While the various powers in the Kanto Region secretly struggled for their own ends, casting one invisible net after another, a change capable of overturning the entire game was quietly unfolding in a corner almost everyone had forgotten: Cinnabar Island.
At the center of the island, the active volcano called Mt. Ember was Cinnabar Island's symbol, as well as a backdrop its residents had long grown accustomed to. The wisps of white smoke drifting from its crater year-round were as gentle and harmless as cooking smoke rising from the town's chimneys. Children even pointed toward that column of smoke to find their way home.
But today, everything changed.
The sleeping behemoth awoke.
The island's shaking was the first sign anyone noticed. At first, it was only a faint tingling beneath their feet, like the sensation of a large truck passing nearby. But soon, the tremors became steady and powerful, their frequency approaching the rhythm of a human heartbeat, as though an immense heart were beating beneath the entire island, every contraction making the earth shudder.
Then came the change in the sky's color.
The white column of smoke that had once drifted lazily into the sky vanished. In its place was a thick, savage dragon of black smoke. It no longer drifted upward, but shot straight up with a resolute force. Within that dense black smoke churned hundreds of millions of tons of volcanic ash and debris burned red-hot, forcibly tearing a hideous wound in the azure sky. The pungent smell of sulfur, like rotten eggs mixed with the metallic tang of blood, enveloped the entire island, making every breath searing and painful.
The enormous black dragon rose high into the sky, then spread out limply, forming a heavy, dark-red canopy of clouds that looked as though it had been