"It's me." Arceus's voice was flat, but Lin Hao stopped in the middle of slipping his phone into his pocket.
The phone's screen was still lit, the glow of Cyrus's message falling across his knuckles. He stared at the text for a while before slowly turning the screen off. "He wants to summon you?"
"Not summon." Arceus answered slowly, enunciating each word. "He wants to force open a passage connected to the beginning of creation. Spear Pillar is the only access point."
"What if he succeeds?"
"Time and space will shatter. Order will collapse."
Inside System Space, even Groudon raised its head. The massive beast that spent its days lazily rolling around sat upright for once, its tail no longer swaying. Ho-Oh opened its mouth but made no sound.
Lin Hao closed his eyes. Behind him, May and Red stood beside the ruined arena. Security personnel rushed onto the field, shouting for the crowd to evacuate and carrying away the injured. The rising clamor collided with those words in his mind, leaving neither clear.
Two hours later, in an emergency conference room at Silver Conference headquarters, over a dozen people sat around a round conference table. The Johto League president occupied the head seat, three members of the Elite Four were present, and Norman attended as Hoenn's representative.
The holographic display was divided into two screens: Steven on the left, Cynthia on the right. Lin Hao had been seated at the far end of the table. Pikachu lay listlessly on the tabletop before him, its tail drooping. Footage of Lugia's arrival played on a loop on the large screen, casting flickering light over Pikachu, but it did not so much as lift its eyelids.
Pryce of Johto's Elite Four was the first to slap the table. "Article seven of the