#i guess its because the foretellers were given such isolating roles

[cinnabeat]

workplace drama 🙄

[fandomoverflow]

Of Their Own Volition: Luxu, the Master, and KH3′s Secret Ending

Shortly I finished playing Kingdom Hearts 3, someone (can’t remember who but if anyone knows/finds the OP for it) suggested on Tumblr that Xehanort “shattering” Kairi was Luxu’s idea. That Sora didn’t require further motivation to fight Master Xehanort, but he did need a reason to keep abusing the Power of Waking until he faded away at the end of the game. 

My initial take on the idea was that Luxu either wanted to remove Sora as an obstacle to the Master of Masters’ plans, or Sora was part of the Master of Masters’ plans and Luxu wanted to isolate him from his friends. But now I think I’ve hit on a different take: Sora was just a means to an end. Getting Riku to the Master’s location was the true goal. 

Let me break it down. 

When Sora chases the Lich to rescue his friends’ hearts, Young Xehanort says 

“Dream by dream you nearly buried yourself in the dark of sleep. And now you’re at it again.” 

And when he departs, YX tells Sora that: 

“You’ve paid the price, and it lies at the bottom of the abyss.” 

Connecting Sora’s fate at the end of KH3 to the eternal slumber the Organization planned for him in DDD indicates that those who misuse the power of waking like Sora did trap themselves in the deepest layers of the Realm of Sleep.

Since the Master of Masters’ talk of fading/vanishing is reminiscent of what happens to Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, a lot of us have caught on to the indication that the Master’s disappearance in Back Cover is the result of misusing the power of Waking. 

For what purpose we still don’t know yet, but what the puzzle pieces laid out in the games tell us is that the Master of Masters knowingly sealed himself in the deepest abyss of the Realm of Sleep. How he’s able to interact with Young Xehanort in the Re:Mind trailer remains to be seen, but my best guess is that this is a projection of him, while his heart is elsewhere, like Crab Jack and what the Sleeping Realm Theory suggests happened with Kairi. 

Twitter user Scherzo pointed out the parallels in Chain of Memories’ Hollow Bastion storyline between Sora and the Beast as well as Riku and Belle. In their analysis, Maleficent’s role in this plot has paralles to Organization XIII. But in the comments for the post, Scherzo brought up the possibility that this plot parallel (Villain wants to use Character A’s love for Character B for their own nefarious ends) being repeated with the Master of Masters filling the role that Maleficent played in Chain of Memories. 

And that's when I remembered this line from Re: Chain of Memories when Vexen hears that Maleficent was one of the scents Zexion detected in Castle Oblivion’s lowest basement:

“The witch is gone. She cannot return from the Realm of Darkness of her own volition.”

Given the fact that the Realm of Sleep is repeatedly connected to the Realm of Darkness, it would stand to reason that returning from the deepest layer of the Realm of Sleep where Sora and the MoM are works similarly to returning from the Realm of Darkness.

So let’s look at the characters who have ended up in the Realm of Darkness at one point or another and how they were able to escape: 

Case 1 (Riku; COM): Sora enters Castle Obvious with the express goal of finding Riku. In Re:Com, his gut feeling that Riku and Mickey are in the castle is verbalized as “our very best friends. They’re here.” And during the course of Marluxia’s exposition dump, Sora out loud puts Riku into the category of “people I miss”. During or shortly after this time, Riku awakens in the Castle’s lowest basement. Vexen openly states that Riku’s arrival is because “his existence resonates with that of another.” In other words, Riku is able to escape the dark realm because of his connection with Sora.

Case 2 (Maleficent; KH2): After her apparent death in KH1, Maleficent’s heart ends up in the Realm of Darkness, where she manages to time travel back to the Age of Fairy Tales and ends up trapped in a Data Simulation made from the Book of Prophecies. A mysterious figure referred to as “Darkness” helps her return to her own time, back in the Realm of Darkness. In KH2, her raven diablo brings her robes to the Mysterious Tower. The three good fairies attempt to deny her existence, but simply remembering her is enough to reconstruct her body and return her to the realm of light. 

Case 3 (Sora & Riku; KH2): Sora’s heart opens the Door to Light at the end of KH2 after reading a letter that Kairi had written to him at the beginning of the game. 

Case 4 (DiZ; KH3): DiZ was removed from the Realm of Darkness by the Heartless of his former apprentice, who as a Heartless could travel in and out of the Dark World at will. 

Case 5 (Aqua; KH3): Rescued by Sora, who from her perspective she had met not too long ago when she recognized Riku as Terra’s chosen successor and made Sora promise to support Riku the way she knew Terra had needed support from her and Ven. In addition to that, Sora still had Ventus’ heart inside him when she was rescued. 

What all of these cases have in common is that each character is only able to leave the Realm of Darkness because of a strong enough connection with another person. 

Meaning that even if he knowingly consigned himself to the depths of the Realm of Sleep of his own choice, the Master of Masters cannot leave and return to the waking world without the outside assistance of someone he has a strong connection with: 

Riku’s connection to Sora allows him to slip out of the dark realm into Castle Oblivion in COM. 

Sora and Kairi’s connection allows him to open the Door to Light in KH2. 

DiZ was taken out of the dark realm by the Heartless of his former Apprentice. 

Aqua and Sora met once and he has Ven’s heart inside him. 

And although they tried to forget her, the three fairies, her enemies, were enough of a connection to allow Maleficent to come back in KH2. 

This fits incredibly well with Joshua’s line in DDD: 

“By ourselves we’re no one.  It’s when other people look at us and see someone.  That’s the moment we each start to exist.  All they needed was someone to see them, connect with them.”

In summary, escaping from the Realm of Darkness requires someone you know and have a strong connection with to acknowledge your existence.

But despite the similarities the Realm of Sleep is still the Realm of Sleep. The requirements for exiting its deepest layers aren’t going to be the exact same as exiting the Realm of Darkness. So it’s a good bet that the Power of Waking has to be involved 

The only times the Power of Waking was shown being used in DDD and KH3 were situations where the sleeper had a connection with the person waking them. Sora and Riku. Sora and Ventus. Sora and Kairi. 

So we can infer then that releasing someone from the depths of the Realm of Sleep requires 2 things: 

someone you have a connection with on the outside to serve as a beacon home

someone you have a connection with who can use the Power of Waking to release your heart from its prison. 

Which brings me to the end of Kingdom Hearts III and beyond. 

In the epilogue, Luxu summons four of the five Foretellers to the present day after Xehanort’s defeat. They are now the only people left alive who have a connection with the Master of Masters. No one else in the present day knows who he is. The few other X-era characters only knew of him at most and had no real connection to him. So it’s up to Luxu, Ira, Gula, Invi, and Aced to serve as the anchor point. 

As for the second requirement… 

After Kairi was “shattered” Sora used the Power of Waking one last time to restore her at the cost of casting himself into the depths of the Realm of Sleep. As his Dream Eater, Riku followed him. 

The presence of the Gazing Eye on Riku’s Soul Eater and Way to Dawn indicate that there is some connection between Riku and the Master of Masters. 

What that connection is remains to be seen (although I’m a big fan of the Nightmare Family Theory suggesting that the MoM is Riku’s father, with Luxu as his older brother and Nightmare counterpart), but I’m willing to bet that the Master of Masters is fully aware of that connection, whatever it may be. 

Now all he has to do is force Riku to acknowledge that connection and the Master will be freed from his prison to return to the Realm of Light once more. 

TL;DR: The Master of Masters has spent ages sealed in the deepest layers of the Realm of Sleep. The epilogue and secret ending of KH3 represent the beginning of the culmination of Luxu and the MoM’s carefully orchestrated plan to use the bond between Sora and Riku to free the Master from his self-constructed prison.