This is the prologue to the Final Fantasy part of this story. If you read this in the Final Fantasy section of then you may skip this as it is exactly the same as what is posted there. Otherwise it is suggested you read this.

Well, I hereby give you all my first attempt at a crossover and my first attempt at an M rated epic journey story. Hope I don't screw it up. Reviewers are welcome to rip me a new one for any and all faults in this tale. If I can, I'll get around to fixing them as soon as possible.

In the King Arthur timeline this is five years post movie, no changes in movie plot. It is twelve years post game for Final Fantasy VI, with no changes in game plot except Shadow did not die as the game leads us to believe. If you would like an explanation of how this may have happened, my story Interceptor's Duty covers it.

Any notes, clarifications, or other such needed information will be posted in the index chapter.

The following story is rated M for language, violence, and adult situations. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I own neither Final Fantasy VI nor King Arthur or their respective characters, settings, and plots. I also make no money from this fanfiction and write it solely for my own enjoyment, not for profit. I will not be repeating this disclaimer in later chapters of the work. I said it here, that should be enough.

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Kefka had fallen. But that did not mean the world's troubles were over. Creatures still aged, sickened, and died. People still killed one another. The world went on as it always had and always would.

As all men do, the heroes of that world grew older. Some grew wiser, some more foolish. Some did not change at all. When it was their time, they died. It was to be expected. They were only human after all.

What was not expected was for some to die before their time. These things are never anticipated. A young artist, no more than a child when the world was broken, but a true hero in her own right, fell ill. Without the power of the espers there was no medicine, nor inborn magic strong enough to save her.

It was a great blow to all who knew her, but for one it was almost his destruction. Only a promise he had made kept him from following her into the afterlife. And only the memory of past mistakes kept him from going down the path he had traversed not so long ago. She had saved him from that fate once; he would not dishonor her memory by destroying himself that way.

So he did what he could. Changed his name. Traveled. Became a hunter of monsters. People called him to take down rouge creatures too powerful for the average person to handle. The Fight, The Hunt, and The Kill. Those were all he had left.

It was all that kept him sane.

All that kept him going.

All he had left to live for.

As he had years before, the man once more found himself praying for death to find him.

He had no idea that when he reached his ordained time to die that his shadowed soul, the thing he believed made him deserve death more than any other, would be the very thing used to call him back.

A Mystic's Vision. A New World. New Companions. A Dangerous Tide.

As it had forever been, the reaper was always one step behind him.

Shadow Knight