★;; starter for @emptinas
Master Yen Sid’s observation that this world had been pulsating with a peculiar darkness is no longer lost on Ventus now that he’s seeing it firsthand. There are experiences that can’t be accounted for without Chirithy’s consultation, but he doesn’t think he’s traversed such a dreary and unsettling place in all of his life. It’s a proper ghost town—not a single inhabitant or heartless invader to be found in all of its continuity, the air itself stained with an indescribable bleakness.
Something terrible happened here, and if it wasn’t his job to investigate, he’s sure he wouldn’t want to stick around and find out what.
Swallowing the knot that forms in his throat at the sight of a tied shoe warped into its sole and wedged between the bars of a sewer grate, the blonde warily calls upon his keyblade, gives its handle a firm squeeze and pushes on through one vacated street after another.
It feels as if hours have passed come the time he finally spots a wisp of something in his peripherals and snaps into a defensive stance, glancing every which way in his frantic attempt to source it. Completely and utterly failing to do so certainly doesn’t do anything for his spiking heart rate. Even taking a breath and rationalizing that his mind could be playing tricks on him after such an extended period of silence can’t set him at ease.
An even deeper breath and a snail’s pace step act as a prelude to Ventus’s attempt to backtrack in the direction that he swears whatever he may or may not have caught a glimpse of darted in. Hopping several warped poles and rounding an automobile decimated beyond hope of repair, he comes to an alleyway, gripping his weapon just a fraction tighter as he resolves to take a chance on it.
Seeing exactly what it is that teased the edges of his vision immediately upon entering might have provided him with some sense of closure if the creature—an Unversed, of all things—wasn’t all too familiar to him in the most befuddling of ways. It looks him dead in his widening eyes, forelimbs and neck twitching once, then twice before it tries to scurry away.
Suddenly, Ventus’s feet are moving of their own accord, carrying him to the corner the Flood rounded at a speed that’s jarring in comparison to how cautiously he’s been progressing thus far.
Fingers catching the edge of the brick wall, he slides to a startled stop at the indentation that marks the alley’s dead end, staring wordlessly at the incomplete form of his other half for several seconds too long.
“Vanitas.” The shock in the boy’s voice isn’t brought on by the other’s presence alone. Some way, somehow, he knew that Vanitas wasn’t gone—he just couldn’t be—so it was only a matter of time before their paths crossed again. It’s more so the state that he’s in. “Your legs. They’re—what’s—”
