Prologue

No Burden Heavier to Bear than a Tired Heart

The beast turned back for another pass at Sora's exposed head. It shrieked in a shrill tone, its dull red body flaking as if it was covered in dry blood as its wings pumped frantically to keep it aloft.

Sora drew his arm back and launched his keyblade at the aerial creature. The silver blade sliced through the beast's wings, dropping it to the ground where it twitched for only a moment before stilling. His keyblade flew on, powered by the strength of his throw, but Sora wasn't watching it anymore; he was already searching for his next target. The keyblade would return, it always did, and as he raised his left hand, calling forth fire to burn yet another of the blood-stained creatures, a shimmer of light in his right hand signified the return of his keyblade.

As the beast he had burned collapsed to the ground in a fiery mess, more came to take its place. They were creatures of all shapes and sizes, some were reminiscent of insects and still others had a vaguely human shape to them. Sora wasn't sure what they were, but it was obvious to him that they were enemies of some sort, and that was something he could deal with.

He wasn't entirely sure where he was, but he also didn't seem to think his lack of knowledge was worth worrying about. He was in some sort of vague, shapeless place. A ubiquitous light illuminated everything so thoroughly even the shadows were washed away. Despite that, Sora wouldn't have said his surroundings lacked darkness. It frustrated him as he tried to find the right way to describe it, and eventually he realized that it was less about there being light and more that he could see everything equally well.

The angered roar of one of the creatures that surrounded him dragged him out of his contemplation. Now really wasn't the time to be concerned about where he was. He needed to focus. He was surrounded on all sides by the beasts; there were too many to count easily, but not so many he felt hopelessly overwhelmed. Sora had fought numbers larger than this before, but that didn't mean he could let his guard down.

Sora caught sight of movement from his right side and dodged away before he even realized what he was doing. The massive paw of a cat-beast narrowly missed his shoulder. The paw alone was the size of a dinner plate, and Sora wasted a moment as he gave the giant paw and equally giant (and frankly rather fearsome)claws an uneasy stare. It wouldn't be good to be hit by something like that.

The cat-beast shoved its way closer to Sora, brushing aside its allies as if they weren't there in order to get another swipe at Sora, but this time the he was expecting its attack and was able to counter. Sora ducked under the paw and stepped in, toward the cat-beat's head. He raised his keyblade and swung with all his force up at the cat-beast. The keyblade dug into its head, leaving behind a trail of flaking, red dust and the smell of iron. To his surprise, once past the hard outer skin, the creature gave no resistance, and Sora realized as he cut his way through its upper jaw, that the creatures were hollow.

Sora jumped back as the beast collapsed. He hadn't watched the final moments of any of the other ones he had defeated; he had been too busy fending off more attacks, but the creatures were leaving him alone at the moment so he took the chance to watch what happened when they were killed.

The beast disappeared. It was there one moment, and simply gone the next, almost as if it had never been in the first place. What was left behind was simply more of the lightless-darklessness that surrounded him.

Sora shivered as a chill ran down his back. There was something so fundamentally wrong with what he had just seen that he hardly even knew what bothered him. He turned away from the spot where the cat-beast had been reduced to nothing, feeling a twinge of something in his chest, and turned to face the next attack from a flying, beeish creature.

Sora fended off the darting, piercing attacks, but his chest felt heavy and his legs were sluggish. It was hard to fight alone, he realized. He had always been supported in the past, even when he had been alone, he had always known there were those who believed in him and trusted him. But in this place, he couldn't feel any of that. The warmth that was always supporting him wasn't there, and he couldn't seem to remember what it had felt like.

Sora sliced through the bee and turned away quickly before he could see it vanish. He didn't want to feel that chill again, or the empty feeling that accompanied the sight.

He turned too quickly though and his legs gave out beneath him. He was tired. How long had he been fighting, here in this endless place? Sora couldn't remember, but for some reason it seemed like he had been here for far too long.

Sora dropped to one knee, and before he could recover one of the faster moving, human like creatures swung down what looked like a sword. Sora caught the red colored sword on the keyblade which he had raised above his head to defend. The blow wasn't strong enough to break his guard, but it was enough to keep him from rising to his feet, and it was enough to keep him from being able to defend against the attack that came from behind.

Sora saw it coming, the rush of red, though he never saw which creature it actually was. He couldn't stop it, and the pain was enough to make Sora collapse to the ground where he was immediately prey to countless more attacks. The pain that surged through his body was intense, but none of the attacks were enough to do more than cause pain.

The assault lasted for an unimaginable span of time; the attacks of the creatures around him were unceasing. As time passed, Sora found he could only think about the pain. Nothing else seemed to penetrate the surging waves of torment the emanated from each blow. Nothing, except for a single, instantly regrettable thought, a thought he had never imagined he would entertain. A thought he would forever wish he could forget.

I want to disappear too.

As soon as he thought that, the attacks stopped. Sora raised his head; he had unconsciously curled into a ball while on the ground taking the repeated blows. His whole body ached, but he didn't understand why the creatures had stopped.

"Is this all a lone keyblade user can do?" an unfamiliar man's voice asked.

Sora saw the man's feet, clad in boots the same color as the beasts, enter his vision. The man bent down and Sora caught a glimpse of silvery eyes and dark hair. The man pulled at the keyblade in Sora's hand, and unwillingly, Sora let go. He was too tired and in too much pain to have much strength left. The man held Sora's keyblade in his hand carelessly and straightened.

Sora's gaze followed the man up. It was strange to see someone else holding the blade that Sora knew so well. Only a few people had ever taken the keyblade from him, and only Riku had ever been right to.

"It's an interesting weapon," the man said as he examined the keyblade with his strange, empty eyes. The blade glinted in the non-light that surrounded them, and the keychain swung gently from the end of the keyblade as the man held it aloft as if saluting some imaginary person.

The man chuckled and swung the keyblade back down, resting the tip of it on the ground just before Sora's face.

"I've heard it runs off of hearts or some such nonsense; what a weak source of power," the man said mockingly.

Sora wanted to shout back at the man. To explain that that wasn't the truth, to prove to him how strong hearts really were, but he was too weak. The fight had taken too much out of him and it was all he could do to keep his head up and glare at the man.

The man seemed to understand what he was thinking though. "It seems you disagree," he said, surprising Sora with his accurate response, and then he added, "No Sora, I can't read your mind; you're just simple to understand."

How does he know me? Sora wondered. Who is this person?

The man knelt down so he was closer to Sora's face. With the distance between them closed, Sora could see that the man was young, a little older than Riku at most, and he was clad in the same, dark, reddish color as the beasts that still surrounded Sora. His face might even have been called handsome, but Sora couldn't feel anything from this man. It was as if he wasn't even there in the first place, as if what stood before Sora was simply more of the non-light that surrounded him.

"In that case, why don't we play a little game," the man said with a smile, but it was obviously not a suggestion or an invitation. The man hefted Sora's keyblade, holding it in front of Sora's face. "The prize will of course be your keyblade. The rules are simple; you just have to take it from me." The man paused and then smiled. "Can a keyblade wielder who has lost his keyblade still call himself as such?"

Panic seized Sora as he realized something. He tried to recall the keyblade that was just in front of him, but something stuck tight and wouldn't budge. The familiar light that accompanied the summoning of his keyblade, the light he had taken for granted, didn't appear. The strange man continued to hold onto Sora's keyblade with an ease that frightened Sora. His keyblade was close enough to touch if Sora just stretched his hand out, and yet, it was completely out of reach.

The man straightened, still holding onto Sora's keyblade and turned away.

"I look forward to seeing what your 'heart' can do," he said scornfully before he strode away and vanished.

Sora felt it when his keyblade disappeared with the man. It was a feeling akin to having all the warmth leave his body, like having the breath knocked from his chest and not being able to get it back no matter how long he tried. It was painful, and sad, and overwhelmingly lonely.