The doors from their most recent sojourn closed behind the trio as they found themselves back at the marble white decorated halls of Castle Oblivion. They were just a few feet away from the stairs leading to the next floor before Goofy stopped, scratching his head with a loud, contemplative hum. Sora and Donald stopped and looked back at their friend, the latter asking, "What's the matter?"
One of the rare times in his life, Goofy was showing something other than his upbeat demeanor. Something more serious, like he couldn't put it out of his mind like it was important. "It's that creepy castle I mentioned earlier. I know I didn't imagine it. Cause that was the castle where Sora had to use the Keyblade to free Kairi's heart. Then he just disappeared! And I was so worried. How could I ever forget that?"
The memories flashed through Sora's mind in an instant. The final smile he gave his friends, the dark Keyblade he plunged into his chest, Kairi calling out to him, "Oh! It was when I turned into a Heartless!" Now he was getting what Goofy meant. There was no way he could forget that moment. Especially after the conversation he had with Kairi at Traverse Town. But as he thought back to that moment...another terrible memory came back to him. One that none of them were keen to remember. "And...and when Pyrrha..."
As Sora thought back to that horrible tragedy, even more grim memories came flooding back. The moment Pyrrha was...Neither he, Donald, Goofy, or Jiminy could bear to even think the word, much less say it. They remembered that moment with more clarity than they'd have liked. "I'll never forget that either..." Goofy mused sadly. None of them would...especially not Ruby, Jaune, or any of their friends.
But then Sora realized…"...Wait. That happened...in a castle?"...he couldn't remember any castles being attached to either of those events. DID all that happen at a castle?
Sora's uncertain inquiry drew Donald's attention as he rolled his eyes at Sora's forgetfulness. "Aww, you forgot that? Because I remember perfectly!" he said confidently.
"Then what's it called?" Sora asked challengingly. If he and Goofy couldn't remember it, how could Donald?
"That's easy! It was..." An awkward silence filled the hallway as Donald stopped short in what should have been an easy recollection. Try as he might, Donald couldn't think of the name of the castle they were in when this happened. But it couldn't have happened THAT long ago. They practically JUST came to this place. So why couldn't he remember? "Jiminy, help me. Is it in your journal?" Donald asked, feeling a little scared by his inability to remember.
"Every word." Jiminy assured the group with a smile as he popped out of Sora's hood. "I finished the first volume right before we got to this castle." He turned around, fishing through Sora's hood, drawing a rather surprised look from the Keyblade Master. Was Jiminy storing all of those in the back of his jacket or something? "Now then, if I can just find it...Ohohohoho. Here we go." Pulling the journal out, Jiminy hopped onto the floor and opened it up. Hopefully the journal could jog everyone's memory. "Let's have a look." The moment he looked at the pages, his face blanched with shock and disbelief. "Oh! How could it be!?"
The shift in his demeanor worried the trio. "What's the matter?" Goofy asked with great concern. He'd never seen Jiminy so horrified by anything in their travels. At least not that he could recall.
A crestfallen Jiminy turned the journal to show the pages. "All my entries! They're gone! Every page… is blank!"
Sora and Goofy were almost speechless as Donald exclaimed, "What?!" Jiminy's journal entries were just…gone?!
"How could this happen? I'm so careful with the journal!" Jiminy said, He worked so hard to chronicle every bit of their adventure, and now...now...Jiminy started sobbing as he realized..."All that hard work is gone..." Every single entry he made of their adventures, both the good and the bad…lost.
Sora felt even more unsettled than he already was. For whatever reason, he couldn't help but think back to the time he first saw the hooded man who took Ruby then coaxed him into taking the path to this castle. Ever since that moment, strange things kept happening one after the other. Stranger than even his world being consumed by the Heartless and him finding himself in a different world. He wasn't sure how, but...he felt that somehow, this place was responsible for Jiminy's entries disappearing "The Journal's blank...What kind of castle is this?"
Donald and Goofy felt so terrible for poor Jiminy, the latter whispering to the former, "I don't think Jiminy would erase his own journal." There was no way he would just up and destroy all of his own hard work. Especially after everything they went through.
Trying to think of something to cheer the poor cricket up, Goofy looked between Sora and Donald, and said, "Once we get out of this castle, let's help Jiminy re-write the journal!"
The teary-eyed cricket sniffled as he looked up at Goofy's considerate offer. "Really? You'd help me with that?" he asked hopefully.
"Of course!" Donald said, looking at him with his own smile. "We're all friends, right? And friends always help each other when they need it." A sentiment he finished, cheerfully pointing to himself.
Jiminy wiped his face, smiling as the sentiment of his friends at least helped him feel a little better. "Thanks, fellahs. I appreciate that," he said before taking out a second journal. "At the very least, I've still got the journal that has all the things we've done ever since we set foot in this castle...Kind of odd that one didn't get erased. Not that I'll complain."
Sora helped Jiminy back to his shoulder and smiled at him. "Yeah. Least we've still got one journal with things written in it." As they continued, the realization of that made Sora curious again. Only the things before entering the castle seemed to be gone. Not during or after.
Elsewhere in the castle, Ruby was not having any luck finding an exit or anything kind of noteworthy landmark in this place. "Ugh. Why does everywhere in this castle look the exact same?!" she bemoaned with frustration. She'd lost track of how long she'd been wandering.
Yet, as she did, she couldn't help thinking about what she'd felt since she woke up. An oddly nostalgic feeling that she couldn't put her finger on. It felt slightly similar to the way she felt when she first met Sora. Both in their shared dream and when they met in Traverse Town. She didn't think much of it then, but now something seemed to make that feeling a bit stronger, ever since she woke up here. But why? The only reason for it that she could guess was... "Sora… Are you here too?" If he was, she hoped he was having better luck finding his way than she was.
As the five visitors wandered their respective pathways, another figure in the castle was hard at work with something else. A girl, around Kairi's age, even with a similar frame, sat in a pearl white chair, similar to everything else in the castle, with a sketchbook in one hand and a colored pencil in the other. Her light blonde locks of hair draped along her right shoulder upon the respective strap of her pure white sundress. Her sandal clad feet idly tapped the floor as she drew and drew with a small, wistful smile on her lips.
Sora, Donald, Goofy and Jiminy struggled to make sense of what was going on all the way to the third floor. "Something's screwy here. Journal pages don't just vanish." Donald said. Someone must have sabotaged them or something.
"What if… It's more things?" Sora's sudden question drew the attention of Donald and Goofy who were walking ahead of him. "Goofy was telling us about another castle we went to, but none of us remember it." he elaborated, reluctant to share what he was theorizing. "Could it be… that we don't remember, because we're losing our memories?"
"Losing? Our memories?" Donald repeated with even greater confusion and concern.
"Hold on!" Jiminy exclaimed, popping out of Sora's hoodie and hopping onto his shoulder. "Remember what that mystery fellah said? 'In this place to find is to lose, and to lose is to find.' It must have been our memories he was talking about losing!"
Sora's theory seemed to be more plausible given what Jiminy said. Reason enough for him to say, "So if we keep going, we'll lose more… Guess it really is Castle Oblivion."
"So the higher we go, the more we'll forget?" Donald asked, piecing together what all of this meant. None of it painting a pretty picture in the slightest. "Does that mean everything and everybody will be forgotten?"
The idea of something like that was scary. Sora immediately thought of all the people he had known for so long in his life. Especially the two closest people of them all. Not being able to remember them was as frightening as some of the most dangerous fights against the most threatening monsters or enemies he faced up till now. "Riku and Kairi, too..."
Donald was just as worried about such a thing happening. He could see it on Sora's face that they were in the same mindset. Maybe it was best they not go any further than they already had gone through this castle. "Do you want to go back?"
"Don't worry, fellahs!" Goofy suddenly interjected with a much more optimistic air about him. "We might forget where we've been or what things we've seen, but we won't forget who our friends are!"
Goofy's optimism was normally reassuring and welcome, but Donald and Sora just couldn't match it. "I don't know..." Donald said uncertainly. If they were already forgetting something so important as the place where Sora turned into a Heartless and where Pyrrha...was lost forever...then what if they forgot even more important things the higher they went?
Goofy's upbeat attitude didn't falter for a moment at Donald's anxiety. "C'mon, Sora. When you turned into a Heartless, did you forget about me and Donald?"
Sora blinked with shock at the unexpected question. Forget his friends "Of course I didn't!" he responded almost instantly. How could he possibly forget about them after everything they went through together?! The three of them and Ruby, they were Team SRDG!
The smile on Goofy's face widened at Sora's response. He knew Sora didn't forget about them. It was because of those memories that he was able to come back from the darkness. "There ya go! No matter what happens, you won't forget your friends!" he said optimistically.
Sora was silent in the wake of Goofy's reassurance. He wanted to believe it, yet in the face of all this doubt, he just wasn't sure. His eyes shifted toward Donald who looked at him with expectant concern. Then to Goofy who simply smiled and nodded in reassurance. That was when Sora found the will to smile again. "You're right." he said, realizing that there truly was no way he'd forget such wonderful friends. No matter what this castle might do to them. "Thank you, Goofy."
Donald brightened back up as he looked between the optimistic Goofy and Sora. "So if there's nothing here that can make you forget about your friends… Then we have nothing to be scared of! Let's go!" With renewed confidence, Donald turned around, raising his arms in a ridiculously macho fashion as he strutted toward the next door.
Sora remembered something else since Goofy brought up how he became Heartless. Something he was certain Donald remembered too as he asked with a cheeky smirk, "But when I turned into a Heartless, who was the one who took forever to notice and kept clobbering me?"
That question made Donald stop in his tracks. Sure enough, he remembered that Shadow chasing him, Goofy, Kairi, Ruby and all her friends through some place. Not realizing it was Sora, Donald began pummeling the Heartless's head with his staff. "How come you couldn't forget about THAT?" Donald asked, not appreciating being reminded about that moment. Sora, Goofy and Jiminy broke out into a fit of laughter as Donald quackingly shouted over them, "That's the stuff you should be forgetting!" Seeing his reaction to that reminder, Sora was quite tempted to hold this over Donald's head from now on.
Despite his frustrated embarrassment however, Donald was glad they were all cheerful again. Himself included. So after everyone calmed down, Donald gave a chuckle of his own and said, "If you're still remembering the silly stuff, we'll be okay." Though he was secretly hoping they'd forget the more embarrassing things about him.
And sure enough, one could say that Goofy was most certainly vindicated. "There's no way we could forget our friends!" Goofy said as they approached the stairs.
"Right. Silly stuff included," Sora said with another smirk to Donald who only rolled his eyes with a soft grin of his own. Sora's expression turned to a more serious one as he took out the cards he got from Axel and picked one. "And speaking of our friends, Ruby has still been taken by that hooded guy. We need to find her, Riku and the King." With that said, Sora raised the card high up in front of the twin doors, causing them to open with light filling their vision yet again.