"The worst kind of god is the one who forgets what it means to be human."
---
The skies were no longer skies. They were tapestries unraveling at the seams, and behind them was something far older than light.
Arceus had returned.
But it was no longer the deity of creation sung about in ancient Johto hymns or etched into Sinnoh stone. It was a corpse god now—a shattered entity stitched together by broken laws and forgotten time. Its rings of light flickered, not with divinity, but with the glitching hunger of a system rebooting itself without reason or heart.
Its body wasn't flesh or form—it was code. Timelines. Languages older than emotion.
It hovered above the ruins of the Memory Warfront like a virus wearing the skin of a god.
Every warrior on the battlefield—champion, rogue, trainer, or specter—collapsed to their knees. Not because they chose to. But because their existence bent.
Ash stood, legs trembling, heart clenched like a dying star.
Paul stood beside him, face bloodied, breathing shallow. "That's not Arceus," he murmured. "That's a concept given shape. A law without mercy."
Ash's hands clenched into fists. Around his right wrist, the last thread of golden memory—Pikachu's final promise—burned with heat and defiance.
"No…" Ash whispered. "That's what happens when a god forgets what it was made for."
---
Arceus raised its blade.
No words.
No declarations.
Just erasure.
Its limb—a crescent of raw deletion—slashed downward, and entire moments were sliced from time.
A scream began and ended in an instant as a trainer's past, present, and future were ripped clean away, leaving behind a silhouette of ash and forgotten breath.
Ash felt it ripple across him.
Memories of Professor Oak—gone.
The first time he held Charmander's Poké Ball—scraped from his brain.
His mother's smile—blank.
He staggered, clutching his head.
"Ash!" Paul shouted, stepping in—but Arceus flicked its limb and Paul was flung into the debris, bones crunching, ribs breaking.
"STOP!" Ash roared into the void. "I REMEMBER! YOU HEAR ME?! I—REMEMBER—EVERYTHING!"
His voice cracked—and from his palm, the golden thread howled.
And that was when Arceus turned toward him.
---
The god's eyes weren't eyes. They were versions.
Thousands of timelines where Ash died, failed, gave up. One where he joined Team Rocket. One where he never left Pallet. One where Pikachu hated him. One where he never met Serena. One where he became a god.
They stared at him. Judged him.
"You are broken," came the voice. Layered. Distorted. Cruel.
"You are not supposed to exist anymore."
Ash stared back.
"Yeah?" he whispered.
Then he charged.
---
Every step tore a hole through unreality. Golden flames erupted around his feet—memories solidifying into power.
He remembered Butterfree flying away, crying.
He remembered saving Goh from the collapsing Tower of Reincarnation.
He remembered every scar, every failure.
They fueled him.
He leapt—straight into Arceus's attack.
The blade of deletion struck—
—and met resistance.
Ash had wrapped the golden thread around his body. His life—his true life—was now armor.
And when the blade struck?
Ash screamed.
His body seared. His skin cracked open. Blood poured. But he held his ground.
"NOT—THIS—TIME!"
He hurled the thread like a spear—burning with the lives of all he'd loved.
It pierced Arceus's chest.
Not because it was stronger.
But because it meant something.
---
Arceus stumbled.
The battlefield gasped.
For the first time—the god felt pain.
But not from the wound.
From the memories invading its core.
Pikachu's laugh.
Brock's dumb flirting.
Team Rocket getting blown into the sky.
Serena's trembling hand.
They weren't just memories.
They were weapons.
---
Paul dragged himself to his feet, coughing blood.
"Ash… whatever you're doing—don't stop."
Ash's face was a mask of fury and tears.
"I won't."
He dashed forward again, a comet of soul-fire.
Behind him came the rest:
Misty, her daggers forged from frozen lakes and lost time.
Gary, astride the ghost of his Blastoise, cannon glowing blue with forgotten promise.
Serena, glowing like a nova, her lips trembling.
They weren't fighting for power.
They were fighting for remembrance.
---
Arceus screamed, and the world fractured.
Rivers flowed backward.
Children grew old and then unborn.
Paldea vanished in a blink.
Sinnoh became a crater.
And yet—
Ash reached the core.
His hand, bleeding and burning, grabbed the thread still lodged inside the god's heart.
He looked up.
Straight into the abyss of eternity.
And whispered:
"I won't let you forget them."
---
Then he yanked.
And vanished in the explosion.
---
The silence after was eternal.
When the dust settled…
Ash was gone.
No remains.
No cry.
Just the golden thread.
Still burning.
Still remembering.
---