Night in Traverse Town never truly ended. The stars hung like watchful eyes above the fog-wrapped rooftops, their reflections scattered across puddles and metal as if the world itself remembered the sky it no longer had. In the Second District, every window was a dim beacon—yellow light flickering through rain-streaked glass, cutting through a haze that never lifted.
Inside one of those windows, the steady thrum of engines mixed with the faint crackle of electricity.
Helios hadn't left the workbench since returning from his walk. The garage was alive with noise and silence in equal measure—the hum of tools left running, the low, rhythmic breathing of machines. He sat among it all, lost in a constellation of projected schematics, each one layered over the next like the reflections of stars across oil-dark water.
He was drawing a bridge between worlds—at least, that was what he told himself.
Cid returned some hours later, heavy boots echoing on the iron floor. "You ever relax, kid?" he asked, setting down a battered toolbox. "Looks like you're tryin' to outshine the damn stars."
Helios didn't look up. "The stars are the only constant light in this world. It's a pretty strange thing if you think about it."
"That's a fancy way of sayin' no." Cid rubbed his eyes, glancing over the holo-display. "You been here all night?"
Helios gave a faint nod. "I rarely sleep that much regularly."
Cid grunted, lighting a cigarette. The flame flared briefly against his face before dying into a red ember. "Maybe you ain't human. But you ain't gettin' smarter starin' at star till your eyes bleed."
Helios finally glanced over, eyes reflecting the pale blue light. "That's true. But I… just like looking at them."
Cid exhaled smoke that drifted toward the ceiling fans. "Alright, fine. What's this mess you got yourself in? Seeing you all nervous to ask me means it's gotta be some about circuits and philosophy this time, right?"
Helios leaned back slightly, eyes following the smoke as it twisted into the dim light. "Something I've been designing in theory—a system that could save people before their worlds fall to darkness."
Cid froze mid-puff. "Save people? From darkness? You say that like it's a cold you can cure."
"Not cure," Helios said softly. "After it, something you use after the darkness arrives, so it's more like an evasion."
The old man frowned. "You'll have to spell that one out for me."
Helios rested his elbows on the bench, hands folded, his tone clinical but weighted. "When a world starts collapsing, it's already too late to evacuate. Even a Gummi Ship can only carry so many people, so when a world goes, most of the people will follow afterward. The Heartless eat everything that moves. What if there were a way to extract the heart—its memories, its identity—before that happens?"
Cid blinked. "Extract? You talkin' soul science?"
"In layman's terms," Helios replied, "yes. I call it a digital ark. A kind of artificial refuge—an encoded reality that stores people as data before their world dies. They wouldn't vanish. They'd live on—safe, contained, preserved until we can send them to a different world, or maybe we could rebuild what was lost."
For a moment, the only sound was the buzz of the lamp above them.
Cid's cigarette burned down a few millimeters before he finally muttered, "You're tellin' me you wanna make a digital afterlife."
"Not an afterlife," Helios corrected. "but it might even be possible to recreate the world in the digital space and have them live there until they're restored."
Cid let out a low whistle, shaking his head. "You're serious."
"I wouldn't bring it to you if I wasn't." Helios's tone was calm, steady—the tone of a man who already believed in his own lie. "You're the only one left who understands both code and engines. You built escape ships from rubble. You rebuilt the network after the fall. If anyone could make it real, it's you."
Cid's laugh was short and humorless. "Kid, that's a hell of a sales pitch. You know I can't resist a good impossible project."
Helios gave a faint smile. "Then I came to the right man."
Cid gestured with his cigarette. "You got any math to back this up, or just poetry?"
Helios reached into his coat and pulled out a small metal drive, no larger than a thumb. "Encrypted specs. I've mapped the core theory. Energy transference. Emotional resonance containment. Compression algorithms. Everything except the physical host—it'd need someone like you to build it."
Cid took the drive, rolling it between his fingers. "And what's the power source?"
"That's the real beauty of this idea," Helios said simply. "I found this new power source in my travels and brought some back for the Moogles to analyze. With it, they believe we can make a medium the Moogles are calling the New Heart. This New Heart will not only allow the project to work but will power it indefinitely."
Cid's brow furrowed. "New Heart, huh? You always did aim high."
"High enough to matter," Helios replied.
The older man stubbed out his cigarette, still staring at the drive. "You really think this thing could save people?"
Helios's gaze didn't waver. "I know it can."
He didn't add the rest—that it wasn't salvation he sought, but replication. That this "ark" would do more than preserve hearts; it would learn about them, create them, and call to them. He would need this if he wanted to transform his heart into something that could transcend both light and darkness.
But Cid didn't need to know that. He just needed to build it.