Sora was safe. Riku had pulled him back to the light. The threat hanging over them had passed. So, why did this darkness remain, and why had he been shaken from his slumber?
This darkness he found himself in scared him. It wasn't simply sleep, but something much stronger, something he knew shouldn't have been there. Once his feet found solid ground, he took a deep breath, leaned his head up, and closed his eyes in an attempt to block out the darkness around him. He summoned forth Oathkeeper and pointed the Keyblade toward the ground a few paces ahead of him, and a light shot out from the tip and flowed toward his target. A brilliant light broke through the darkness, shattering it away and leaving behind a stained glass pillar of a brown-haired boy in red.
"Sora…" Oathkeeper's wielder breathed as he looked down at the boy's face.
"Roxas…" came a soundless voice as if in reply, and Roxas looked up into the darkness above him. "Stop the Darkness. Save the Light."
"Sora?" Roxas called again in a stronger voice. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"
"Save the Light," the soundless voice said again. Roxas sighed and dismissed his Keyblade, glancing around the pillar as he started walking forward.
"Save the Light…" he mused. "What's happening?" He stopped and stood still for a moment before turning around to find a small creature watching him from the edge of the pillar with large yellow eyes, scratching at the glass as it stared at him. At the sight of it, Roxas summoned his Keyblade again and set himself into his battle stance. "What are you doing here?!" he demanded as it turned its black head from side to side, its antennae twitching. Shadows like this were never much of a nuisance to him, but to see one here disturbed him. He didn't wait for an answer and rushed toward it, Keyblade at the ready, but it vanished before he could reach it. He skidded to a halt and straightened back up, both hands clenched into fists as he tried to make sense of what was happening. He turned away from the edge of the pillar and started back toward its center.
He stopped, however, as he felt a slight shaking beneath his feet, and turned around just in time to find a giant black Heartless with a heart-shaped hole in its torso rising from the depths of darkness below, yellow eyes watching him as its claws flexed. Roxas felt a chill move down his spine and readied his Keyblade once again, scrambling back as the Heartless, a Darkside, drove its hand into the ground he stood on and darkness erupted around it, summoning several more Shadows. Without even a moment of hesitation, Roxas charged forward and slashed at the Darkside's hand again and again, stopping only when the Heartless pulled its hand back. While he waited for another opening, the boy turned his attention to the Shadows attempting to swarm him, dispatching them quickly before they could overwhelm him.
Once they were taken care of, he jumped up with his weapon aimed at the Darkside's hand again and spun around, connecting with his target several times before he landed. The Darkside leaned forward and crossed its muscular arms over its torso before bowing back and shooting out several balls of light from the hole in its chest. Roxas frowned and jumped back about a pace, circling the circumference of the pillar he stood on, and found himself knocked forward with pain in his back as one of the lights managed to catch up with him. He looked up and rolled back and out of the way as the Darkside smashed its hand into the pillar once more, hitting the boy with the shockwave it produced upon impact. Roxas grit his teeth and shook off the blows, dodging around the Shadows that appeared to attack the Darkside again.
One final strike sent the Shadows scurrying and the Darkside leaned forward again, though it prepared no attack this time. Instead, it simply stared at him as it swayed, its form beginning to dissolve back into darkness.
"How did you get here?" Roxas demanded of it, but it offered no reply. The yellow of its eyes faded into black and it sunk back into the darkness below, and Roxas jogged over to the edge of the pillar and looked down after it. As far as he could tell, it had vanished, and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
When he looked back up, though, at some sense or other, he found himself staring at a figure seemingly standing on nothing in the darkness ahead of him, arms crossed over its chest. It wore a garb Roxas was far too familiar with: the long black coat of Organization XIII, accompanied by the usual black gloves, pants, and silver-trimmed boots. The coat's hood hid the figure's face from view, though it appeared to have a masculine build as far as he could tell, alerting him that this wasn't one of his companions he had come to have around. Without much thought, he glanced down to his own clothing- a white, short-sleeved jacket adorned with a checkered pattern over another black one and black and white pants.
"Who are you?" he called as he looked back up, but the figure didn't speak. It uncrossed its arms and only nodded to him before turning away and vanishing into the darkness. "Hey, wait!" Roxas yelled, but the figure was gone, leaving him confused and irritated. He dismissed Oathkeeper and crossed his own arms, lowering his head in thought for a moment until a brief glow of light out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he found a path resembling stained glass had appeared. He frowned a moment longer before he made his way across it to another pillar of a different color.
Once he had arrived there, he let out a breath of relief as two others approached him, and they met in the center of the pillar. One was a girl dressed in the same coat the figure from before had worn. She had short black hair with bangs swept to one side, and her deep blue eyes shimmered with relief at the sight of him. Their other companion was a boy who strikingly resembled Roxas with the same hair of blond spiked up similar to a wave on one side and a nearly identical face, though his eyes were a brighter shade of blue and reflected a consciousness that had endured harsh pain and loss, yet shone with stalwart determination and hope. He also wore an outfit made of mostly black and white, though his jacket was made of about half and half and his pants only reached down to his ankles. He also wore armor on his left shoulder and around his waist, though neither Roxas nor his other companion had any explanation as to why.
"Roxas, Xion," the other boy greeted with a smile of relief and a dip of his head.
"Ven," they both replied within a moment of each other, using his preferred nickname rather than his full name of "Ventus." "Are you both okay?" Roxas wondered.
"A little shaken," Xion admitted, rubbing her arm. "But I'm okay."
"Same," Ventus agreed. "I'm gonna guess you both had some issue or other with this darkness."
"A Shadow and a Darkside," Roxas reported.
"Darkside?" Ventus echoed, confused.
"A really big Pureblood Heartless," Xion explained, and Ventus let out a brief grunt of understanding as he nodded.
"I don't think they were the same thing, and something about the Shadow bothered me," Roxas went on as he crossed his arms again. "And there was a guy in a black coat. I didn't see his face, but-"
"It was like he was standing on nothing," Ventus interrupted, and Roxas stared at him.
"Yeah," he agreed. "How'd you know?"
"I saw him too. I had a kind of nasty battle with an Unversed, and I'm trying to figure out where it came from. But after I got rid of it, I saw a boy in the coat you two wear."
"But he vanished," Xion finished. "Who is he?"
"That seems to be the big question," Ventus shrugged. "But a bigger question is, how do we figure that out?" Roxas looked up into the darkness above them, losing himself in his thoughts for a moment.
"There's something wrong in Sora's heart," he thought aloud. "This darkness shouldn't be here, not after Riku saved him. The guy in the coat probably has something to do with it." He paused. "I heard a voice that said 'Stop the Darkness. Save the Light.'"
"Me too," Xion said, and Ventus nodded. "So, if we get rid of the Darkness, then Sora should be okay. But I don't want to find out what'll happen if we don't."
"But how do we do that?" Ventus sighed. "I guess we'd need a way to traverse his heart."
"Well, that should be simple enough," Xion pointed out, summoning forth the Kingdom Key and pointing it forward. A light formed at the tip and flowed forth into the darkness, but something like a barrier stopped it, and it shot back toward her. She shrieked as it knocked her back and both boys quickly scrambled to pull her back to her feet.
"You okay?!" Roxas demanded as she tried to regain her balance.
"Y-yeah," she replied as she looked over to him with an attempt at a reassuring smile. "I'm okay, I think."
"What was that?" Ventus wondered as he looked out into the darkness. "Whatever it is we're dealing with, it doesn't want us to leave."
"Then how the heck are we supposed to fight it?" Roxas groaned. "We're not gonna get anywhere if we're just standing around." The three of them fell silent in thought while the boys doted over Xion to assure she was okay, to which she shrugged them off and insisted she was fine.
"Roxas," Ventus pondered. "You're Sora's Nobody, so you've probably got the closest connection to him out of all of us. Maybe you can break through." Roxas stared at him briefly and shrugged.
"I guess it's worth a try," he replied, calling forth Oathkeeper again and aiming it into the darkness ahead. He took a deep breath as the light formed and flowed forth, breaking through whatever barrier had them trapped and opening a path. He blinked and turned back to his companions.
"Go," Xion assured him with a smile. "We'll catch up!" Ventus smiled as well, and Roxas nodded to them before turning to the path he'd opened and hurrying through it.