The story spread, somehow. It was fragmented and distorted, yes, but pieces of it spread to every world. There was a new darkness, after all, and the walls between the worlds were broken. The story spread.
Travelers in the barren deserts of Agrabah told stories of a land even more desolate. The desert of the world that died, they called it. The waste lands of Verge. The stories were a way of bragging - a wanderer might say that he would survive in the waste lands, while those fools would surely perish. It was a desert of heroes, which they all measured themselves against.
Border sentries in the mountains of the Land of Dragons swapping stories by their campfires spoke of the Last One. Most of the tales called the Last One a dragon himself - to these people, the fiercest guardian imaginable. Everything he loved had perished in a great battle, and so he remained on the battlefield, guarding it against those who would defile his precious memories. He was a black dragon, of grief and remembrance, but the soldiers spoke of him with awe and no fear.
Gazelles in the Pride Lands passed nervous rumors from herd to herd, telling of a black hyena. He'd been born, they said, on a carrion field, or on the thirsty plains of Death itself. Gathering shadows around him, he came to harry the flanks of the living. Eventually, he would pull down life itself, and crush its throat. The old baboon Rafiki knew more than rumors. He had discerned a name for the beast - Raze - and he knew that Raze was a black and broken heart. The Pride Lands were peaceful, but Rafiki wandered restlessly along the edge of the light, watching for the black hyena when he came.
Little ghouls in Halloween Town frightened each other with ghost stories about a spirit called Once-Wept. In life, he had gone into the utter depths of darkness, and then learned the way back. But it was not the dark that he hated, but his friend the light that betrayed him to death, and so he wept one tear before he died. His soul, enraged, had gone back to the darkness, and now it killed everything it found there. The town's older folk thought the story of Once-Wept was delightfully terrifying, but a few of them found it oddly familiar. Jack Skellington, in particular, would sometimes look into the night, curious and unafraid.
The odd folk of Wonderland told jokes. "Peter, Peter, shadow-eater, met a girl and had to beat her, put her in a pumpkin shell, she's crying still but he can't tell." "How do you lock up a key? Put it in a box that never opens." And one more, that the Queen of Hearts thought was treasonous, "The king is gone, long live the king."
In the courts of Atlantica, merfolk and dolphins said that the War of the Keyblades was over - but softly, softly, so their king would not hear. King Triton did hear, of course, and raged because a king could not weep. The war wasn't over, he knew. The keyblades always came back.
-O-
It was the stories, at long last, that led the knight and wizard of the missing King on their first steps toward the truth.
The stories in Atlantica weren't much use to them, because they already knew about the Keyblade War. They'd fought in it, after all. Just as they and their friends had been closing in to finish off Malificent and her Heartless at last, the Endless had appeared. The Endless were souls, sundered from their bodies, that could control things - plants, machines, weapons, people - like their own missing hands. And by some quirk of their being, they could all wield keyblades, every one. Most of them did, too, though no one knew where all those keyblades had come from.
The sage Yen Sid said that the Endless were beings of light, and in their natural forms, they looked it. Most of the Endless, though, only wanted to purify the worlds of everything but themselves. The only exceptions were the heroes who called themselves the Chasers of Dark Hearts. The Chasers used intricate suits of plate armor as their surrogate bodies, and they were experts with their keyblades. The group had formed to fight Heartless, but they had allied with Sora and King Mickey to fight the other Endless.
That had been the War of the Keyblades. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and the Chasers were on one side, and the rest of the Endless on the other. Donald and Goofy had fought, too, of course. They'd left, though, separated from both Sora and Mickey. It was only supposed to have been a few days. Anyway, Donald and Goofy weren't the strong ones. They were the ones who'd been in danger, off on their own. What could possibly have threatened Sora, Riku, Kairi, and King Mickey together?
But they never came back. They vanished, all of them. Kairi and Riku, Sora, the King. The Chasers were missing, too, including the one Donald and Goofy had been going to meet at Disney Castle. They had seen a few stray Endless since then, but they'd all been weak - none of them had any kind of weapon. There were no keyblade wielders left. The Keyblade War was over.
Of course Donald and Goofy hadn't let it go that easily. But there had been no sign of their friends, not a trace, in any of the worlds. Donald and Goofy were faithful and persistent, but even they had almost been ready to give up, until they started hearing the stories.
-O-
"Raze? How do you know that name?"
"You know who Raze is, Yuffie?" Goofy asked.
"Raze is the name we gave a Heartless," Leon said, leaning against the wall.
"The black hyena," Donald said. "I thought they were talking about a Heartless."
"It wasn't a hyena, really," Yuffie mused. "It moved and fought like an animal, yeah, but it was shaped like a person."
"It attacked while we had the defense system down," Cid growled, "trying to fix it so it would work against Endless. Brought a whole bunch of Heartless with it. Got a lot of people before we beat 'em off. No one you know, but still."
"Then it attacked again, alone," Cloud said, "after the defense system was back up and set for Heartless. Like it wanted to prove that it could. Nearly killed Aerith."
"It nearly killed you and Tifa, too, Cloud," Yuffie put in. Cloud glared at her.
"It fought smart," Leon said. "And when it came the second time, it didn't bring any of the weaker Heartless, the ones that weren't tough enough to take the hits from the defense system. Smart Heartless are the last thing we need."
"What's all this about?" Cid asked.
"Well, we're not too sure," Goofy said, "but we think it might have something to do with where Sora and King Mickey are."
"Oh, good," Aerith said. "I hope you find them."
"Weren't they here, just before they disappeared?" Donald asked.
"I don't know if it was just before," Yuffie said, "but yeah. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and one of the Chasers who was a friend of Sora's, a kid named Raider."
"They were talking about Kairi and Raider staying behind," Leon said, "but they all ended up leaving."
"Where to?"
"If we knew, we'd have told you before now," Leon said. "They were trying to track down where the Endless were coming from. They were frustrated, because between them, Mickey, Sora and his friends, and the Chasers had looked everywhere."
"'That accounts for every single world of light.'" Yuffie agreed. "That's what Riku said."
"World of light?" Donald repeated. He and Goofy looked at each other.
-O-
"'The Last One?'" Pence tried to sound like he'd never heard the odd name before, but the attempt didn't quite come off. The look Hayner and Olette gave each other didn't help.
"How about a place named Verge?" Goofy asked. Pence shrugged, blatantly nonchalant, and Olette wouldn't meet their eyes.
"Look, guys," Hayner said, "we don't know what you're talking about. Sorry."
"You're lying!" Donald said. "You. . ."
Goofy squeezed his friend's beak shut. "Easy, Donald. Don't get excited, now." He turned to the three teenagers. "The thing is, guys, we're looking for Sora, Kairi, Riku, and King Mickey. We haven't seen 'em in quite a while, and they might be in trouble. We know they were looking for a twilight or dark world, so maybe they came here."
"Oh!" Olette said. "Sure, we can help with that. Sora, Riku, and Mickey were here, looking for something."
"They beat up the tram," Hayner added.
Donald and Goofy looked at each other. "Huh?"
"The tram turned into some kind of monster," Pence explained. "Sora, Riku, and Mickey destroyed it."
"Mickey called it an Endless," Olette said, "but he said they were coming from somewhere else, and the three of them left again."
"What about Kairi and Raider?" Donald asked. "Weren't they here, too?"
"We didn't see Kairi," Olette said. "I asked Sora, and he said she stayed behind."
"Who's Raider?" Pence asked.
Donald looked at them, then at Goofy. "Uh-oh."
"Something wasn't right," Goofy said, "and now all five of them are missing. The Last One and Verge might have something to do with it."
The three teenagers hesitated. Pence spoke first. "Can we trust you guys not to hurt, um, anyone?"
"Sure!" Goofy said.
"Unless they did something to the King, or Sora," Donald corrected.
Another pause. "No," Olette said slowly. "He wouldn't have."
"Okay, fine," Hayner said. "There's this guy we know. Kind of a pen pal. We've never met him in person, but he started sending us letters by bird. Weird birds, white with some kind of mark on them, that waited around for us to send a letter back."
"He never told us his name," Olette continued. "He signed the letters as 'Nobody.' But he said he was lonely, because he was the last one left."
"I don't know how he knew about us," Pence said. "Some of the things he wrote sounded like he'd met us, though. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy."
"And he told us not to tell anyone about him," Hayner said, "especially not where he was." Reluctantly, he mumbled, "Place called Verge."
"It sure sounds like a twilight world," Goofy said. "Did he maybe mention it was a desert?"
"Yeah, come to think of it," Pence said. "A couple times he mentioned it being hot, or sandy."
"The world that died," Goofy said. "Gawrsh."
-O-
"Um. . . there was the voice that said it wouldn't cry again," the little girl said shyly. She was the only one in town that would answer their questions. Verge was a broken world. There were signs that there had been farmers, prosperity, a place where people lived and worked and played. But that had been years and years ago. Donald and Goofy were in a nameless ghost-town, full of ruined buildings and starving survivors.
"A voice?" Goofy prompted.
"A long time ago," the girl said, "I heard a voice outside my window when I was going to sleep. He said he wasn't going to trust again, and he wasn't going to cry again, and he wasn't going to fall to the dark again. I 'membered 'cause he sounded real angry and sad."
"Did you see him?" Donald asked.
"No. . . I was too scared to look. Later I thought he might be. . . " She looked at them and stopped talking.
"The Last One?" Donald asked. The little girl stepped back. "Why won't anyone talk to us about the Last One?' The girl shook her head.
"Did he try to hurt you?" Goofy asked. "Or say he would?" The girl shook her head again. "Well, why. . ." The girl turned and ran away.
Donald sighed. "Do you think the voice she heard really was the Last One?"
"I dunno, Donald. But it didn't sound like Sora or King Mickey."
"Do you think it was Raider?" Donald asked. But they were both thinking the same thing. The words had sounded like something Riku would say, in a. . . non-good-guy frame of mind.
Goofy looked out past the edge of the shattered town. "Maybe we can find something out in the desert."
-O-
It was a hard desert. This was no land of soft sands and dunes. The land was sharp gravel, covered only by a thin veil of grit that drifted in the dry wind. A few low boulders broke the flat ground, and the sun struck it like a hammer to its anvil.
He stood in his armor, the two points on its helmet shining in the vicious sun. He was the Endless known as Master, captain of the Chasers of Dark Hearts, holding his six-tined keyblade Redemption over his shoulder. He stood atop the corpse of a monster. It was an evil-looking thing, even in dying, an amalgam of many-spiked weapons - a hammer, a shield, a spear, a gun, a wind-fire wheel. Master had come to this secret place, and slain it.
The captain stepped down, his cape shifting in the desert wind, and walked toward the center of this place. There, three keyblades stood point-down in the dirt like tripled monuments upon a hero's grave. With the monster dead, two other Chasers now approached. The first had armor shaped in a woman's form, with helmet spikes pointing back instead of up, and a long keyblade with prongs like a tiara. She was called Speaker. The second was slight, male, a smaller copy of Master. His keyblade was held backwards, in his left hand, a short, black thing with prongs like a dragon's head. This was Raider.
They approached, and the dead monster behind them dissolved, becoming just a little more dust on a dusty wind. The Chasers reached out their free hands. Master took Sora's Kingdom Key. Raider took Riku's Way to the Dawn. Speaker took Mickey's Royal Key.
So they stood in this dire desert place - for it was more of a place than a single monument could make. This was the site of a great battle. Two wide boulevards ran ruler-straight through it, crossing in the center, and these were clear. Surrounding these clear paths, though, keyblades had been placed in the ground, keyblades of all kinds, dozens, hundreds, all the other keyblades whose wielders had fallen here. They stood in balance to the three in the center, proclaiming that those three had been the keyblades of the Heroes of the Keyblades, and that these hundreds were the proof of their works.
Now the three Chasers turned, as if by some signal. Out of the desert, someone was coming. His form was obscured by heat-ripples, but they could see he came straight-backed and alone, wrapped in a dark cloak and a cowl that obscured his features. The Chasers stood and waited for him to come.
-O-
Eventually he stood before him, in his black robe. "Why are you doing this?" he said.
"Are you the person called the Last One?" Speaker asked.
"Do you see anyone else left here?" He threw back his hood. Raider gasped, because the face was much like a face he knew. "You have no right to those keyblades. Put them back."
"We are not your enemies, Roxas," Speaker said. Raider looked at her, and took a curious step toward Roxas before he remembered himself. Master stood silently. "We were Sora's friends," Speaker went on.
"Yeah, you were," Roxas said. "You're Speaker, aren't you? You sent a message asking to meet Donald and Goofy at Disney Castle." Speaker did not start or jump, but she shifted a little. "I have some of Sora's memories, this time. Surprised? I remember this," he gestured at the battlefield, "in bits and pieces. Donald and Goofy weren't there. You're the reason why."
"I'm sorry," Speaker said. "There was a Heartless incursion, and I needed their help."
"What about you, Raider?" Roxas said. Raider did jump. "I remember you. You really were Sora's friend. He liked you. He trusted you. He left Kairi with you because he knew you'd keep her safe." Raider shifted and looked away. "I remember something, Raider. It's fuzzy. I thought it was a nightmare, but now I'm not sure. I remember Kairi was here. She was marching with the Endless, like she was a Stolen One - a human controlled by an Endless." Raider was silent. "Was that a nightmare, Raider? After all, what Endless could have possessed Kairi when you were there to watch her? What Endless could have done that, Raider?"
Raider still didn't say anything. After a moment, Speaker answered instead. "There was a major Endless raid on Hollow Bastion. Raider fought as hard as he could, but. . ."
Roxas cut her off. "Liar. You're a liar." He turned to Raider. "And you're a traitor."
"Me!" Raider shouted. "You think I betrayed Sora? He lied to me! After what he did - after what Riku and Kairi and Mickey let him do - anything I did was just fighting a war."
The Chaser sounded grieved and angry. "I don't get it," Roxas said. "What do you mean? Sora never lied to anyone."
"You don't have those memories?" Speaker asked. "Did you never wonder why you exist again? Raider is correct: Sora is a traitor. He has given in to the darkness. Even before the battle here, he would secretly transform into a vicious Heartless."
"The Heartless that followed them," Roxas said, then shook his head. "No way, not Sora. Riku, maybe, but. . ."
"You are a Nobody," Speaker said. "For a Nobody to exist, there must be a Heartless. Sora is called Raze now. He leads an army of Heartless against those he once called friends."
"No. . ." Roxas squeezed his head between his hands.
"How did you think this battle worked, anyway?" Raider snapped. "Where are the winners? Did you think the last ones alive on each side stabbed each other?" He shook his head. "That monster killed them all. Sora - Raze - killed the Endless, and then Riku, Mickey, and Kairi."
Roxas' head snapped up. "Kairi's alive. You're all liars - I know Kairi's alive. I feel Namine's soul. She cries in my dreams." The keyblades Oblivion and Oathkeeper appeared in his hands. "You came here, you killed my sentry, you took my friends' keyblades, and you lied to me." He stepped toward them.
Master gestured. Speaker and Raider raised their weapons and charged.
Raider was the faster of the two, and too angry to let his partner keep up. But he was also a knife-fighter, holding a weapon much larger than he was used to in his off-hand. Roxas knocked Way to the Dawn aside, parried the slash from Raider's own weapon, and countered with a double left-to-right swing that sent Raider flying. The Chaser plowed into the field of keyblades and rolled to a stop.
Speaker was better, but she'd never practiced two-weapon fighting, either. After a moment she realized that she was only throwing herself off. She flipped the Royal Key behind her back and held it there, fighting only with her own keyblade. But Roxas did know how to use both his weapons. He blocked Speaker's keyblade high with Oathkeeper, and crushed her knee with Oblivion. Then he ran right past her. Speaker herself wasn't hurt, it was only damage to the armor, but she certainly wouldn't be running after him.
Master didn't take a fighting stance until the last moment, as if reluctant to fight. But when he did move, he blocked both Roxas' keyblades, smooth as silk. Obviously, Master did know how to fight with two swords. The two of them fenced across the center of the battlefield. Every blow was parried, as if the fight had been choreographed, but that was an illusion. None of their four keyblades feinted or went for the hands or feet. Every swing was aimed to kill.
Suddenly, Roxas realized he recognized Master's style. He twisted in mid-swing, a risky move he'd learned the hard way from Riku. Now inside Master's guard, he knocked Redemption and the Kingdom Key high and wide. Roxas brought his keyblades back, in a swing that would have them meet in the center of Master's chest, where the Endless itself lived. Before he connected, he felt a blade go through his kidney.
Roxas staggered back, and fell to his knees. Oathkeeper and Oblivion vanished from his hands. He reached around, and felt Raider's dragon keyblade sticking into his back. Raider had thrown it like a dagger. "Do you always stab people in the back?" Roxas gasped.
"The right way to fight a war is to win," Raider said. He called his keyblade back to his hand. Roxas felt blood pour from his now-empty wound, and he fell face-first into the dust. Dimly, he heard Master's armor clank above him as the Chaser moved. "No, Master!" Raider shouted. The movement stopped. "Maybe if he lives. . . he'll become what Sora should have been." There was a pause, and Roxas heard metallic footsteps as the Chasers walked away.
The world went dark.
-O-
"What's that?" Goofy pointed at something on the horizon. It was a dark spot, looking jagged, but they could see now that it wasn't rocks.
"Come on," Donald said. They jogged toward the spot. Slowly, the dark shapes became clear. "They're keyblades," Donald gasped. "Like someone stuck them there."
"Gawrsh," Goofy said, as they reached the edge of the field. "I didn't know there were so many." Then, in the center, he saw a person, sprawled on the ground in black clothing. "Look!"
"He's hurt!" They both sprinted toward the fallen boy. Donald waved his staff, and a swirl of magic like blowing leaves spun around him. Feeling the Cure magic, he shifted and groaned. "Sora?" Donald said as they approached.
"Riku?" Goofy guessed.
He rose up on his hands and knees, his hood falling down around his neck. "Roxas!" Donald and Goofy said together. "What happened?" Donald asked. "What are you doing here?"
"The Chasers," Roxas panted. "They betrayed us. They took the keyblades." He looked up. "Donald? Goofy? I was afraid Speaker had killed you. The message was fake."
"She never showed up," Donald said.
Slowly, Roxas stood up. "How did you find me?"
"We heard stories in other worlds," Goofy said, "about the waste lands and the Last One." Roxas chuckled hoarsely.
"Do you know anything about a Heartless named Raze?" Donald asked. "He might have been created here."
"Raze is real?" Roxas moaned. He closed his eyes, pained. "The Chasers said he was Sora."
Donald and Goofy looked at each other. "That can't be true!" Donald said.
Roxas shook his head. He didn't argue, but if Sora wasn't a Heartless, why was Roxas there? "His voice. . . it's left me. I used to hear Sora's voice, sometimes. I didn't know what it was, and I couldn't make out the words, but it was there. It almost felt like I had. . ." His hand fluttered over his chest. "But not anymore. I only hear him in nightmares, when Namine's crying."
There was a long, shocked pause. "What were you doing in this place?" Goofy asked eventually.
"I woke up in the desert, not far away. The last thing I remembered was Sora's memory, of a fight. I found where it happened. There was a big pile of keyblades and Endless parts. It looked like every Endless in the worlds had died there. But in the middle, I found Sora, Mickey, and Riku's keyblades. I. . . I thought they were all dead. I made them a memorial, sort of, out of the keyblades.
"I thought about leaving," Roxas went on, "but I. . . I dunno. I didn't see what for. I knew Kairi was alive, but I thought she was grieving for Sora. She wouldn't have wanted to see me. The Endless were all dead, anyway, and the Heartless were on the run. I thought you didn't need me, so I. . . I just thought I'd stay. So there'd be someone who remembered, even if I was alone."
"You sent letters to those guys in Twilight Town," Goofy said.
"They told you about that? I told them not to say anything. But yeah, I made some little artificial Nobodies, birds to carry letters to Hayner and the gang. They were the real ones, not DiZ's data copies that knew me, but they were still my friends, you know? And there were the people in the ruins, too, though we weren't friends, exactly. I protected and helped out in exchange for food and keeping me secret." He looked from Donald to Goofy. "How bad is it? In the other worlds?"
"Raze is attacking Hollow Bastion," Donald said. "Leon and those guys can't stop it. Malificent's still out there, too."
"And if the Chasers are bad guys, they're doing something sneaky," Goofy added. "We haven't seen them since everyone disappeared."
"Do you know where Kairi is?" Roxas asked.
"Nope," Goofy said. "We heard she was with Raider."
Roxas looked off into the distance. "I don't think she's grieving for Sora, I think she's in trouble." He ran fingers through his hair. "I need to find out about Raze. And the Chasers. Raider was angry, but the other one was just a liar. And their leader, he fought like Xemnas."
"Xemnas?" Donald said. "Sora and Riku killed him."
"Yeah, but I know that style," Roxas said. "I've sparred against it a hundred times. Xemnas is the one that taught me to fight with two swords. I don't know what it means. Something else I need to go find out."
"You're not gonna stay here any more?" Goofy asked.
"What for?" Roxas pointed toward the empty crossroads. "The Chasers took their keyblades." He shook his head. "I can't stay here. And I can't fade away and let Sora handle everything, not this time. This time. . . I'll fight."
"Well," Donald said, "King Mickey always said we should help the keyblade wielder."
Roxas grinned. He called in Oblivion, spun it once by the hilt, and then let it vanish and did the same with Oathkeeper. "One last hero of the keyblade, coming up." He whipped off his black Organization XIII robe. It fell to cover the stain of his blood in the center of the crossroads. His clothes underneath were brilliant white, trimmed in grey, with the spiked cross of the Nobodies in black over his heart. "Let's go."