And a few… return. Every region has a ghost story: the former Champion who puts on the cape one last time when a catastrophic threat emerges (a rogue Legendary, an evil team, a meteor). They always say, “Just this once.”
But every reign ends. What happens when the confetti settles, the challengers stop coming, and the Champion hangs up their cape?
“I didn’t retire to fish,” Red told us (through an interpreter—he’s still a man of few words). “I retired to remember why I started.”
“I was ‘Steven Stone, Champion’ for eight years. Now I’m just ‘Steven Stone, rock collector.’ The silence after a title defense is deafening.”
“I was a terrible Champion,” Alder admits, laughing over a plate of Casteliacones. “I was grieving. I let my partner die of an illness because I was too arrogant to see the symptoms. The title was a cage.”