The journey to Prenarch took several days for Aika and Dylan. Their legs were getting tired- but without much else direction- they continued on. Aika was careful to avoid stepping into any mystery dungeons again, her caution made them move slower through forests but it saved them from unnecessary trouble.

They weren't quite sure what to expect when they got there. The story they heard about the "Burning of Prenarch" sounded unlikely to them, but they still felt there was some possibility of it. At times, they wondered if the town of "Prenarch" existed at all or if they would just find barren land where it was purported to be. They discussed a few different ways the events might've happened, or if the massacre even happened at all. They didn't know. So they just kept moving forward.

It took many days and nights, but they finally reached it. They reached the spot their map said "Prenarch".

The town did exist, that they could finally see it with their own eyes as they approached from a distance. That answered one question they had, but there were still many more.

They were still too far away to make out many details. As they kept walking forward, Aika remembered the pair of small binoculars that Yuki had given her, so she stopped to retrieve them from her backpack. After seeing Aika stop, Dylan stopped walking forward as well.

Using the binoculars she could finally look at the town closer. She saw that the town wasn't abandoned, but seemed damaged. Buildings had walls, roofs, and entire sections which were clearly repaired from some past damage with the new repairs having materials which didn't match the building's original materials. At some parts, there were still scorched materials. She slowly moved the binoculars to glance over all the buildings, until she stopped at something which caught her eye. In the town, there was a wooden monument of some with vines of flowers placed on it, and in front of it was a series of gravestones. She continued looking at it- inspecting it closely- until suddenly she spoke up.

"...Dylan?" Aika asked.

"Yeah?"

"What were the exact details we were told on that 'Burning of Prenarch' massacre again?"

"A group of humans turned into pokemon attacked the town and killed some people."

"I mean with the numbers of it. Do you remember that?"

"Wasn't it that four humans attacked and killed seventeen people?" Dylan said.

"Yeah… that's what I remember it being as well."

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I'm seeing a monument of some sort with some gravestones surrounding it…"

"Uh-huh…"

"And I'm counting twenty-one graves," Aika said.

Dylan's eyes widened and his face fell, Aika took the binoculars off and looked at him. They turned to look at the town again, and began moving towards it at a hastened pace.

They ran at a speed that began to exhaust them, but they felt it was necessary. They got closer and closer to the town, until they eventually came up to what Aika had seen so they could inspect it properly.

It wasn't just a monument, it was an entire cemetery with a sheer number of graves and tombstones. They made a count of how many there were, and they found that Aika's first count was correct: there were twenty-one tombstones present. For each and every last one of them, the date of death was the same.

Aika and Dylan walked between the gravestones, reading the text upon them. Both stopped once they found something: four tombstones in a row, each with a question mark put in place for the birth year but having flowers on them just like the other graves did. The stones read "Courtney the human bayleef", "Tory the human charmeleon", "Mia the human eevee", and "Briana the human sobble".

As Aika and Dylan continued gazing at the graves, a voice called out to them from behind. "Hey! Who are you two?"

They turned around to see a spinarak standing behind them. He looked to be about the same age as Aika, and his expression was serious. "Why are you here?" he asked. His accent was clearly of a country, not like the boltund they had met before.

"We're just two travelers who have been going across the countryside," Aika began speaking. "We heard about this 'Burning of Prenarch' tragedy, and since we were within the area we wanted to check it out."

"Why did this take your interest?" the spinarak pressed on.

"It's just that we were-"

"I'm a human," Dylan said.

Aika immediately turned her head to Dylan, her eyes wide. "Why didn't you keep that a secret?!" she thought. The spinarak was also taken aback by the sudden admission.

"Is that true?" he asked.

"Yes," Dylan said. "I came to this world very recently, only waking up by a pond with no idea how I got here- and I still don't know. I heard about this 'Burning of Prenarch' massacre while we were in another town, but parts about the story we were told didn't seem to make sense. So we walked over here to learn the truth."

The spinarak took a second to take that in. His posture seemed to relax somewhat as he reconsidered, but he clearly kept his guard raised. "And who is the girl?"

"This is Aika. She was the first one who found me when I came to this world, and she's been with me ever since," Dylan said. "She's a friend."

Aika was still surprised by Dylan's confession, but she turned to face the spinarak again and gave a nod. "That's right. We've been through quite a bit together already."

"Why is some of your fur black?" the spinarak asked.

"That's a… different story altogether," Aika said. "That will take awhile to explain."

The spinarak seemed to dismiss that to return his focus to the litten. His face was difficult to read, not just because he was a bug type pokemon. It seemed there were a few thoughts and emotions he was working through. "Did anyone follow you?" he eventually asked.

"No, I am sure of that," Aika answered. "We took a weird and windy path to get here to dodge any potential mystery dungeon entrances, and we don't come from anywhere significant at all. No one could've followed us."

"Yeah," Dylan confirmed. "We're just here to learn what happened here."

The spinarak paused for another moment, retaining his stance. "...It began sometime before that day," he began to say. "One day when we were still tendin' to crops, there were four people who suddenly ran into town, each looking starved, frantic, and even hurt. We calmed them down and heard their stories.

They were all humans- just like you are. They had been wrapped up in a place called the… P.P.F.F." he didn't make eye contact with them as he recounted. "They were told that they could help the world and repent for the actions of Armin if they worked for them, and so they did. But no matter how much they worked- no matter how much they were exhausted- no matter how much they were abused- it was never enough. They realized how they were being abused, so in the night the four all fled together- running off in a random direction in the countryside without a map. This town here was just the first one they ran into.

We gave them hospitality and fed them. Nice folks those four were…"

"...What happened then?" Dylan asked.

"They all came after them," the spinarak continued. "After their four favorite victims got away, the P.P.F.F. wanted them back. They demanded we hand over the humans back to them, but we refused. We protected the humans and turned them down. Their leader started coming over on a daily basis to make her demands- pretending to be cordial- but we kept the humans safe in the town hall. Then one night… then one night…"

"...They attacked?" Dylan asked.

The spinarak seemed to disassociate for a moment. In his eyes, they could see him reliving so much. "...They attacked the town from all sides. They set buildings ablaze, broke through everything, and killed everyone even remotely in their path so they could get to the humans and slaughter them," he told the account in the most matter-of-fact way he could.

Aika and Dylan contemplated that. With the damaged buildings, the graves behind them, and the spinarak being from the town itself, it was clear what they were saying was true. Just thinking about that boltund from the P.F.F.F. made them feel sick, the story he told them was completely false. It was even harder on Dylan, he knew that people hated him for just being human, but now he knew that he was being hunted, there were possibly hundreds who would actively want to kill him the moment they learned of his identity.

"...I am so sorry," Aika said.

"Just be delicate with those graves. I don't want you stepping on them or touching them," he said. "Now… who are you? I get it that he's a human and you're his friend, but who are you as people?" his voice carried a queer sense of curiosity with it.

"I'm Aika Thompson," Aika told him.

"I'm Dylan Blanche," Dylan said.

"Alright… I'm Shawn. Just Shawn," the spinarak said.

"Nice to meet you," Dylan said.

"If you don't mind me asking, when is your birthday?" Shawn asked Dylan.

"May seventeenth," Dylan said.

"I mean, how old are you?"

"I'm fourteen."

"Alright," Shawn said.

"I'm sorry, I still think I'm processing this information," Aika admitted. "I really thought it was just seventeen people who died. But no, it was twenty-one."

Shawn looked annoyed at Aika for saying that. "It wasn't just that," Shawn said.

"Did more than twenty-one die?"

"No. They're not just numbers like seventeen or twenty-one, they were people. They had their own lives," Shawn said.

"What do you mean?" Aika asked.

"Come with me, let me show you something," Shawn said.

The spinarak led Aika and Dylan deeper into the town. He mostly kept quiet as he walked, only occasionally glancing back to ensure they were still following.

On the walk, they got a much closer look at the state of the town. It was random which buildings were harmed, completely without rhyme or reason. The structures were not just damaged, but they were scarred: even the repairs made to them couldn't hide the fact that they were once torn and singed. At other places, there were empty places where buildings once stood that were never raised again. There were still people in the town besides Shawn, and each of them focused on Aika and Dylan after seeing them. Their gazes touched them, but didn't piece them.

The spinarak led them into a building, one which didn't look very different from the others. He opened the door and guided them inside. The room was densely packed with different odds and ends, approximating a storage room. Shawn walked over to a chest on the edge of the room and put in a code to unlock it, Aika and Dylan looking over him as he did. All that was inside the chest was a singular preserved manuscript.

"Take a look at this. But just be very, very gentle with it," Shawn said to Aika. "And Dylan, I don't want you touching this."

"Hey."

"I'm not saying that because you're a human, I'm saying that since you're a fire type," Shawn clarified.

"Okay, that's fair."

Aika reached town and pulled the book out, being careful as Shawn had told her. She moved the cover away and looked at the first page. She became confused. It wasn't some journal, history book, or even some sacred text. It was a novel titled "Arnold and the False Birthright". Aika continued to flip the pages to very briefly skim the words on it. It was a purely fictional story told in the third person of people going on a fantasy adventure.

"Why are you showing this?" Aika asked.

"Flip to page two-twelve," Shawn said.

Aika did as she was told, pulling up the corner of the page to look at just the page number and adjusting it to find the exact right page. When she fully turned the book to that page, she saw that the left page was only half-filled with words while the page on the right was completely blank. She lifted the page to glance at the next few pages: they were completely blank as well.

"The mire stunk like death with its sickening concoction of mud, gas, decay, and all other wretched substances. They were glad to have finally escaped from Fredrick's pursuit; less than glad to be interlopping into land where no pokemon desires to go. Arnold and Kiana held onto each other to make sure they wouldn't be separated, and they watched every step they took to avoid slipping into one of the rancid ponds of unknown depth. They felt sick, but they persisted on. It was two days of traveling before they finally found a way out of the mire, finding a path to the town of" was the last paragraph written in the manuscript.

"It's unfinished?" Aika asked.

"This was a novel which Isiah the mawile was writing when he was still alive," Shawn said. "He had been planning and working on it for a good amount of his life. He took a short break from writing to give himself time to think of a new location name in his world. Then later that same day, he was killed in the Burning of Prenarch.

Now, this is how the book will remain. No one will ever be able to read the full version, no one will ever be able to see how he intended for it to end. It might've been a masterpiece that sold a thousand copies. Or it might not have. We'll never know."

Aika looked back at the final page, reading over it again. "I… I see," her voice was somber.

"That's what killing is," Shawn said. "Each and every last one of them had their own lives, their own story that was cut short without any sort of right ending. Isaiah the mawile, the four humans Courney, Tory, Briana, and Mia. Joshua the carracosta, Irene the floette, Daniel the dedenne, Rosa the eldegoss, Tiana the gogoat and her two kids Eve and Micheal, Noir the zigzagoon, Ruth the gabite, Adrian the slowking, Charlie the indeedee and his wife of three years Noelle the breloom, Ari the nidoqueen, Eber the archen, Brandon the houndour, and Edith the mabosstiff," Shawn recited each of them off of memory without taking a break.

"I understand," Aika said, closing the book as gently as possibly to return it to the chest.

"That's why I don't like it when you treat them as just 'twenty-one'. They aren't numbers, they were people with their own goals, feelings, relationships, and names. Every murder is a story left unfinished," Shawn looked to the ground. "I think… those humans probably had it the worst among us all. We never asked them when they were born, so we had to just leave that part as unknown on their gravestones. Not even their graves can be finished. It was such a simple thing- asking them how old they are- but we didn't think to do it until it was too late," Shawn lamented.

"I'm sorry I'm… feeling nauseous, I need to leave," Dylan said.

The human turned litten walked out of the building the way they came in. Aika finished setting the book back down in the chest and walked after him.

Dylan dashed across the street, just walking to the edge of a ditch to get away from things. Aika caught up to him, and she could see he was beginning to breathe heavily.

"Are you okay?" Aika asked.

"I just- no. I'm not," Dylan sputtered out. "I don't want to get killed."

"I know, I'm here for you," she placed a paw on him.

"I don't want to die," Dylan reiterated. "If I get killed here, will I go back to my own world, or will I just- I just…"

"I'm so sorry for this," Aika said. "I really thought I'd be able to stomach whatever I saw here, but…"

"I don't know what to do!" Dylan raised his voice. "I have on idea where I am in this world, I know barely anyone, and there is an entire organization of people who hate me."

"We'll think of something," Aika said. "I promise, we'll think of something."

The two spent longer at the side of that ditch than they would have liked, just trying to calm down. The town around them was one step towards ruin, and they couldn't earnestly say that they were much better off. They spoke no words to each other; just spending solemn time in each other's presence. It was only broken when a voice spoke to them.

"I'm sorry for that," Shawn said.

The two turned to face the spinarak again.

"I was just trying to get you to understand more," he explained.

"It's… okay," Dylan said. "We would've needed that warning sooner or later."

"You've traveled a far way on this journey, haven't you?" Shawn asked.

"Longer than you'd think, most likely," Aika answered.

"Where are you goin' from here? That's what I'm curious about."

"I'm… workshopping the plans right now," Aika said.

"You can leave if you want. We all have goals," Shawn said. "But if you will hear me out: I would like you to help me. And I think I can help you."

End of chapter 19.