They had liberated the Darkness from the Dark One, only to find that it refused to go away just because it no longer had a vessel. It had been tied to the Dagger, and it would not stop until it had a new soul to latch onto. It had grown stronger with each new Dark One.
Henry was terrified. The Darkness was swarming Emma, his birth mother. He was the one who dragged her back into this mess, when he had gone looking for her to break the curse. And now he had to watch his mother be consumed by the Darkness and become the new Dark One.
In his desperation, he reached for the one thing he had begun to fall back on to escape everything. Long before he had become the new Author, before he remembered magic and everything about Storybrook, he had found a mansion in the woods. In the study there were many, many empty books that he would later find out were empty stories waiting to be recorded.
He had taken one of the books with him when his other mother Regina, who ironically enough was the Evil Queen (ironic due to the fact his grandmother on Emma's side was Snow White), had been forced to remove their memories of Storybrook for over a year until Hook brought them back.
Henry had been the last to remember.
While he lived in New York, Henry had taken to writing in the empty book as a way to escape. At least, after he got tired of certain people yelling at him over the internet because they claimed his stories didn't work like that in the series.
He would swear it was his subconscious trying to remind him of the truth that got him hooked on Kingdom Hearts.
After one too many depressing or downright mean reviews online where he posted his short stories, he had started writing a new one in the empty book. It seemed to almost take a life of it's own, to the point where he was beginning to feel like he had accidentally written himself into his own story.
He didn't even have a name for it, but he found the act of trying to figure out how his main character would live and survive in the Kingdom Hearts series soothing.
Henry took out his book, the one his mothers, grandparents, and pretty much anyone who generally got caught up in the madness that was Emma's life had seen him write in...and in a desperate attempt to do something, threw the book into the swirling vortex of malevolent energy.
Instead of bouncing back, like everyone assumed it would, the darkness caught the book instead. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen.
And then it did.
The vortex seemed to be absorbed into the book, almost as if it were trying to consume it. The Dagger glinted with magic, as if it too were trying to fight off whatever was happening.
"What's happening?" shouted Emma.
The wind seemed to howl, and as the Darkness was sucked into the book no one spoke. Then the book slammed shut with a loud snap. It fell to the ground, and everything was silent. Then the book opened, and the pages flipped from an unseen wind.
That was far from the end though.
Just when they all thought things had calmed down, a new vortex appeared. This time from the book.
"Henry!" shouted Regina.
"Mom!"
Henry tried to hold onto his family, even Hook. But the pull was much too strong. He was sucked into the book...into the story.
Before any of them had the wit to do or say anything, the book slammed shut...with Henry inside.
"What happened? Where's Henry?" demanded Regina.
"He's... He's in the book," said Emma, picking it up. The inside pages were blank, which was somewhat terrifying because she knew very well Henry had written a lot in the thing before this happened. It had almost been full of his handwriting and imagination, from pencil to pen, whichever he could get his hands on at the time when an idea struck him.
She had encouraged him to write, since it let him vent in a healthy way and had even signed him up for a creative writing class. He had kept it up even after getting his memories back, because it was the one thing that wouldn't be changed by magic.
"Well let's get him out of it," said Regina. She went to take the book from Emma's hands, and the moment both of them were touching the book, words appeared.
Emma let go, and the words vanished. She touched it again, and more had appeared.
"That's Henry's handwriting," said Regina, upon closer inspection.
"I recognize this, or some of it anyway. This is the story Henry was writing in the book, though it looks a little...different."
"Henry was writing a story?" said Snow. She had seen him with the Book, but rarely paid him any mind.
"He got into it when we were in New York. I didn't see any harm in it so I signed him up for classes. He let me read his work sometimes," explained Emma.
"I've seen him writing in something. I thought he was doing homework," said Regina.
Emma found the book awkward and heavy. When they went back to her mother's apartment, they found the situation was even stranger than they had originally assumed.
Henry's story was writing itself.
It took Henry all of an hour to realize where he was, and what had happened.
He was in his story, and the Darkness clearly latched on to the power of the fairy tale book in some way despite the fact it was a fiction.
He knew that the Disney stories were all wrong, and to be honest the idea of a mouse as a King was rather silly. The talking animals had never really sat well with him, and he would debate on them for hours online.
However, in here none of that mattered.
Henry tried to walk around, to figure out how he was going to get home...when he saw them.
The Heartless. There were hundreds, thousands of the things.
But that wasn't what worried him, oh no.
What horrified him the most was where they were. More specifically the scene in front of him.
He had played the games often enough that he could tell which world he was on by memory at this point.
He was inside the Door to Darkness.
Henry face-palmed in dismay.
Why was he this surprised. Of course the malevolent dark forces would find it absolutely hilarious to throw the one who interfered behind a door that shouldn't be opened, with countless Heartless between him and escape. And without a keyblade or ability to use magic to boot.
In fact the only way he could get out would be if Sora or Riku were to magically open the door, or if he were to become his 'main character' from his sorta self-insert.
Ryxhen was an unusual Nobody who had limited memory of who he was, and he hadn't lost his heart in the conventional sense.
Unlike the other Nobodies, Ryxhen hadn't lost his heart to the Heartless, thus becoming a Greater Nobody (as Henry liked to call the ones who still looked human). No, he had used Heart Magic to remove it in an effort to save himself from the Darkness before his world was lost...except in the mess of trying to survive his heart went missing, thus turning him into a Nobody anyway.
He wasn't a Heartless, because he was still targeted by the creatures and they left their own kind alone. But he wasn't truly a Nobody either since he did have a heart, it was just missing.
Ryxhen was almost about to find it (while acting as bodyguard for Naminé) when Henry threw his story book into the Darkness. In fact he had found the final clue to who had his missing heart, and Henry was about to write who had had it all along when this mess came to a climax.
Henry couldn't get past the Heartless, and the odds of Sora or his group opening the door before he was turned into one were so slim it wasn't worth considering.
He was boned, no two ways about it.
So when he felt himself falling, it took him a few moments to realize what was happening.
He was entering into the Station of Awakening.
He walked the path, and it almost felt like he was in his games.
Except unlike the games, Henry saw two paths. One of light and one of darkness.
His mom and grandparents would want him to walk up the path of light, and be a hero.
His mom Regina (and likely his grandfather, the now ex-Dark One Rumpelstiltskin) would likely be thrilled if he went on the Dark path. To become an anti-hero, since there was no way he'd be happy as a villain. He'd seen where that ended, thank you.
But Henry was an almost even mixture of good and evil, Heroes and Villains. And to be honest, he was likely the only true neutral in Storybrook that got dragged into their adventures, even if it was on the sidelines.
So why not live up to his real self, and straddle the powers of light and dark at the same time?
Henry walked directly in the middle and didn't stop. To his amazement, he didn't fall off the platform like he had feared for a moment, but onto a hidden path.
There was a reason Riku was his favorite character, next to Naminé. He walked the path of good and evil, and he came out on top.
Henry came out of that place with a new weapon and a very large target on his back. The Heartless were drawn to the Keyblade, after all.
In a fit of desperation, Henry reached into his satchel (now rather empty without his Book with the story he had written) and pulled out a very fancy box with his name on it.
Emma had gotten him a really nice box to keep his writing supplies for his birthday, along with some really fancy paper and a lot of notebooks that were filled with his stories. He had liked it to much that he had brought it with him to Storybrook and kept it in his satchel.
Regina, in an effort to give Henry something he could call his own that no one else would try and take away, had placed a blood spell on it so only Henry (or to a lesser extent Emma or Regina) could open the thing. He kept the key to the box around his neck at all times.
After he started writing his own story in the book, he had moved things around so that there would be a hollow area which protected a space just big enough for something about the size of an adult fist.
Something like his heart, for instance. It even had a bag to keep it safe.
He didn't think he would do this to himself, especially after what his great-grandfather did to him...which lead to his temporary exile and loss of memory in the first place... but Henry really didn't want to become a Heartless.
Besides, he had seen others do this enough times to get the gist of it. And now that he had a keyblade, he could use magic.
Henry channeled magic into his hand...and took out his own heart. It was really, really creepy and more than a little disturbing how easily that came to him.
He quickly hid his heart in the bag, then placed it into the box and locked it. He then put it back in his satchel and hoped it would be secure long enough to get out of this place.
He had played the games. He had read the graphic novels. From what he could tell the Heartless didn't really go after the Nobodies as much as they did normal people. At least not unless provoked. Some of them were very territorial, and all of them went after anyone with a weapon in their hand.
Henry walked as quietly as he dared, feeling very much like Frodo inside the realms of Sauron with the orcs all around him. Unlike the hobbit and his brave, loyal companion Sam, he wasn't there to destroy some mystical artifact his grandfather would have eventually gotten in his pawn shop at some point.
Because let's face it, Rumpelstiltskin wouldn't have passed up on an invisibility ring if it also contained an evil soul, if only to drain the thing and use up it's magics in something else. He was the Dark One for crying out loud, and that sort of thing would have drawn him like moths to flame. That or any of the other myriad of villains who would have bartered it with the Dark One for something else, which made the point moot anyway.
Henry suddenly had the image of his grandfather with Gandalf the Grey complete with pipe, and had to hold back a snort.
Who was he kidding? Rumpelstiltskin would have thrown Saruman off the tower within a week and stolen everything inside for his library. Either that or made a deal and gotten the traitorous wizard thrown out of the place when he came to collect.
The image of the Dark One, leather pants and scales in all kept him amused long before he realized he was in trouble. The Heartless were starting to take notice someone was in their domain with a heart.
Henry quickened his pace, and in spite of anything he dared hope for, his "hero's luck" held out.
The door was opening. The fake Ansem was right on the other side, and waiting to see what lay beyond.
Henry didn't hesitate. He bowled past the surprised evil Keyblade Master (or a fragment of one) and ran like hell out of the area.
He had no idea how to use a keyblade, very little idea how to use the magic that came with it...and he would openly admit being able to pull his heart out was a total fluke... and he knew very well that now was absolutely not the time to experiment when he had that many Heartless breathing down his neck.
He brushed past the surprised faces of Riku and Sora, and narrowly avoided a lightning bolt from the bad guy. However his satchel wasn't nearly as lucky. A second blast made a big enough hole in the bag that his box was hanging out of it.
He didn't have time to stop. He had to get out.
He dove through the original opening Sora had gone through (past a very surprised Donald and Goofy, among others) and completely missed when the box finally fell out onto the ground. Goofy, being the sort of...person...he was, picked it up and stored it someplace safe until it could be returned to the odd teenager.
Henry immediately knew when something went very wrong, because the moment he left the castle and went outside, the tenuous connection to his heart frayed and snapped.
He felt himself falling again, except this time there was something much more sinister behind it.
Without his heart, he fell prey to the same forces that created the Nobodies.
His last vision was of Kingdom Hearts, shining brightly above...before he hit his head and his mind went blank.
A cloaked figure looked at the two Nobodies before him. One was a blond with blue eyes and white clothing that had black and white checkers on the shirt. He could have been any child of this world. But he was special. He was the Nobody of a potentially powerful Keyblade bearer.
The figure moved his hand, revealing the name Sora...which quickly rewrote itself into the name Roxas.
Then it turned to the other child. The one who was a bit more coherent than the newly formed one beside him
He was a bit older than the newly named Roxas. But his potential was nothing less than amazing. He seemed to hold a power he had never seen before, one entirely unique.
Almost exactly like Naminé, in fact.
He tried to find the identity of the soul that created this Nobody...and frowned when his Naming was viciously rejected.
The last time this happened...was when he had met Naminé for the first time.
"Your name?" he commanded.
The child, who's black hair curled around his head in a tamed fashion and who's brown eyes saw far too much for his liking, spoke. His name held the same vestiges of power that would best be served under his command, and no others.
"Ryxhen."
It was very obvious within the first few months that Ryxhen was not suited for the Organization in any active roles. While he picked up magic quickly enough, he didn't seem to have any predisposition to weapons. And that would only get him killed.
So he put the boy on the one thing he could do while still staying firmly under Xemnas' thumb.
He placed him as Naminé's bodyguard. The boy seemed to befriend the lonely female easily enough.
And there was another oddity. Ryxhen's emotions weren't missing, as much as they were muted to the most minimal amount. It was almost like he was developing a heart.
So he kept a firm eye on the teen, who seemed content to be around the other Nobodies and chat for hours with Naminé over art supplies.
She was delighted every time Ryxhen practiced his use of the Corridor and came back with odd paints and more paper.
All she ever got from the others were boxes of crayons, if they could be bothered at all to do something. She was lucky if they resupplied her paper and pencils.
Ryxhen had also introduced the girl to something he called 'origami'. Their efforts were crude and misshapen, but they gave Naminé something else to do with all that paper she had.
Xemnas couldn't help but wonder...
Exactly who was Ryxhen was when he had a Heart?