What Lies Beyond the Light
Prologue
~ The Long-Forgotten Door ~
The mouse King walked up to the front door of the old tower that never seemed to be in the same place twice, quickly knocking a few times before returning his hand to his side and waiting patiently for the place's only permanent resident to answer. He had been summoned by the wizard Yen Sid, who seemed to be rather insistent that he come as quickly as possible; Mickey wasn't sure what his old master wanted to tell him, but he figured that it had to have been pretty important.
A few minutes passed before the door slowly swung open, the flowing blue robes of the wizard swishing about as he invited Mickey inside. The two silently headed up the stairs toward the highest point in the tower, where Yen Sid's study was located; when they got there, the first thing that caught the little mouse's eye was an ancient scroll laid out across the table, with several books and papers piled alongside it.
"Gosh, what's all this?"
"This scroll is the reason I have called for you," Yen Sid said, taking a seat at one end of the table and motioning for Mickey to join him. "It contains an account of ancient history, a time even before the destruction of the Keyblade War."
Mickey gasped, his mouth hanging open for several seconds afterward as he looked over the yellowed paper of the scroll in disbelief. How had something so old survived? As far as he knew, no coherent records from the time of the Keyblade War had ever been recovered, let alone before it. The very thought of it was something he had never imagined.
"Before the Keyblade War?"
"That is correct," Yen Sid answered, "If I have translated the ancient runes correctly, then this scroll dates back to a time before the Realm of Light was fragmented into the many worlds that exist today."
He stood up, pacing away from his seat and toward a nearby window.
"Or, I should say… before what we know as the Realm of Light was fragmented."
"What we know as the Realm of Light? What do you mean?"
"That is what I have called you here so suddenly to tell you. If what the scroll says is true, then the realm in which your world lies is not the Realm of Light we have always believed it to be."
He paced back over toward the table and pointed toward a section of the scroll, which Mickey immediately focused his eyes on. Among the indecipherable ancient writing, the mouse noticed a very clear image of a tall, ornately-decorated door standing on a stone platform, with light pouring out from it in every direction.
"Furthermore," he continued, "The scroll mentions the presence of a sealed door, much like the one that blocks the way into the Realm of Darkness… a long-forgotten door, at the end of the only path to the true Realm of Light."