I sat by the window in the east parlor, staring out at the garden I’d walked past a hundred times without really seeing.
Funny how that works.
You live somewhere long enough, and the things around you stop being things and start being background.
The garden was just…
there.
Overgrown.
Forgotten.
Another part of the estate that needed work I didn’t have the energy for.
But Ingvild had found it.
She’d claimed the little pond as if it were hers by right, and honestly, watching her sit by it in the mornings, trailing her fingers through the water like she was reacquainting herself with the world—I wanted to give her something.
Something that matched that quiet joy she was starting to rediscover.
So I decided to make her a Milotic.
Seemed simple enough.
I’d been experimenting with Annihilation Maker for weeks now, pushing its limits, seeing what I could pull out of thin air.
Pokémon weren’t exactly standard fare, but the logic was there.
The idea was there.
I could see it in my head—the elegant serpentine form, the iridescent scales, the way it would glide through the water like living silk.
I closed my eyes and reached for that power.
Focused.
Pushed.
And…
nothing.
Well, not nothing.
There was a flicker.
A shimmer.
The ghost of a shape that started to form and then dissolved like smoke.
I opened my eyes and stared at my hands.
Right.
Of course.
Annihilation Maker was powerful, but it wasn’t omnipotent.
At base level, it had limits.
And apparently, “creating a fully realized Pokémon from scratch” was one of them.
I’d have to wait for Balance Breaker for that kind of precision.
I sat there for a long moment, feeling stupid.
I’d gotten so focused on acquiring the powers —Dimension Lost, Telos Karma, Dreamlike Curse—that I’d started to think I could do anything.
But the truth was, I was still learning.
Still figuring out what I could and couldn’t do.
Still running up against the edges of my own abilities.
So I did the second-best thing.
I made her a Milotic Lotus instead.
It wasn’t the same, obviously.
Not a living creature.
But it was something.
A construct.
A piece of beauty that I could shape and sustain with what I did have.
I walked out to the pond that evening, when the light was soft, and the air was cool, and I let my imagination do the work.
The lotus bloomed slowly at first—just a shimmer in the water, a ripple of color beneath the surface.
Then it rose, unfurling petal by iridescent petal, until it was fully open and floating in the center of the pond as it had always been there.
It was huge.
Bigger than I’d expected, honestly.
The petals were pale blue and pink and silver, shifting colors as they caught the light.
The roots stretched down into the water, long and graceful, mimicking the elegant scaled tail of a Milotic.
They moved gently, swaying with the current like they were alive.
And the thing about it was—it did things.
It wasn’t just pretty.
The roots filtered the water somehow.
Purified it.
Drew up minerals from the deep earth and turned the pond into something pristine and clear.
Every so often, the lotus exhaled a cool mist that rolled across the surface, keeping the air fresh and the surrounding plants green.
I used Dimension Lost to expand the lake and the space around it, stretching the boundaries until it felt like its own little pocket world—separate from the rest of the estate, tucked away like a secret.
The air changed.
The light softened.
The whole place took on a dreamlike quality that made it feel apart from everything else.
And just to be safe, I created a spatial guard.
Nothing elaborate—just a guardian woven into the fabric of the space itself, something that would only let Ingvild and me through.
For now, at least.
It hovered at the edges, barely visible, a faint shimmer in the air that you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it.
I watched it for a while, feeling a quiet pride settle in my chest.
It wasn’t a Milotic.
But it was something.
Something that belonged here.
Something that Ingvild could look at and know was for her.
I added a pair of Feebas to the pond too.
Small, scruffy little things, but they had potential.
If I could figure out how to evolve them—how to push them into something more—it would be proof that I was getting closer to that Milotic.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it?
Evolution.
I’d been thinking about it a lot lately.
Not just for the Feebas.
For everything.
For myself.
For the people around me.
For the peerage I was starting to build.
I needed something that could help with that.
Something that could accelerate growth, ease transitions, smooth out the rough edges of transformation.
Something that could take potential and turn it into reality.
The Hogyaku.
The idea had been rattling around in my head for days now.
I could see it in my mind’s eye—a small, crystalline sphere, humming with contained power.
It wasn’t a weapon.
It wasn’t a shield.
It was a catalyst.
A tool that could help me evolve my creations, my abilities, my peerage, maybe even myself.
But it was complicated.
More complicated than the lotus, more complicated than anything I’d tried to make so far.
It would need layers.
Precision.
Power sources that didn’t just draw from me but sustained themselves.
I wasn’t sure I could do it yet.
But I was starting to think about how.
And that, I figured, was the first step.
The next morning, Ingvild found the lotus.
I was in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea and pretending I wasn’t watching through the window, when she walked out to the garden.
She stopped at the edge of the pond, and I saw her freeze.
For a long moment, she just stood there, staring at the massive iridescent flower floating in the water.
The mist curled around her ankles, and the Feebas darted beneath the surface, curious and unafraid.
Then she turned and looked back at the house.
Right at the window where I was sitting.
She didn’t wave.
She didn’t call out.
She just smiled—that small, quiet smile that was becoming more and more familiar—and turned back to the lotus.
I felt something warm settle in my chest.
Something that had nothing to do with the tea.
Later, she came inside and found me in the study, surrounded by scattered notes and half-formed diagrams.
I’d been trying to map out the Hogyaku’s structure, working through the components I’d need, the power flows, the anchoring mechanisms.
She didn’t ask what I was doing.
She just pulled up a chair and sat across from me, and after a moment, she said: “The lotus is beautiful.”
“Good,” I said.
“It’s yours.”
She was quiet for a beat.
“You made it for me?”
“Who else would I make a giant flower for?”
She laughed, soft and surprised, and I looked up from my notes to see her watching me with that observant gaze of hers.
“Thank you,” she said.
I shrugged, suddenly self-conscious.
“It’s nothing.
Just a construct.”
“It’s not nothing,” she said.
“You made something beautiful.
For me.
That’s not nothing.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded and went back to my notes.
But I couldn’t quite focus after that.
The Hogyaku was going to take time.
I knew that.
It wasn’t the kind of thing you rushed.
But I was starting to see it more clearly now—the shape of it, the structure, the layers of power that would need to interlock.
It would draw from Annihilation Maker’s creative force, obviously.
But it would also need something else.
Something stabilizing.
Something that could hold the energy in place and keep it from unraveling.
Dimension Lost came to mind.
The ring had been a constant companion since I’d acquired it, always there in the background, holding things together.
If I could weave that spatial stability into the Hogyaku’s core, it might just work.
And maybe—just maybe—I could use it to evolve those Feebas.
To evolve my peerage.
To evolve myself.
It was a big dream.
A huge one.
But I was starting to think that maybe I was allowed to dream big.
Reviews and stones keep the story alive.
See you next chapter.