I couldn’t sleep.
(Yes, again, Even, I don’t want to deal with your sarcasm right now.)
I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t concentrate. I found myself staring at the ceiling in my room and I couldn’t even think properly. It was as if something was just out of earshot at every moment, whispering to me or speaking, and I couldn’t make out what.
I got up. I went walking.
The heartless we keep in the lab? They’re not just in the lab. Lords only know whether they’re the same ones or if there are more in the castle, but I saw them plainly as I wandered. Those yellow eyes are unmistakable, and the gentle click of claw on stone. There were so many they lined the hallway as if they were an honor guard.
(I don’t think hunting them will help, Dilan, they multiply like guilt.)
I walked– I was lead– I found myself in the servants’ passages. The stairs there are smaller, cramped, darker. They seemed to go on much longer than they should.
Have you ever seen it so dark that you could see shapes? It was that sort of darkness as I descended, the velvety thickness that the heartless seem to be made of.
(No, Braig, that was not innuendo. At all.)
There was a door there, at the base of the servants’ stairs. I don’t know why, I only knew what to do with it.
(… Yes, the keyblade again. It’s not an obsession, Ienzo, it’s a course of inquiry.)
It came of its own accord and there was light enough that I winced, and a clicking noise that seemed to bounce off the stone walls. The door swung open. The whispering was louder, and it was welcoming. I stepped into it, and I could almost feel my memories in there, tangible and just out of reach.
And then I was up here again.
(Don’t give me that look, Elaeus. It was not a dream.)
I think we can take this research to the next level. I think we have to. And I think I need to be the next subject.
