KERNEL32.DLL (in spite of the name) provides user-mode system services for the Windows API. The CRT provides the C99 API. There are many entry points to the same thing on Windows; you can do any of `malloc`/`HeapAlloc`/`new`/`VirtualAlloc` to get a void* memory buffer. `malloc` is from the CRT; `HeapAlloc` is from KERNEL32.DLL, and `new` is from the C++ runtime.