It had been a few hours since leaving Crystal Caverns, and the six trainers had made significant leeway on their trek to the next town, when the light of the evening sky began to blink out of existence. In seeing the fading light the group decided it would be best to set up camp before it got so dark they couldn't see their hands in front of their faces. Ash and Serena, along with Aura and their Pokemon, began the initial setup of the camp, spiking the tents and digging a hole for a campfire. During the setup of their nightly dwellings Diana, Dena, Cal, and their Pokemon went in search of dry logs to supply themselves with a suitable campfire for the cold night.

The groups worked as quickly as they could but ran out of light before all their tasks were complete, leaving them somewhat lacking in the wood department and Ash without a tent. In the meager light that their campfire provided the group offered to help Ash pitch his tent, but had their offering of assistance shot down by him claiming he prefer to sleep under the stars anyways.

Letting Ash be Ash, the group had their fire types light a stick hut they'd made in the pit, and soon they were all enjoying the warmth of cracklings flames. Practically right after the flames were lit Cal brought out a two bags of jumbo stuffed marshmallows, and some other s'mores supplies, which were passed around at an impressive rate and within seconds they were all dining on the sweet delicacy. 

The small fire felt warmer with everyone indulging themselves in small talk, sweets, and dumb ghost stories that were more comical than frightening; everyone that is except Ash whose mind kept wandering to the gifts Rhyolis had given him before their departure. The gifts he'd received felt more like a burden than a blessing, their very presence seemed to weigh on his mind like an odious force that threatened to turn his entire world upside down.

For the time being though he pretended to share in his friends merriment, but was relieved when it finally ended and they packed it up for the night. He watched with false amenity as his friends shuffled into their tents; knowing that while they could seek shelter from the cold and darkness of night, he had to face the chilling stygian that rested in his jacket pocket. He took some comfort in the fact that he was not entirely alone in his task, for his two partners were sitting next to him waiting with just as much dread to learn the secrets his gifts held.

As soon as everyone else had gone to sleep Ash crept closer to the small flames, they'd left him with, and opened the pouch. Inside was a variety of colorful stones ranging from glassy like multi colored spheres to diamonds of singular colors and odd insignias. Ash wasn't interested in the stones at the moment his attention was fixated on the sheets of folded paper tucked at the bottom of the pouch.

Moving as cautiously as the bomb squad on the job, Ash took out the paper and began reading it.

"To whom it may concern, these papers contains the last wills and testaments of the men known as Rhyolis S. Danpen, and Ferric T. Danpen; and if you are reading this we are dead."

Ash felt himself go numb after reading that one sentence; the odious feeling he'd been having about the farewell he'd witnessed confirmed in just a few words. He drew himself closer to the dying fire and brought his Pokémon into his lap, needing both their warmth and presence to keep on reading.

"This is not news to us though, for we have known about our deaths for some time now. Our demise was seen by Ferric's Lunatone's use of Future Sight. In said move our fate was played out before us: a dark haired trainer and his two Pokémon would leave our shack with Aura; moments after they leave three people in ash grey cloaks jump out from the locked door of my private study and we fight them for nearly half an hour. The fight doesn't go in our favor though and we are forced to take extreme measures to assure the safety of  Aura. In a final act of desperation we have our Pokémon use Self-Destruct and the resulting blasts rupture the shacks propane storage and engulfs us all in an inferno."

Ash stops reading for a minute and, despite being outside already, gets up to get some fresh air; the weight of the letter causing him to become almost ill. He found the whole thing repulsive, "How could they do that?" he thought to himself, "Why didn't they find another way?". He got the answer to his second question as he began reading the letter again.

"You're probably wondering why we didn't try and prevent this from happening given that we knew it would. We did try and each time we checked with Lunatone's Future Sight the outcome became more horrific, until it reached a conclusion that,(for the sake of all), we couldn't let happen. This future we saw was completely void of any hope for salvation and in seeing it we knew the only course of action we could take was to accept our fate as gracefully as we could, and leave the world with the best chance it could get."

Ash pocketed the first page as he moved onto the second one. Blessedly this one wasn't about what they had done but was more of a note to Ash and Aura.

"Forgetting the unpleasantries of our deaths for a moment we move onto what we wanted to leave behind. To Aura, as the only living Danpen, we leave the family estate and all of its possessions to you, and pass the title of Crystal guru unto you. We have also put together a memorial box containing some specialty objects that may help you get through this.
And to the young man and his Pokémon we have given you some of the rarest stones in the world; only a handful of people have these stones and in some regions a single one of them is worth a small town (Don't loose them). There are three multiples of one of these stones too, this wasn't a mistake you'll need all three before the end of this."

Ash opened up the sack again and sure enough there were three stones that were nearly identical. One was a bit rounder than the other two and one was had a slightly deeper shade of green in its prismatic coloring.

"We have one last thing to say before we finish writing this letter, the reason why we wrote it. Our purpose in this letter was to provide a justification for our actions, as well as help with the outcome of the future; but we also wrote this to apologize and say goodbye to Aura. We are so sorry to have to leave you like this, we wish we had more time with you, but fate decided that this was the only way. We also felt it important to tell you that our deaths are not on your head, (nor that boys); there was no outcome involving our survival that had an acceptable ending. We hope that someday you can forgive us for what we did, but until then know that we love you.

Yours forever, Grandpa and Ferric".

Ash felt a few tears escape his eyes, but he didn't care; this was the last words a newly orphaned girl had from her family and it was perfectly acceptable to cry. Still leaking a bit Ash started to get up to give Aura the two papers when he noticed that there was a third stuck to the back of the second. Peeling it off Ash sat down to read the final part of the dead men's message.

"To the boy, I certainly hope you've read this by yourself or else a whole lot of bad is waiting for you down the road. Assuming that you have read this alone I suggest you keep it that way until Aura starts asking questions about Ferric and me; only then can you give her the first two pages of this letter. I don't know what you'll do now that you've read this but I hope you will adhere to a dead mans wishes. Also when you've finished with this page burn it in your campfire.

-Rhyolis.

P.S. Your girlfriend is going to walk out of her tent to give you a blanket, she'll notice you're distressed and ask to help, you should share this letter with her when she does."

For most of the letter Ash had given their fortunetelling capabilities the benefit of the doubt; but the last two sentences sent a shiver up his spine for he had a campfire to burn the last page, and a second after finishing the letter one of the tents opened up. Starting at the last log slowly burn away Ash dwelled over Rhyolis's letter trying, (way to hard), to figure out who was approaching, since he didn't have a girlfriend, and after straining his brain he just assumed that Rhyolis's soothsaying ability might be a bit off.

Nonetheless he felt a thick polyester blanket being gently placed on his shoulders as his nighttime heroine made sure he didn't freeze to death. The first thing he noticed about the blanket was it's familiar scent, smelling of strawberries and honey suckle, the aroma was rather pleasant and brought him some comfort; what he noticed next was that the provider of his polyester protection hadn't left but instead was leaning over him looking worriedly at the tears that lingered on his cheeks.

"Ash, what's wrong?" Serena asked as she moved to look him in the face. In the remaining light from the fire she had an almost golden glow to her skin and her light pink pajamas only added to her warm completion.

Ash whipped away his tears and tried to force a smile, "Nothing's wrong, I just got a little ash in my eyes." He said, trying to avoid involving Serena in the unpleasant nature of the letter he had just read.

Serena made a face that depicted her level of belief in that lie. "Ash don't lie to me I can tell something's bothering you."

Whether it was her straight forward approach to his lie or just her concern for him that made him drop his joyful act was anyone's guess. Either way he admitted to his troubles and brought Serena into the folds of the bleakness that he'd become wrapped up in. He handed her the letter but couldn't bring himself to watch her read it.

Barely ten seconds passed before Serena gasped, "Ash is this..?"

"Yes, you don't have to read it if you don't want to." He said as he extended his hand expecting her to want to be rid of the dark parchment as soon as possible. He was surprised when she didn't hand the letter back to him.

"If you read this then so will I; I won't let you go through this alone and if I know what you're dealing with I might be able to help." Serena said softly and supportively.

Ash wanted to argue that she didn't have to share his burdens, but at the same time he desperately wanted someone to help lift the weight of the Danpen men's deaths off his shoulders. Receiving a nod, indicting his acceptance of her decision, Serena sat down next to Ash and continued reading the letter. In the middle of the letter some tears sprouted at her eyes and again Ash offered to take back the burden.

Serena refused again but said she felt a bit cold prompting Ash to wrap a blanketed arm over her shoulder, providing her with enough comfort to resume reading. By the time Serena finished the letter she and Ash were practically hugging, each needing the affirming presence of another human being to deal with this heavy secret. After a moment of just residing in the comfort of each other, Serena detached herself from Ash and looked him straight in his eyes.

"This isn't your fault, there was nothing you could have done for them." She said with upmost certainty.

Hearing those words come from any other person might have made him question his guilt in the men's deaths, but hearing it from Serena he believed them completely. Her simple act of being there for him and letting him know the truth was freeing and felt like the iron shackles of guilt had been severed from him. He still remained sad at the deaths of Auras kin, but thanks to Serena he didn't feel as hallow.

"Thanks Serena I really needed that." Ash said with a faint hint of his normal upbeat self.

Serena conveyed her joy at helping Ash through a simple yet heart warming smile she was known throughout Kalos for, "I'm glad I was able to help." She began fidgeting with the edge of the blanket wrapped around them, "I had a feeling something was bothering you and I couldn't live with myself if I just left you to deal with it by yourself."

An awkward moment of silence followed Serena's statement and each teen tried to avoid eye contact so as to conceal the faint bloom of pink that had planted itself across the brim of their noses. The silence was eventually interrupted by the last burning log splitting in two with a loud Pop. The noise that the log made was just enough to galvanize Ash into asking Serena to stay by him for the night, not wanting to be by himself with the dark secret fresh in his mind.

Serena didn't even hesitate, accepting his request without a second thought. The two pickup Ash's now sleeping Pokémon and moved over to a fallen log a few feet from their fire and laid down on the dry forest floor, using the log as a sort of pillow. Before they drifted to sleep Ash fulfilled Rhyolis's request, crumpling up the third sheet of paper and tossing it into the flames.

As the paper burned away Ash and Serena slowly entered the realm of sleep, feeling as if the burden they shared was burning away with the paper, and as he closed his eyes Ash found himself smiling at his light sleeping peacefully across from him.

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So what you guys think; good, bad, sad? To dark, not enough darkness? I tried to go dark but I don't really know how well I did,( it's hard to judge how dark you get). Anyways I hope you guys liked this chapter and depending on your reactions I might try to write more seriously like this.
Also I wanted to state some things I thought might confuse people: 1) Ash and Serena still aren't dating, despite what I had Rhyolis's letter say. 2) I had the Rhyolis and Ferric say "the boy" when referring to Ash because I thought with Future Sight there wouldn't be sound hence they wouldn't know Ash's name. 3) I also didn't include Ash's name because I wanted it to seem like the letter was written awhile before they met.

That's all for now, I hope you'll all stick around until I've got the next chapter up; until then take care.😁