I lasted only a few more days. Just enough time for the Party to end and operations to shift back into normal gear.
By then, the tug had not faded, and my curiosity had gotten the better of me.
"You're leaving again?" Shikaku asked. "So soon?"
"I've got something I need to take care of. I should be back pretty soon." I explained. "Honestly, I might be back in an hour or two."
Shikaku shrugged. "Well, alright then. Take care."
"I always do."
I left the World not long after.
The Sea of the Skies was the same as it always was. Semi-reality, interspersed with rocks and strange things...
I didn't linger there for long. I just... dived.
The Realm of Darkness was a little different, as always. The upper layers had shifted into more contrasting colour schemes, abyssal pools covered by sharp, jagged pieces of land. The Heartless within were ever-present, but they paid no mind to me.
But once I reached the depths, it was the same. Just Darkness, giving up on any concept of physicality. Endless black, timeless and spaceless. To anybody else, impossible to navigate. The Darkness would consume, twist, or turn even the darkest of Hearts, should they try to come close. Going through here was impossible. Only Darkness, pure and true, could pass.
I crossed the abyss in moments.
It lays at the deepest depths of the Great Darkness. Within the Realm of Darkness, Heartless are everywhere. Surrounding it, however, is nothing but Darkness itself. Heartless do not go near it.
The reason for this is simple.
Within this black abyss...
A Light still shines.
The Heart of All Worlds, the Heart of The World...
Surrounded by Darkness, it had never been consumed. Heartless do not come here because there is no point. This is a Light that will never fade. This is a Light that cannot be taken.
Kingdom Hearts.
It is beautiful. Surrounded by the Great Darkness, yet it's Light holds the Darkness at bay. Existing forever... And so, bound forever. The Great Darkness shall not let it go.
I cross the border, and step from the Great Darkness into Kingdom Hearts' Light.
Kingdom Hearts focuses its attention on me. It judges me, considers me. All that I am, all that I have been.
Its Light feels warm upon me. The Darkness behind me twists, shifting, but coming no closer.
Kingdom Hearts accepts my presence. Still, I venture no closer, for I am the moth to Kingdom Hearts' proverbial flame, and I don't intend to see that to its inevitable conclusion. I stay at the border between the Infinite Dark and the Endless Light.
It is certainly a sight. Kingdom Hearts, in the distance, on one side, radiant and magnificent. A sharp divide, in middle, where Light and Darkness meet and clash, where things come in and out of existence. Darkness, on the other side, an infinite black devoid of stars...
My presence here offers a little bit of stability. Rock forms underneath me, a quick crag growing outwards. Three outcroppings come into place, each equally distant to the other. One is behind me, the other two in front of me.
"So? What are you waiting for?" I asked. "I was called. Now I answer."
In the time between moments, between instants, they're there. Perhaps, in a timeless place like this, they've always been there.
And seeing them, I immediately understand why that pull felt so familiar.
One figure was covered in elaborate robes. The posture was perfect, the robes elaborate. Every single inch of this person screamed 'magic', save only the fact that the form was slightly translucent, illuminated by a light from within and given definition by shadows the same.
The other was simple where the first was elegant. The posture was slumped, head barely lifted. Armour, Keyblade Armour, covered the form, missing only the helmet. Again, translucent, but where the former had light illuminating and shadows to give definition, this one had shadows to make seem real and light to hide the scars.
One, a mage. The other, a tired warrior.
As different as they seemed, they had more in common than one might think. Both were Memories, bundles of emotion and thought, not true existences of their own. No Heart or Soul was held inside their being. Their appearance, here, was possible only because of the nature of this place; the border of the Deepest Darkness and the Brightest Light. Memory took a physical form.
There was another thing, too.
Both of them had the same face.
A face that told me the answer to why they were so familiar. A face I recognized easily.
How could I not, when it was the face I used to see in the mirror?
"Took your time." My voice, older, wiser, long since lost, says.
"Didn't we?" My voice, older still, wiser still, and much more bitter but not yet broken, asks in turn.
"I had obligations." I said. "Friends." I say, because that's all the explanation I need.
And I sit down upon the rock behind me.
"Friends would do that." Says the Mage.
"Friends are good." The Warrior agress. "We lost too many as it was."
"So how'd it happen?" I asked.
"The World was a place of infinite potential." The Mage says. "Dimensions, realities, existences, every possibility could become something real."
"Such as, for example, a reality, a universe, without Magic, its people unknowing of the Light and the Dark, but a place where a story known as 'Kingdom Hearts' might be written." The Warrior explains.
So, it was that all along?
"I see." I nod. "So, the... 'real world' would not be the term for it, I suppose, seeing as it would be as real as any other. Our world, then, was part of a vast multiverse? A multiverse that happens to be similar to a work of fiction in our world."
"Hole in one." The Mage agrees. "So long as multiverse theory was true, it was bound to resemble at least one model. Too many works of fiction with too many bases covered for it not to. As it turned out, Kingdom Hearts had the right of it."
"The question, then, is how did we get from there to here?"
"That's simple." The Warrior says. "I failed."