Shards of Darkness

PART 1 – Parting and meeting

"Don't be afraid… Remember; you hold the mightiest weapon of all…" (Kingdom Hearts)

Prologue

"This eternal world is all: what was, what is and what shall be and what beyond is in eternity." (mantra from the opening verse of the Upanishads)

Once upon a time…

This story is old enough to be told in the fashion of a fairy tale, but it's in no way a story for children and every bit of it is true, and therefore it should rather be seen as a piece of history, forgotten and made legend.

Long ago, the worlds that today are separated were parts of one big unity, one complete world. But as a large group of inhabitants of this world learned how to use their inner sources of power to form magic, they also learned of the source of all life, a gathering of soul energy that they came to call the Kingdom Hearts.

They also learned that the immense power behind it was dependent on a balance between two different prospects of the power: light and dark. However, as the people learned more of the balance, they also learned what could be done with each side of it. The balance was then disrupted, creating a crack between light and dark, when someone created a weapon from his power, using only the darkness in his heart. Others realized the threat this person was, once he started to use his weapon to create chaos and cause death, and they managed to copy his creation, but using the light part of their powers instead. Thus the keyblades were born.

For ages the war between those of light keys and those of dark grew until it all ended in one final battle of large proportion. As the greatest concentrations of powers both light and dark clashed on one spot, the crack created in the wall between the world of light and the world of darkness, was blown open. No matter how hard the keyblade warriors of the light side fought to prevent it, the world was finally swallowed by the darkness that poured out of the wound created.

But the old world remained in the hearts of children, and their memories became the light from which the world slowly was recreated. But being memories, they were mere glimpses of what had once been and so the former unity was shattered and the different worlds were created, separated from each other and without any memory of once having been a unified whole.

For eons of time the worlds developed their own distinct natures, as the balance between light and darkness slowly was repaired. The power of Kingdom Hearts had changed with the world, and so had the weapons. They were no longer the conscious creations of the wielders, but creations of the heart of the worlds, picking out the wielders in an endless chain of destiny so that the balance between light and darkness would be kept. Along the road the keyblade warriors were once again building in strength as the need for guardians of the balance grew. The keyblade masters that were wise enough to see the developed differences of the new worlds, realized that the former grand world they once were part of, could not be re-forged from these parts, seeing as how they'd changed from their former shapes. It would be like trying to complete a puzzle with pieces from several other puzzles that doesn't fit; not in shape, nor in motif. So they taught their students to keep the balance and guard the worlds from ever knowing of the former unity they belonged to.

The darkness however was not that easy to control and it found its way into the hearts of key wielders as well as ordinary people. Darkness in itself isn't evil, mind this, but it strives for a domination of things that come in its way and does so in a more fierce fashion than the light. As a key wielder learned about the old world and how it got destroyed by the darkness, he sought a way to re-create what was lost, despite his master's recommendations and warnings. The thought of the possibility to get rid of the need for balance-keepers, such as the keyblade wielders, was too tempting to his heart. His own desire to get free of the obligations that came with the keyblade, made the darkness grow inside of him, until he could no longer see the wrong in his ideas and actions.

He learned that every heart contains light and darkness alike and that the keyblade was connected to the strength inside a heart. He also learned that in order for the world to be reborn as it once was, it had to be disassembled once more. To do this, he had to open the Kingdom Hearts and release the power it held. For this to be possible he had to create a key that would open up the door and this would only be possible if he found a way to make pure light meet with pure darkness inside of one single heart.

Seeing that every heart had both darkness and light, the keyblade wielder now sought a way to extract and purify these two parts of a heart. He started experimenting on people he met that seemed to be balanced enough to have as good as equal parts of the two powers. As he tried to find a way to split the heart, he came across a magic that originated from the deep shadows that lurked in the darkness in which he now dwelled. Using the shadows as a base material, he managed to create a crystal that had the power to absorb the darkness of a heart, working as a magnet for the matter that it was created of. He knew now that he had the tool needed to split a heart and rejoiced in his success.

But the darkness has its own ways of getting things done and so it came to be that the first person to face the power of the crystal, was his best friend. The friend he'd never intended to hurt, struggled against the powers of the crystal, but as the sliver of darkness that was inside of him left his heart, so did the remaining light and his body disappeared along with his heart.

Devastated and broken, the keyblade wielder that in his ignorance had manufactured the crystal, finally saw the wrongs in what he had been trying to do and with his powers he managed to shatter the crystal, rendering it useless. But he wasn't able to completely destroy it, for the material it was shaped from had grown too strong. In order for no one to ever reassemble the crystal again, he used his last powers to seal the shards of the crystal into the worlds that he had visited in his research, giving back a piece of what he had taken away from them and thus rebalancing the powers of those worlds.

All was well for a while, until once again the balance was disrupted and the call for the keyblades once again was heard. A battle started between students and masters, almost completely wiping out the balance keepers along with the knowledge of the keyblades. Until a young boy listened to the cries of the worlds and answered their call as his own world was threatened. The keyblades were once more taken into use, but this time, the strongest blade was held by someone who had to discover all of its powers on his own, with no one to guide him. Through a time of war against the darkness, he grew to become a powerful warrior and protector of the light, until the day that he finally could return home.

But his story was far from over.

In fact, it had only just begun.

And in the far parts of the universe, the darkness once more gathered around a man that listened to its call. A man set on recreating the world of old. With nothing and no one stopping him from following this dream, he came to know about the crystal and the shards needed to shape it…