Lucien? I have a feeling that a person with that kind of heart, who spent his entire life building something for others, he would not simply vanish without a reason that fits his character."
Lucien's gaze moved to the flames in the fireplace. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and unhurried, carrying the particular detachment of someone describing something they understand from the inside.
"There are scattered folk tales, but nothing that counts as historical record." He paused. "Perhaps for him, the peace and security of the people was the only thing he ever truly wanted. Once that was achieved, once the responsibility was fulfilled leaving would simply be the natural next step. Following his own heart, for the first time."
He continued, still looking at the fire.
"He spent his entire life working for the people and for the continent, never for himself. Perhaps disappearing was simply a way of setting down the weight of the crown and living out the rest of his days as an ordinary person, quietly, without the world looking at him. That would have suited him more than remaining on any throne."
Cynthia looked at him.
The words had landed somewhere she had not expected. She turned back to the fireplace and sat with them for a moment, and felt something shift in how she understood the question she had been carrying for years.
A king who had no interest in fame or monuments, whose only concern was the welfare of every living thing under his protection — of course he would not wait to be celebrated. He would wait for the work to be done, and then he would simply leave. Quietly, without ceremony, in exactly the way the history books had found so puzzling.
"I see," Cynthia said softly. The sadness in her eyes had changed into something gentler. "If that's what happened, then it was the right ending for him."
Lucien said nothing more. He turned back to his tea.
After a moment, he asked: "You'll be leaving soon?"
"In a few days," Cynthia said. "I found the answer I came for."
Though if anything, she was more curious now than when she had arrived. Lucien's traces were not limited to Sinnoh and Unova. Hoenn, Kanto, Kalos, Paldea, legends connected to that era existed in all of them. She had heard fragments. Perhaps she would visit those places someday and see what else the buried record held.
"Then good luck with the rest of your research," Lucien said, raising his cup slightly.
Cynthia nodded and stood, turning toward the stairs.
Then something at the edge of her vision stopped her.
The two unfamiliar Pokémon near the sofa were sharing a plate of donuts. She had been noticing them since she arrived, and neither her memory nor her Pokédex had produced any match for either of them.
"What Pokémon is that?" she asked, not quite managing to keep the researcher out of her voice.
Lucien followed her gaze and smiled.
"That's Hoopa."