Chapter 33

It was a hard road, traveling on foot to Castle Oblivion, but that was the only choice Roxas had--none of the trains even had the place on their maps, and most of the people who did know where it was believed that the place was cursed, or inhabited by nothing but mindless Heartless and Nobodies that would kill anyone who entered.

Roxas knew better, of course, but he'd never be able to convince anyone else. He wasn't sure what kind of reaction he'd get if he told someone that he was going to join Organization XIII--nobody knew they had returned, and not everyone knew that the group had died in the first place. And worse, fear of the Organization (both the irrational, panicky kind and otherwise) was still common in the Twilight World, even ten years after they were destroyed.

But, before long, Roxas found that he had found his way onto a familiar road. It didn't seem like very long had passed, but he could tell he had traveled a very long way just by looking up at the sky--the familiar frozen sunset was gone, replaced by the blue skies and sunlight of mid-day. There were huge, puffy clouds in the sky, and the grassy fields in front of him stretched as far as the eye could see, with the road becoming a squiggly brown line in the distance before finally disappearing from sight entirely.

Roxas walked the grassy path for what had to be several hours, and the sky above was beginning to change once again--this time back to sunset, though a different kind of sunset from the one that hung over Twilight Town. Just ahead was a small town, run-down and mostly populated by old, rickety wooden buildings and the occasional old man standing on his front porch, watching the streets in front of his house while reading a newspaper.

He didn't stay there long--only for enough time to pick up a quick bite to eat. After that, it was back to the road--Castle Oblivion wasn't far now. He'd probably be arriving right around nightfall, if he kept his pace up. The familiar four-way crossroads came up over the next hill, and as he passed beyond the branching paths, his mood suddenly picked up.

He was about to start running down the path like he was a kid again when he noticed that someone was approaching from the opposite direction. Rather than running, he stopped immediately and tried to get a better look.

Whoever this person in the distance was, they were wearing a very familiar black cloak...

Zexion walked into the training room that Lexaeus and Otonashi had been using for the past few hours, watching as Lexaeus taught the newcomer how to fight more effectively. During this training, they had discovered that Otonashi's weapon had the power to extend itself to incredible lengths, though there was still no sign of Otonashi's other powers surfacing yet.

"Any progress since the last time I checked?", Zexion asked, walking over toward Lexaeus. The larger man turned around to face him, nodding slightly, before he spoke.

"He's learning fairly well," Lexaeus said, "Not the kind of improvement I saw in Michiko, certainly, but he appears to be learning at about the same rate that the rest of us did."

"And still no sign of his powers?"

"No. But that should come as no surprise," Lexaeus replied, "It has hardly been a day since Otonashi joined us. None of us mastered our powers on the first day, or even within the first year."

"That's true," Zexion said, "Unfortunate, though. It looks as if we'll need as much help as possible in the near future."

Zexion stopped and looked around the room for a second, noticing that something seemed to be missing. He thought about it, at first thinking that one of Marluxia's old decorations must have been destroyed during one of the recent training sessions, but then realized what the problem really was.

"By the way," Zexion asked, turning back toward Lexaeus, "Where has Michiko gone off to? She was in here just a few minutes ago, correct?"

"Michiko? She went for a walk not long ago," Lexaeus said, "She said she was going to visit her parents again. They're not far away--just a few miles from here, in an old town."

"Ah," the smaller man said, "Well, I suppose there's no problem then. She should be careful, though--it's hard to tell what could be happening out there."

The town of wooden shacks was suddenly illuminated as a glowing door appeared above an old inn, causing several annoyed customers inside to groan and roll over in their beds to block out the light. Seconds later, there was a sound of some heavy metal object thumping against the wooden roof of the building, followed shortly by the glowing door fading away.

That thump was quickly followed by another as the armored figure that had appeared on the roof hopped down, landing on the ground and standing there for a few seconds, looking around. The sunset was slowly beginning to fade and the sky was starting to grow dark, but the knight could still see perfectly, even through the dark-colored faceplate of his helmet.

Vasilios suddenly began laughing, the sound becoming halfway-metallic as it echoed inside his armor. The town he had been sent to attack was a pitiful place--it had almost destroyed itself, thanks to the effects of time.

"Hey, you!", someone yelled, "Isn't it a little late to be walking around in full armor?"

Vasilios turned around to face the person who had spoken--a man with green hair, apparently the owner of the inn he had landed on based on how he was standing in the doorway of that building. The green-haired man took one look at the knight and gasped, reaching for the door to close it, but he was too slow.

A single Keyblade swing later, the man was lying dead on the ground, missing a large chunk of his head. Vasilios turned to walk off down another street, stopping for a second to look down all the alleys before he continued. Before long, he came to a house with a familiar symbol painted on its door.

"Ah... so this little place is where they all went," he said, running his hand over the door for a few minutes, "And they've even marked the houses where the descendants of royalty ended up... this won't take long at all."

The knight's Keyblade slammed into the door, splitting the royal symbol painted on it in half and the slicing through the door itself not long afterward. He kicked down what was left of the door and then walked in, and immediately the entire house went silent.

In the next room over, a middle-aged woman ducked into an open closet. Upstairs, three children--two in their late teens and one much younger--suddenly stopped talking, ducking into the bed that the three of them had to share. In the dining room, the man of the house sat down his drink and carefully walked toward the front room, not knowing what to expect.

And before any of them could do anything else, Vasilios held up one hand and clenched his fist. A beam of light shot up into the air, cutting through the celing and continuing upward. A second passed, and then a shower of beams poured down onto the house, cutting hundreds of holes into the house and reducing it to a brittle shell of a building in seconds. The three children upstairs were killed almost instantly, impaled by the beams as they headed back down. The house creaked, then collapsed entirely, leaving nothing standing except for Vasilios and a few stray pieces of furniture.

The knight took a few steps over to the remains of an old closet, seeing that the green-haired woman was still just barely clinging to her life. He stopped in front of her, looking downward, and then smiled--though she couldn't see through his helmet.

"So you're the last of the royal bloodline," Vasilios said, holding out one of his hands toward the dying woman, "Go ahead. I'll help you up."

She reached her hand up weakly, grabbing the armored hand, and was pulled upward out of the rubble, coming face-to-helmet with the mysterious knight who had just destroyed her home and killed her family. The knight laughed quietly, holding her up by the hand for several seconds, before speaking again.

"There's a little tradition I have about royalty," he said, gripping the woman's arm tighter and holding her upright, "Especially when it comes to relatives of the Twilight World's royal family... like you."

"Wh... what are you going to do to me?", she said weakly. Whatever it was, it would have to be quick--she probably didn't have more than a minute or two left alive.

"Oh, I won't do anything to you," he said, raising his Keyblade high into the air, "Your body is worthless to me, and your soul is nothing but an afterthought. What I'm interested in... is your heart."

"What do you mean?", she said, "My... heart?"

She looked down once, and noticed that the knight's arm was beginning to glow brightly. The glow spread to her own arm, creeping across her skin until her entire torso was surrounded with the strange, unnatural-looking light. The Keyblade in Vasilios' other hand began to glow as well, and then began to pulse with rainbow-colored light.

"You see," Vasilios said, "Hearts are a source of incredible power... especially when Keyblades are involved. But no one person can have more than one heart of their own..."

She gasped, and her heart slowly emerged from her chest, glowing pink and rotating around slowly. It began to glow, but Vasilios swung his Keyblade down and thrust it through the heart, causing it to dull and fade back to its original pink color. It then began to shrink, and the Keyblade was surrounded by a pinkish aura for several seconds before the heart disappeared entirely.

The knight let go of the woman, causing her to fall in a heap on the floor. Unlike many, her body did not begin to fade away to transform into a Nobody--it was too late. She was too badly wounded to even move, let alone disappear and be reborn as a new creature entirely.

But as Vasilios walked off, before she finally lost consciousness, the dying woman manage to whisper one thing.

"Michiko..."