Helios moved through the inner corridors of the castle with silent intent, the clinking of his boots muffled by the dense velvet of old carpets and stone dulled with dust. The audience with Maleficent was over, and though she bought his deception, the weight of her ambitions hung heavy behind him like an unwanted shadow. But he wasn't done here. Not yet.
Instead of returning to the surface, Helios veered deeper, beyond the known and patrolled halls. He reached a door long thought sealed—a thick wall of reinforced steel etched with sigils and technological locks. It led to Ansem the Wise's original laboratory—a place few knew how to access, and fewer still dared enter.
Only Xehanort had reopened this lab, and only after banishing its creator.
Helios stepped up to the console beside the vault. The screen flickered to life, ancient coding lines rushing upward. He typed the password manually, fingers dancing across the keys with muscle memory born of a hundred secret visits.
The steel door groaned as mechanisms engaged. Then, with a soft hiss of pressure release, it slid open, revealing the interior chamber.
The room was colder than the rest of the castle. The lighting was low, casting pale glow across metal panels, cables, and the towering mainframe nestled at the far wall. This was no ordinary workstation. This was the heart of Ansem's research—a nexus of data collected over decades. Here, thoughts were digitized, experiments encoded, and forbidden discoveries filed behind layers of encryption.
Helios crossed the room, pulled a hard drive from a hidden inventory pouch in his coat, and inserted it into the console's port.
He then entered the names of the seven Princesses of Hearts granting him master access to the computer.
The monitor flared with light.
File Detected: Back-up Archive Alpha-Helios
Before the collapse of Radiant Garden, he had snuck in and copied every fragment of Ansem's work—every note, every video log, every discarded theory. But between the chaos, the resistance, and the fleeing survivors, he'd never had the chance to sync the data with the current records.
Until now. With a few keystrokes, he found what he needed.
A prompt blinked: Would you like to copy and update the central database on Back-up Archive Alpha-Helios? Y/N
Lines of code scrolled across the screen as the synchronization began. Files merged. New folders were created. But one segment blinked red.
WARNING: Space Paranoids - Data Conflict Detected
Helios narrowed his eyes.
Space Paranoids wasn't like the others. It existed entirely within the castle's internal network—a self-contained digital realm accessible only through this terminal. He had already altered its internal systems, tailoring them for his own design. Copying over that data now would revert those changes. Undo days of invisible groundwork.
He disabled that part of the sync manually. The rest continued seamlessly.
Once the update was complete, Helios opened his own custom folder. The data he had been hunting for blinked on screen.
Project: Matter-Digitizer
Ansem the Wise had laid the foundation. But the final blueprint—the key to activating the machine—was unmistakably Xehanort's work. The schematics were elegantly cruel: a machine capable of breaking down anything into pure data and sending it into a digital construct—or retrieving it back into the physical world.
It didn't just mean transporting someone into a place like Space Paranoids.
It meant transporting something from there... into here.
He opened the file and began scanning the interface. Energy requirements. Dimensional stability constraints. He pulled up the designs for the core component—the phase bridge—and smiled.
He could build this. Not here but in a sufficient technological world he could easily find the part and maybe even improve upon the design.
But it would take more than just materials. It would take a small power source capable of outputting a massive amount of power in a closed-off circuit. And more importantly, it would require a willing participant to test it. Or... at least, someone expendable if it failed.
Helios leaned back, resting his gloved fingers on the edge of the console.
"This... changes everything. I should do this before anything else."
He downloaded the schematics to a separate drive—one programmed to erase itself should it fall into the wrong hands without his password. Then he reached under the paneling, removed the two drives, and placed them in the pouch.
Tucking it away, he powered down the terminal and sealed the lab once more. The door hissed shut behind him, leaving no sign of his visit.
As he made his way back through the winding halls, the shadows seemed quieter. Less intrusive. The Heartless didn't stir. Either the world was growing more accustomed to his presence... or the castle itself remembered him.
When Helios emerged once more onto the upper level of the keep, the ruined beauty of Radiant Garden stretched before him. He didn't stop to admire it. There was no time for that.
When he returned to Merlin's warded cottage, the shimmer of the protection spell was undisturbed.
Inside, Kurai sat on the window ledge, balancing a dagger on one fingertip like it was a toy. Thalen was asleep on the nearby couch, curled up beneath one of the blankets. The sight made Helios pause.
Kurai didn't look at him.
"I assume the little witch didn't kill you."
Helios smirked faintly. "Not for lack of trying. She really wanted to blast me with a lightning spell but she still needs me."
He walked over to the desk where the letter to Aqua and Skuld still sat, sealed and waiting.
Kurai flicked the dagger past Helios stabbing it into a wall. "Did you find what you needed here?"
"More than that," Helios said, taking a seat. "I found to ensure we'll be able to succeed in our plan to obtain Kingdom Heart. A way to digitize reality... and realize digital information."
Kurai raised an eyebrow, but didn't ask further.
Helios leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "I have what I need. But building it... that will take time."
She finally looked at him, her silver eyes gleaming in the firelight.
"Then you'd better not waste it."