Chapter One

New Beginnings

Deepground, the organisation that will forever be known as Shinra's dark secret. What was originally an infirmary was later transformed into a human test facility where injured, elite SOLDIERs and those deemed to have potential, were brought. What occurred in the bowels of the Shinra organisation, deep within Reactor 'Zero' is unknown but the experiments resulted in a new breed of warrior, the Tsviets. Unfortunately, these Tsviets were never granted permission to see the surface, to embrace the sun and to marvel at the miracle that was life – instead, they were manipulated and brainwashed to the point that they developed a hatred for all living things.

It was not necessarily their fault, they were not to understand what went on above their heads. They were not to understand how beautiful life truly was as their purpose was to destroy it, not to appreciate it. According to their leader, known only as 'Weiss', they were to bathe in a sea of crimson and they were to purge the world of all life. What these Tsviets' did not understand was that in order to do that, it would result in their deaths as well.

They were never told, it was not of benefit to Weiss or his creator who would later be named as Professor Hojo. They were his creations, he decided their fate and unlike his past failures they were designed to succeed in exacting his plans – what he did not account for was the WRO and the resistance of a vengeful specimen. He had not anticipated that the specimen, Vincent Valentine, would be quite so powerful and had assumed that he would retrieve the protomateria with ease. However, this was not the case and instead, he found that all of his beloved creations were torn asunder by the powerful harbinger of Chaos. Hojo's demise would later follow their's.

It was assumed, that following Hojo's ultimate destruction, a time of peace and tranquillity would occur. A time to rebuild, to regather strength and to unite into a powerful alliance under the WRO's leadership but it seemed that this planet did not have luck on its side.

As a new era began in the south, a slumbering entity far in the north was summoned by the hands of a foolish youth. Unlike what the scriptures had found, this entity did not grant wishes or riches to those that discovered it. What path lay beyond its summoning was quite a different one than any individual could anticipate unless they were taught to read the scripture clearly and most importantly, could see through the illusions painted by the articulate words to the truth that lay inside it.

As the pained scream rippled across the frozen wastelands of the north, the cloaked figure scarcely shifted its head sideways in receipt of the cry but even so it was all too aware of what had occurred. For the individual who had summoned the entity, the pain and suffering was over, the 'soul' all but devoured by the entity who had consequently used the physical body as a vessel, a way to manifest itself…but for the rest of those upon the planet, both living and dead, the suffering had only just begun.

Pressing a gloved palm to the flaking bark of the branch the individual remained perched upon, it considered its options carefully before at last, dropping towards the ground. The feet never touched the undisturbed snow though and instead the individual simply vanished into thin air, leaving only a light imprint of its shoes within the snow that rested upon the branches of the withered tree…