The sun set red that night, and after the last of the light was swallowed by the horizon the sirens began to keen again. They were close, not coming from the next town over but the firehouse off the central square. Sora, Kairi, and Riku were arguing quietly and fruitlessly in the guest room about their lack of progress, and the pointless accusations trailed off into nothing in the face of the foreboding sound. Kairi rose to check on Sophie, who was clutching a paring knife in a death grip and staring fixedly on the scrap of sky she could see through the kitchen window. Sora jogged over to the front of the house, to see the remaining few people on the street dash for cover like rabbits into their holes.

"Sora, get away from the window!" Riku said sharply, from the doorframe of the guest bedroom. Sora realized what he was doing and stepped away from the fragile glass.

Markl burst through the front door a few minutes later, puffing with exertion and fear. "They're coming! I was standing on the bridge and I could see them." He didn't bother naming 'them'. It wasn't necessary. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Sophie announced over her cutting board and a pile of peeled potatoes. "This is my home and I'm not leaving it."

Calcifer, jarred from his nap by the sirens, cleared his throat. "Tiny problem with that. As awe-inspiring as my power is, I can't protect us from everything. Trying to keep the castle together, the Heartless out, and the fire at bay would be more than I could probably handle. And if the house takes a direct hit…" he mimed being blown apart, complete with tiny detonation that sent hot embers skittering onto the floorboards. Markl wailed. Calcifer drew himself up and regarded Riku, Sora, and Kairi. "What about your ship, Oh Mighty Keyblade Masters? I know you've got a ship, chock fulla lasers, I bet. Pew pew pew problem solved!"

Kairi tensed, ever reluctant to take unnecessary lives. But this time the decision had been made for them—Riku reluctantly waved the suggestion off. "It's a two or three hour walk back to the transport point, and that's not even counting dealing with whatever we might meet on the way. We probably wouldn't make—" He froze in mid-gesture as Calcifer's choice of words penetrated fully. "How did you know that?" he asked, interrupting himself. "This world still runs on steam power, and Radiant Garden didn't arm their ships until after the Fall. How do you even know what lasers are?"

Calcifer went silent. It wasn't a shamed silence, but a forced one. He wrung his thin, three-fingered hands in anticipation, flicking his eyes from face to face to face in the hopes the meager hint had finally been enough—and it was.

"You're a fallen star," Kairi said quietly, all the tiny pieces locking into place to form a flawless picture. Calcifer flared in surprise and gratitude that she'd actually done it. "The Keyblade," she said, tracing the string of evidence as she spoke. "You recognized it when Riku shoved it in your face. And that's why you agreed to help us find Sora—you knew what he was. You convinced Howl to stand up against Madame Suliman and the experiments in Darkness because you've seen the Heartless before. I saw my own star die when I was a little girl. I couldn't catch any of the pieces. But Howl must have saved you."

"You're connected somehow," Sora added, recalling the brief crack in Calcifer's concentration at the same moment Howl had almost been forced into Darkness the day of the royal audience. "If he dies or surrenders to Darkness, you go with him. You share the same heart."

"That's impossible," Riku said automatically.

"Is not," Sora countered. "People share pieces of their hearts without realizing it. I'd know that better than anybody. Maybe the rules are different if a heart doesn't belong to a person. There's a lot about this stuff we don't know. If Howl were here we could ask him, but…"

"He's probably not far," Markl said quietly, and swallowed painfully. "That's where he goes, when he disappears and comes back smelling like burning petrol. He was trying to stop the bombings."

"Alright. It's too late to run, and even if we did we'd be leaving Calcifer behind," Sora said. "We can ride this out if we take some of the burden off him. Where's the house weakest against the Heartless? Where would they be able to break in?"

"Front door, and the window of the master bedroom," he answered. "Especially the door."

"Then we'll take care of those. The Heartless always go for us first. We should be able to distract enough of them from beating down the door so that you can hold off the rest." From outside there was flash that lit up the room in a fleeting orange glow, and a bass rumble on its heels so deep and close it made the windows tremble.

Markl whimpered and dove into Sora's chest, his fists curled up under his chin, as if he was trying to fold himself into a package too small and insignificant for the war to reach. "Don't leave us here, Sora. Please don't," he mumbled into Sora's shirt. Sora put his arms around Markl's small shoulders and brown curls. His breath was fluttering like a wounded bird. Sora hugged him tighter.

"One of us should stay inside, as the last line of defense," Riku pointed out. "I think you've been elected."

"Kairi should—" Sora began.

"Be able to decide for herself," she finished for him. Her voice was like steel. "There's going to be mobs of Shadows, and I can deal with numbers better than you can."

Sora reluctantly peeled Markl from his chest and crossed over to Kairi. He took her hand in his; it was much smaller, and her fingers narrower and more delicate, but it was just as battleworn and just as strong. He embraced her briefly, tight enough to squeeze some of her breath out in a heavy sigh, and before they parted she pressed a quick kiss over his lips. "Be careful," he said. "Please."

Another cloud of fire bloomed in the windows. Riku summoned his Keyblade. "We'll come back," he told Sora. "We will."

-ooo-

The door shut heavily behind Riku and Kairi, and the lock clicked into place. Sora stayed by the banisters, still and silent, until Markl took his arm and pulled him to the couch, which was as far as it was possible to get from the windows. The boy wedged himself into the corner of the cushions, and burrowed under Sora's arm and against his side. Sora let him, since a comforting presence and a calm smile was realistically all he could offer Markl at this point. Sora felt more useless than he had in years. Against bombs he was as defenseless as anyone else trapped on the ground. His Keyblade couldn't protect Markl, Sophie, Kairi, Riku, or even himself.

Sophie had been very quiet since the second siren sounded. It was a contemplative kind of silence. If she was afraid she hid it well. After a few minutes, she rose from her seat in the kitchen and dusted off her apron. She walked up to Calcifer and crossed her arms over her chest. "Even if we make it through the night, will Howl?"

Calcifer flickered uncomfortably and fixed his eyes on a speck on the hearth. "No. Probably not."

"Then if I'm going to help you both, I have to do it now." She knelt down on the floor so she could look Calcifer in his wavering eyes. "Please, tell me everything you can that might help."

"I'm sorry, Sophie. Madame Suliman taught him too well—you know he tied me up too tight in the curse of silence."

"That idiot!" she spat suddenly, in a young woman's voice, and the age lines pinching her face released it. "I don't care if he thinks the Heartless are his burden and the Darkness is his curse. He'll damn you both out of his stupid pride!"

Sora sat up a little straighter. There was still a problem left to untangle, and this one he might be able to do something about. "What can you say, Calcifer? Since I already know you're a star, could you tell us how you got to this world? Anything could help."

Calcifer tried abortively to explain himself a few times until he found words the curse permitted. "It was a long time ago. I don't remember how long. Time like you humans think of it doesn't mean much to a star. The people that lived on the worlds around me we born and died, going around and around and around in the circle of things. There was peace for a long time. Then the Heartless came. The circle broke. I didn't know what they were at first, except that they bit off little pieces of me—the hearts of my people didn't circle back like they should have. Then more pieces didn't come back, then more and more. I was life itself—I couldn't end for good, or so I thought at first. After I while I realized what was happening, and…I was scared.

"Then the Keyblade Master came, in her ship. But she was just one girl, and all by herself. She tried leading what was left of my people against the Heartless but there were too many for her. She tried going back for help but her ship was overrun. Nobody came looking for her, or to help her. After she died the Heartless almost ate me alive. All this?" he said, and gestured to his flickering body. "Wasn't all I was. There was so much more of me then. I…we broke apart as we fell, a splinter here and a sliver there. We landed on this world, all least the ones that didn't burn away in the air. Most of the pieces were so weak…pffft!…out like candles when they hit. But Howl caught me when he was a boy. We made a deal," he finished, looking shocked he got that much out, and strangely unhappy he'd succeeded.

"You could tell us that much. That's good, right?" Sora asked. "Come on, keep trying."

"No. It isn't," he explained quietly. "I shouldn't have been able to say that. If the binding curse is weakening it means his will is weakening too."

Sora sighed despondently, but the faint hope Calcifer's speech had kindled on Sophie's face wasn't extinguished. She folded her arms over the lip of the hearth, all of her attention fixed on the fire. "I won't give up on him, Calcifer. Keep talking."

-ooo-

Kairi swung again and split the Heartless into two neat halves. The smoke was choking, and stung her eyes until they watered, leaving two meandering tear tracks through the soot on her face. Madame Suliman's orders hadn't held her servants in check in the face of so much terror to feast upon, and the injured in the ruins of their houses were easy prey for their teeth and claws. Their numbers had increased exponentially in the last hour, and the newly birthed Heartless weren't bound to any master. The courtyard was swarming, and so was the air, for many of the Heartless had discovered the trick of sprouting gossamer wings from their lumpy backs and taking to the sky.

Kairi was balanced on the roof overhanging the courtyard and swatting madly at anything that so much as glanced at the second-floor window. Riku was on the ground doing the same for the inner door. Like Sora had predicted, the beasts hardly cared about battering their way inside when the most succulent hearts were out in the open. Their enemies were numerous but weak, and both Kairi and Riku were holding their ground, at least for now. They'd fallen into their own patterns with the tides of the Heartless—push forward, draw back, push forward again, and swallow a quick mouthful from one of the bottles in their pockets when one of the beasts got especially lucky. Once or twice Kairi thought she caught sight of great black wings in the sky above her head, but there were too many Heartless hovering around her to stop and look more closely.

No matter how many they killed, more came sweeping in to replace the ones that had fallen to their blades, and the barrage of flame from above wasn't letting up either. The latest surge of Heartless rose in a cloud from the ruins of a church and made for her. She cut down a few, then a few more. The braver (or hungrier) ones clawed at her exposed skin, drawing a few streaks of blood from her tiring arms, which she ignored. All in all, she felt, they were doing better than she'd expected.

But their bodies hung so thick around her and their wordless chattering pressed so close on her ears that she didn't hear the scream of engines above her head, and she didn't see the last of its payload fall until the black cloud of Heartless parted with the radiance of several million pounds of explosive force. The explosion shredded their ranks, and they were, ironically, what kept the shattered glass and timber from the townhouse from shredding Kairi, too. She was swept from the roof of the shop and into the wall of the house's second story, tumbled off the narrow overhang, and fell to the courtyard below, cushioned by the gelatinous, squirming bodies pressed against her. They hit the ground together, dazed by the concussion. But there was no time for shock, or to acknowledge the pinch of the shrapnel or the pain that was blossoming in her knees and ankles. Lightning burst forth from her head with a spell spoken so often it was almost a reflex, and a crown of killing white vines dissolved the Heartless that had begun to flutter unsteadily up again.

Riku glanced over at her, concerned for a moment, until he saw her spell light up the yard. "Hey, those were mine!" Riku yelled over the chatter.

Kairi didn't answer. She didn't answer because she had looked down and discovered a crimson flower unfolding its petals across her shirt, and thereafter made a second discovery, which was how much five inches of broken window pane hurts when it's been thrust into your side. The wave of unbearable pain melted her attempts to rise, and the feeling of hot blood spreading across her shirt sealed her lips. The ground pitched up and hit her in the side of the face. The ruddy light of the fires that illuminated the scene flickered and faded, to be replaced by a field of brilliant starbursts only she could see. The only thing that detracted from the beauty of the vision was a woman's voice moaning in the background that she only belatedly and distantly recognized as her own.

The private sky behind her eyelids was beckoning to her. It was dark, but not frightening, like the comfort of a soft and familiar bed before the dawn broke. She could wrap herself in it, if she chose, beyond pain and beyond care. She struggled vainly against the velvet weight of unconsciousness, but her weakening body wouldn't acknowledge her and slipped down further. This was it, she saw. The day she could finally learn what Kingdom Hearts looked like from the inside.

The last scene.

Fade to black.