Kingdom Hearts: Consumed by Darkness

The two made their way to Ursula's lair and began looking around. Helios floated still, staring into the swirling ink where Ursula's throne stood. Kurai watched him, arms folded, eyes half-lidded in frustration.

"I really want to kill her," she muttered flatly.

Helios didn't respond.

Kurai's gaze sharpened. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes, I did."

"And?" she asked.

"Like I said, I don't think that's the solution."

Kurai scoffed and turned her back on him. "Of course not. Because Helios, the ever-calculating tactician, sees value in keeping a parasite-infested, dimension-warping tyrant alive."

"Because she's being used," Helios said. "And the thing using her… it wants us to lash out. If we kill her, we play into its hands. Maybe killing her releases it, and it can possess either one of us, we know too little about it to be impulsive."

Kurai spun on him. "She stabbed a queen using her own daughter. She commands the very ocean along with countless heartless. She's already nearly destroyed this world, Atlantica. Logic demands that she is too dangerous to let live. If this is you being calm and tactical, I'd hate to see what forgiveness looks like."

"I'm not naive to the danger she poses," Helios said, voice low but steady. "Like I said, we know nothing, and killing her might be more dangerous than either one of us expects. I'm focus,d and I believe we can seal her temporarily."

Kurai drifted closer, her eyes cold. "I still feel it too dangerous. Still, all that means nothing. We've seen no trace of her. She's long gone, and we have no idea where."

"No," Helios murmured, almost to himself. "She never left."

Kurai blinked. "What? What do you mean?"

He turned toward the broken coral throne, the heart of Ursula's former lair. His eyes scanned it carefully. "When she projected herself earlier… did you notice the wall behind her? It was similar to this lair."

Kurai shrugged. "So? She made her own throne room. She's emotional and dramatic. I could see her wasting time to remake a new lair."

"No," Helios said, swimming to the throne and running his hand along the edge. "It wasn't new. I recognized it. The wall behind her was this wall. Same barnacle growth. Same fissure near the lower ridge. She didn't recreate it. She's still here."

Kurai floated over, skeptical. "Hiding behind a wall? You think we'd miss that?"

"I think she's not just hiding spatially," Helios said, voice sharpening. "She's hiding temporally."

A pause.

"You think she used time magic?" Kurai asked. "That's… not her in her skillset. Your memory showed her using dark and lightning magic."

"I know," Helios said. "She was never a good caster. Most of her magic was potion-based or relied on the trident later on. Enchantments. Transformations. So this wasn't her doing—it's the parasite's."

Kurai frowned. "So she phased herself out of the timeline? That's absurd. That kind of spatial stasis would leave a trace of some kind. I don't feel anything."

"Yes, so I don't think she moved to a different time," Helios explained. "She might have put herself a little out of sync."

Kurai narrowed her eyes. "Hmm, from your time studying with that evil fairy I know such a magic is possible, but there would still be traces. But if she could hide and if what you say is true, how do you expect to break through that? With what, brute willpower?"

"No," Helios said. "But I have a spell that touches time."

He held up his hand. A shimmer of magic formed between his fingers. The air around him rippled like heat in water. "Slow," he said. "It's not much. Just a manipulation of local perception. But if I weave it tight enough, I might be able to reveal anomalies—areas where time is moving differently."

Kurai's gaze dropped to the current flowing near the lair's rear wall. "You think the barrier's anchored to something here?"

Helios nodded. "And once we find it, you break through."

She smiled coldly. "Now that I can do."

Helios closed his eyes, focusing. His hands moved through a precise pattern, his magic latching onto the water's inertia. A green-gold light pulsed softly, and the spell manifested: a wide field of decelerated perception stretching over the rear of the chamber.

The effect was immediate.

Ripples bent unnaturally around a patch of stone behind the throne. Sand suspended in that space didn't fall. A shard of broken coral hovered mid-collapse, frozen in time.

"There," Helios said. "That's our breach."

Kurai didn't hesitate. She launched forward, her body dissolving into shadows that smashed like tidal force against the anomaly. The impact rang like a bell, the water trembling. The false surface quivered, resisting—but then cracked.

The illusion shattered.

Where once there had been a solid wall now stood a spiraling corridor, coiled like a sea serpent's spine. It pulsed with impossible architecture—every angle wrong, every step echoing backward. Magic from another realm. A hidden pocket in the same space, suspended in locked time.

Helios exhaled. "We were standing on her doorstep the entire time."

"Then let's knock," Kurai said, already swimming forward.

They passed through the veil. The moment they crossed, the world changed.

No longer ocean. Not really. The water grew thick, almost syrupy, resisting movement. The light was violet and blood-red, radiating from pillars made of teeth and coral. The corridor bent around itself, folding space inward like a seashell. At its end, a distant glow pulsed like a heartbeat.

"This isn't magic," Kurai said. "It's something else. Something older."

Helios floated beside her, eyes locked ahead. "This is the parasite's domain."

Their voices echoed wrong here—long and distorted.

"I can feel it watching," Kurai said.

Helios nodded. "Then we're getting close."

They continued forward, weapons ready. Whatever lay at the end of this corridor, it was no longer just Ursula.

It was something much worse. Helios held up his hand. A shimmer of magic formed between his fingers. The air around him rippled like heat in water. "Slow," he said. "It's not much. Just a manipulation of local perception. But if I weave it tight enough, I might be able to reveal anomalies—areas where time is moving differently."

Kurai's gaze followed the tremble in the water. "So, a soft scan—poking to see if there are any temporal fissures. You think that's enough to detect her?"

"If she's phasing or time-delaying even slightly, it'll distort local currents. It has to. Time manipulation, even passive, leaves subtle irregularities in motion. It'll be even easier here, after all, water doesn't lie."

"Water may not," Kurai muttered, "but magic does."

Helios ignored the jab. His fingers traced slow spirals as he cast, a fine haze of gray magic settling over the chamber. The ripples expanded outward, invisible to the naked eye, but Helios saw it through his magical sense. Pressure shifts, current curls—he tuned himself to the distortion.

And then… there it was.

Near the far side of the throne, a section of the wall behaved unnaturally. Particles of silt didn't flow around it—they paused, then jolted ahead. Like reality itself skipped a breath.

"There," he pointed. "Behind the throne—see the irregular drift?"

Kurai peered at the anomaly. "Yes. It's minute. Almost elegant. I will take time later to study it myself."