Oh my! I am really liking ghost Ephemer. Do you have any headcanons you are willing to share about him?
Sorry this took so long Anon! I usually write my headcanons down on various pieces of paper or different word documents so I had to track all of them down. Also I’m simply slow at writing oops.I’m going to do the notes on the KH3 keyblade war on another post, because this already took long enough to post and I don’t want to keep you waiting anymore. This said, let’s go!(Under a read more)
-probably died while protecting the others; he went against the enemy to buy them enough time to escape
-hasnt move on to the Final world or Kingdom hearts because he feels like he didn’t fully complete his role as a Leader
-i have a long headcanon on how hearts, souls, bodies and mind interact that I will share another time, but basically Emph at the moment is only soul and mind. The heart was in an heartless and now is waiting to return to him (in the same way that the nobodies can get their original hearts back after their heartless get defeated)
-some of the Keyblade Wielders of the War also still have fragments of soul in the form of memories that linger in their keyblade. Emph spends most of his time listening to them. It’s the most interesting thing he can do in here and it’s a way to relive Daybreak town and the fairytale times
-this pieces of soul are still here because while the Keyblade sends your heart to KH, some of them still had regrets (“I want to see him one last time”, “The War is not over yet I can’t die”, “I should have told her that”) so memories connected to that feelings remain in their keyblade
-Emph can’t leave the graveyard (yet)
-he isn’t always 100% conscious and present, because it takes a lot of energy. But he gets better with time and practice
-at first he is just a soul that stays together by willpower and lux, but he doesn’t realize it yet. He has no memories, no sense of self, no idea of who he is or what is happening.
-so it takes a while to realize that there’s a man coming regularly to the Graveyard, sitting there and talking. Empher tries to listen, and it takes years before he finally manages to stay present enough to hear him.
-the man talks about his school. He’s a Master now, and he and the surviving dandelions have used the lux they brought back from Daybreak Town to restore the worlds outside. They’re also training new keyblade wielders to protect them in the future. There’s no unions or Master of Masters or Fortellers anymore, and the man hopes that this will be enough to avoid another War.
-by the time Empher has enough energy to remember his past, Master Blaine isn’t coming to the Graveyard anymore, and Empher can only piece together foggy memories of one sided conversations to realize that the man was one of his old friends
-(he isn’t angry at Blaine for what he did. Sure, he acted on an hidden agenda at first, but he was only trying to create a better future for all of them)
-not many people come to the Graveyard after him. Some Masters bring their apprendices to tell them the story of the Keyblade War as a warning, but as time passes on is always less and less people, and the story gets less and less accurate to what actually happened
-its not only keyblade Wielders tho. Sometimes a person alone comes. It’s always someone different, but they all behave in the same way. They just seem to pop in, check that everything is still in its place, and then leave. They all wear a black coat that looks like the one from the MoM, but they’re all different sizes and bodies, so Empher is pretty sure they’re all different persons
-he has no idea what to make of them till after the last battle against Xehanort. Empher is still recharging when the black coat figure appears. They look around, same behavior as usual, then they pull out a big black box. In his state of limbo between conscious and unconscious, Empher vaguely remembers something from the book of prophecies about a black box. But it isn’t till the black coat is joined by four masked figures that he realizes that the various figures must have all been Luxu, the mysterious sixth Forteller. In his spent state Empher thinks that if Xehanort could change bodies, why wouldn’t Luxu be able to do the same and survive this long.
-another person that becames a regular is a white haired man that comes there to train.
-theres not much interaction between the two of them, the man just trains while Emph watches from far
-but the man keeps coming back to train, till one day he doesn’t
-he doesn’t show up for years, but when he comes back he has the MoM’s keyblade and an apprentice
-Emph recognizes Ven immediately
-he still looks like when they last saw each others, even if a lot of time has passed
-but jumping between worldlines is weird and time doesn’t work the same everywhere
-Emph is just happy to see someone of his old life again, alive and well
-(it’s been ages since Blaine last came to speak to him, he’s staring to feel lonely)
-he watches Ven train with his (new) master. Frome what Emph learns watching the twos, he doesn’t seem to remember his past
-(Blaine had explained to them that that could be one of the side effects of jumping worldlines. Knowing that doesn’t make Emph less sad)
-they came regularly to train. Emph wonders if they even have a base somewhere. Do keyblade wielders still live in Daybreak? Does Daybreak still exist?
-with the memories of the past Ven seems to have forgotten a lot of how to fight too, and the master doesn’t seem to be very patient with him
-till one day Emph watches him raise his keyblade (the MoM’s keyblade, Emph realizes) and divide Ventus’ heart in two
-Emph tries to come to the rescue of his friend, but a ghost can’t do much to change Fate
-all he can do is make sure that the light of Ven’s heart (that is so frail, when did it became so frail?) doesn’t vanish
-Emph doesn’t have much energy himself, being only a soul, but he still does what he can
-(years later he’s happy to find out that what little he did was enough to keep the light of Ven together till Sora found him)
-he sees Ven again when he comes to fight against the one that for a short time was his master
-he has friends with him, a blue haired girl and a boy with brown hair
-he watches the three fight against the master and the being made from Ven’s darkness, watches as Ventus’ two halves fight against one another, pure light versus pure darkness, and watches as they forge the χblade and summon kingdom hearts
-(not again, Emph thinks. Not another war please. He and Ven worked so hard to avoid last one)
-luckily the three manage to dismiss kingdom hearts, but the three come out of it gravely wounded, both in body and heart
-Emph can only trust the girl to take care of Ven and the other boy
-the defeated master reappears after years. Epmh watches as he and a few other hooded figures perform a complex magic to call souls from the past into the present
-he sees the younger version of the master, the figure made from Ven’s darkness, and two men who could both be the older versions of Ven’s friend, plus another white haired kid who has an armor similar to Ven’s darkness one’s
-he doesn’t see the faces of the hooded figures at first.
-He’s surprised when one of them pulls down the hood and look vaguely familiar. Wasn’t there a Dandelion with the same platinum hair, playing cards at the Moogle’s cafe once?
-another familiar face appears when the one with the sitar pulls down the hood. This time Emph is sure that he looks the same as the Dandelion that used to play at the square’s fountain.
-the girl pulls down her hood and he’s sure that he’s seen Lauriam hang around with her, when he was looking for his sister
-and there he is, Lauriam, the last one of that weird group to reveal his face. He looks older, his hair have gotten longer (how did they even fit under the hood?), But the thing that shocks Emph the most is the eyes. Everyone in the group has bright gold eyes, his old friend included
-(they’re colder than when they were bright blue. Emph can’t imagine what those eyes have seen since he last saw him)
-he tries to contact his friend, hoping that the connection of their friendship is enough to connect their hearts and talk. But when trying to reach him he finds a stranger’s heart blocking him.
[coming somewhere in the future: Emph during the Third Keyblade War, featuring flying keyblades and two Leaders on different sides]