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Naminé is like a light in the dark; she practically glows like a lantern as she and Kairi run through the corridors of darkness. Kairi has no idea where this benevolent stranger is going, can only trust as her Nobody moves with purpose and urgency. She dashes through the dark abyss as though she can see it – see rooms, halls, paths, and roads where Kairi only sees dark emptiness.
Suddenly they burst out into another white and grey room. At first, Kairi’s heart seizes as she wonders if Naminé had only transferred her to a new prison. All of the rooms were the same colour. But she takes in the shapes around them: a tall wall of windows, some off-white couches and rugs – it could almost be considered cozy if it wasn’t so bland. However, Naminé opens another portal and drags Kairi through it. They keep running. The portal opens to another grey room. They’re behind a throne, and as they keep running, Kairi peeks between the chairs and sees a whole circle of thrones – thirteen of them. Naminé opens another portal behind the next chair and the pair are shrouded in darkness yet again.
“Where are we going?” Kairi asked.
“To Sora,” Naminé answers hurriedly. Then adds, like she’s just gotten a message, “and Riku.”
“How do you know where they are? Or are you trying to find them?”
“They’re close, but we can’t stop to pinpoint them.” They leave the darkness, entering yet another grey and white room. This one looks like a bedroom, but the glimpse is only brief before they’re in the dark again. “They’re onto us.”
“Who?” Kairi gasps, but thinks she knows the answer almost as soon as she does.
“The Organisation.”
Kairi is about to ask what the hell that means when Naminé pulls her out into another room. This one it a long hall lined on both sides with what appear to be graves. Immediately a chill rolls through Kairi’s entire body, but as they run up the hall together, something calls to her. She turns, seeing one of the ‘graves’ almost completely destroyed. Kairi slows, fingers slackening and her hand slips from Naminé’s just as she opens another portal. The White Witch turns, face harrowed as the portal closes on her, leaving Kairi alone in the eerie hall.
It’s silent. Their hurried footsteps no longer orchestrate their flight. Not even her breathing breaks the silence as she’s afraid to breathe too loudly. She has no idea where she is, and the Organisation is still chasing both of them. Kairi is so keenly aware, right now more than ever, of how alone she is.
She looks down, following the feeling that caught her to distract herself from the fear of loneliness. It tugs her towards that grave. None of the graves are labelled on their broken headstones, and the handful that aren’t broken glow with an electric blue light. Though they have no names, they all have a plaque bearing the image of a weapon… except for the destroyed one. For this one, no trace of its owner remains, other than the epitaph reading ‘The Cloaked Schemer’.
Pain lances through her temple, along with fuzzy images and sounds reminiscent of voices trying to speak underwater. She’d never heard of ‘The Cloaked Schemer’, but it stirs something in her memories – something full of colour and light, so unlike this place, this Castle That Never Was. This world shouldn’t exist, nor should its inhabitants, without a heart, yet they did. Lost to the darkness, hanging onto the light, what existed in the middle of these things? Everything else, or nothing at all?
Kairi touches the broken pieces of the panel as her temples ache. Maybe it comes through her power – her special abilities as a Princess of Heart – that allows her to pull these connections together.
“Zex… i… enzo?” she mutters in confusion, unsure how the words came to her or what they even mean. With it come foggy images that are vaguely human-shaped. Child-shaped, to be precise. But for some reason the child has grey hair and wears a white coat, like a scientist or a doctor. One dark blue eye stands out against the indistinct features of his face, glancing at her as if she had just called his name. How is she able to draw these connections? Could they be from the time before the Destiny Islands?
She has no time to consider this further. A dark portal opens in front of her just as another opens behind her. An arm cloaked in black leather and a gloved hand reach out to her from behind, but Naminé is faster, grabbing her by the upper arms and yanking her to the safety of a different dark tunnel. They tumble over each other. Naminé is quick to stand and pulls Kairi to her feet. They continue running as thoughts whirl in Kairi’s mind. This person (somebody? Nobody?) who had entered her memories… had she just seen proof of their existence, or just an illusion?