Cynthia reached the valley before sunset.
Genesis had tried to slow her down along the way. A ruined tower appeared in her path. Wild Pokémon clustered around a broken shrine.
A group of new players had nearly been overrun by a pack of ghost-types that moved with a kind of intelligence no ordinary game enemy should have had.
She dealt with each one and kept moving.
The valley itself was silent.
Silver grass covered the ground. Strange lights drifted overhead even though daylight had not fully faded. At the center stood an altar carved with three symbols: a rainbow wing, a black spiral, and a green serpent.
"Ho-Oh. Giratina. Rayquaza," Cynthia said.
Behind her, the leaves stirred.
Kairos stepped out, Dragonite at his side and Marshadow doing a terrible job of staying hidden in his shadow.
Cynthia didn't turn around right away.
The altar had already told her she wasn't the first one here. The dust around its base had been disturbed, and one of the three symbols still held a faint warmth that had nothing to do with the sun.
"You found this before I did," she said.
"I followed a disturbance."
"From this valley?"
"From whatever left those marks."
"But you knew enough to bring Dragonite and hide something in your shadow."
Down by his feet, Marshadow shifted, and Kairos glanced at him.
Marshadow muttered, "Told you she was terrifying."
Cynthia's eyes flicked over to him.
Marshadow shrank back into the dark.
They had crossed paths once before, in the Ghost World. Then, Kairos had appeared under Gengar's cover, traded a few polite words, and vanished before Cynthia could ask anything that mattered.
This time, she wasn't letting him off that easily.
"Genesis isn't just a game," Cynthia said.
"These legendary traces are real. If Ho-Oh, Rayquaza, and Giratina are tied to this, it is not only a game problem."
Something flickered in Kairos's eyes, just for a moment.
Cynthia caught it.
She couldn't tell exactly what had struck a nerve, only that something had.
The altar lit up beneath her palm. A line of rainbow light split into two paths: one revealed a rusted sword, the other a crescent moon hanging over an island sky.
"Galar and Alola," Kairos said.
"Galar first," Cynthia answered.
"Do you object?"
"You showed up in the middle of my investigation while holding back information."
Kairos gave a small nod. "No."
The symbols around the altar began to turn.
One ring moved clockwise. Another turned the other way. Ancient letters surfaced in the stone, burned for a moment, then sank back out of sight.
"It is reacting to the symbols," Cynthia said.
"And choosing a route," Kairos said.
The Galar path brightened first. Wind rolled out of it, cold and wet, carrying the scent of old forest and iron. A route prompt formed at the edge of their shared map: Galar layer unlocked.
"Galar first, then," Cynthia said.
Kairos stepped onto the path beside her.