DISCLAIMER: I do not own Kingdom Hearts and any other related properties. They belong to their rightful owners. Honestly, if I did own Kingdom Hearts, what would I be doing writing fanfic for it?

BTW, this story is post-Reconnect, AKA the secret ending to Birth By Sleep. So just proceed with caution if you're still attempting to dodge spoilers.

TWISTED SENTIMENTS

Prologue- Sleeping Beasts

What was that feeling?

It twitched from where it slept, waiting, forever waiting. The darkness cloaking it was warm and familiar to its skin. It was the only sensation it was familiar with beyond the bloodlust and thrill of battle. It was unfamiliar to anything else. Who knew how long it had slept there? Who knew how long it had hung in the twilight, without purpose, haunting this desolate world?

But now, it began to stir.

This feeling, whatever it was, had served to jolt it out of sleep. It reached out and felt for an opening. The darkness around it began to form and dissolve. It uncurled from a fetal position and let itself land on the ground gently, without fanfare. Whatever expression it had was lost within the dark abyss of its helmet. To any onlooker, it must've made a strange sight in the barren wasteland of the Keyblade Graveyard. A black and white splotch of color amongst the drab brown setting, if its outlandish outfit did not draw attention to it then the extreme amount of darkness it exuded would more than suffice. Not that it cared what anyone would think about it.

In truth, this monster could not think sufficiently to even know that. It cannot feel anything because it doesn't know what to feel and is quite incapable of feeling anything. All it had were fragments of memories, flashes of random events. It wasn't able to put them into context because it did not know how. All it knew was to find the 'feeling' that had woken it from its slumber. That was the overriding thought in whatever passes for a mind in its head. All it could do was fight through anything and everything to find this 'feeling' and learn how it woke him.

It was nothing more than a shell of a soldier clinging to a lost past.

The Dark Soldier did not know where to start but it knew that it would reach its destination. All it could think now was to find the thing – or was it person? – that proved powerful enough to serve as a beacon for its return. All it had to hold on was that familiarity calling out to it like a siren drawing it closer and closer to the finishing line. Every step it took was a lifetime in this abandoned world but the Soldier did not heed the slow pace or the vastness of the world that it was trapped in. Time was immaterial to a beast that had no comprehension of it. All it knew was that it will not rest until it had its answers.

You….should not….exist….

The Soldier immediately turned around, a Keyblade blazing into existence within its hand at the sound of the voice. The voice came from a figure clad in armor kneeling on the ground, holding on to a Keyblade stabbed into the ground. The Soldier's stance did not soften, regarding the man as an obvious threat. The twisted sentiment that lay before it was obviously a threat. Something at the back of its mind nagged the Soldier. It screamed repeatedly in its head, warning of the armored knight in front of him. The Soldier kept its Keyblade high in the air, waiting for a sign of aggression

You….robbed them….of….a future…

..Aqua….Ven…

For…their sake…..I will…..return you….to…..oblivion!

Words left to the wind, the knight stood up. Its cape fluttered majestically against the wind as the knight grabbed the Keyblade in front of him and unsheathed it from the ground, ready to fight. Whatever eyes he might have had were lost behind the cold gaze of his visor.

The Soldier did not feel fear. It only felt ecstasy. Years had passed, countless years lost within that dark oblivion spent waiting, waiting for a sign. Now that it has awakened once more, the thrum and thrill of imminent conflict served to fully wrest the Soldier away from the doldrums and sleep and back into the waking world. This pitiful knight would not be enough to lock him away once more. Nothing on any world will stop him until he finds the one who has woken him.

If the knight could see its face, he would find the Soldier smiling.

You deserved it

No words were spoken anymore. The gauntlet has been thrown forward. Both combatants regarded each other with a steely gaze before both sprang into action. The knight's Keyblade began transforming as the Soldier jumped into the air, ready to bring his down on the knight's head. Their weapons clashed against each other producing a massive shockwave.

And somewhere in the depths of space, a young boy named Sora woke from a deep sleep.