He’d noticed it the moment he teleported every soldier and friend back to Pala Amna, at her desperate request. The burlap bag in his breast pocket was suspiciously light. And when he opened it, it was empty. Not even the glass shard of the Glass Tree still remained. There was nothing. Not a smear of blood, not a single bit of flesh.

Her heart was gone.

And so was she.

But he wouldn’t accept it. Not until he went back to the First Root and saw for himself.

It was a fevered journey. Malachite was the only one who stayed with him—Varia had come to fetch Fione. He was glad to see his sister, truly, more whole and healed and free of the bone choker, but even she couldn’t pierce the steel around his mind. She was no longer witch. Her magic had gone.

The First Root was gone. Buried under rubble so far down, not even Malachite’s strength could get very far. They dug until they hit a crevice, and then another, and then one incredibly deep and right on top of where she would’ve been. The hot glow of magma at the bottom cauterized his heart shut.

Somewhere between the days and nights that passed of his crying beneath the boughs of the white tree, Malachite found the jewels—her necklace and her bracelet. But not the ring. And that gave him the only hope he could cling to. Her ring—she still had it, maybe. She had said to wait for her.

So he would.

He would, until the end of the world again.

Her heart had disappeared, but so had every other Heartless’s heart. Every single witch lost their Heartless at the same moment he lost her—every bag, every jar, every box. All of them, emptied out in an instant. Every heart magically teleported back into its body, rendering each Heartless human again, the flower-shaped scars on their chests like badges of joy.

“Luc!”

He quickly stuffed the jewels back in the burlap bag and looked up, Varia’s smooth voice ringing over the garden as she caught up with him. Her cheeks were flush with spring and happiness, her black hair long and lustrous as always. It’d taken years for her to recover to this state—to have enough flesh on her bones again to walk, to talk, to laugh. And he was glad of it.