The Fourth Scroll
Vexen rolled up the previous two scrolls as carefully as possible, then moved them out of the way as he began to open up the next scroll.
It was different than the rest, slightly--the ink was actually a very dark blue rather than black, and the scroll itself was made of a different material. It also didn't seem quite as old as the first three scrolls, as none of the writing was difficult to read yet due to age.
And at the very top of the scroll, before the writing began, was a familiar blue seal, shaped like a stylized heart with the lines curving in slightly at the top. The symbol has been used for many years, and was recognizable everywhere in the three Worlds as representing one of many things.
Some saw the blue heart as a symbol of the heart itself; others, the power that hearts could hold; and still others saw it as a representation of Kingdom Hearts, the enormous moon-like structure composed of the hearts of those who had lost theirs, usually due to death.
"It seems that this scroll contains the history of Kingdom Hearts itself," Vexen said, running a finger over parts of the scroll. Like the first and third scrolls, it was written in the language of the World of Darkness, so Vexen had no trouble reading it now--he had already translated two scrolls in this language, after all, so one more, and a more recent one at that, was no problem.
After the defeat of Gil-Neithev, it was expected that the creatures of Light would stop appearing in such numbers. However, after hundreds of years had passed, they began to resurface. These new creatures were smaller than before, but easily recognizable as the same ones they had fought off before.
Something had to be done.
The current generation of Warriors of Darkness, as well as several newcomers who had trained under great wizards from the World of Twilight, traveled across the world, heading toward the sun-exposed side where the creatures of Light seemed to be coming from.
There, they discovered the origins of those creatures--hearts, it seemed, entered the World of Darkness upon the deaths of their bodies, and the vast majority of them seemed to be drawn toward the light side of the planet. Those who didn't reach this side, and instead stopped on the sunless side, became entirely different creatures--black-skinned, insect-like, and with glowing eyes.
Similar to the creatures of Light, but very different--they seemed to be mostly harmless, unless they attacked in large groups, and those who controlled the Darkness could also give them basic commands.
And when the two types of creatures met, chaos broke out. They rushed at each other in what appeared to be a psychotic rage, and immediately attempted to tear each other apart. The Light creatures were stronger, so usually they were the ones who survived these encounters--but occasionally, if they met somewhere further away from the sun's light, a swarm of the Darkness creatures would outnumber the others and destroy them.
Regardless of which creatures these hearts would become, they had to be stopped. Something had to be done to prevent hearts from drifting into either the Darkness or the Light, something that would stabilize them and keep them in their natural state rather than allowing them to be corrupted.
Though the people of the World of Darkness preferred the force which saturated their own world, they realized that a balance needed to exist in order for peace to exist--too much Darkness, just like too much Light, could be destructive.
Those who had studied under the wizards from the Twilight World combined their skills in magic and metalworking to construct a massive orb, covered in various strange symbols and crystals of various types. The Warriors of Darkness imbued the center of the orb with the power of Darkness, and those from the Twilight World saturated the outer layer with Light so that hearts would be drawn to it after the deaths of their bodies.
The group carried this enormous device to the site of the new city that their people had built after fleeing their previous home, and then the Twilight wizards activated the orb, causing it to lift itself into the air magically. Almost immediately, the effect of the device could be seen--hearts, which would drift over the land every few minutes most of the time, were now immediately drawn to the outside of the metal orb.
They clustered around it, and as more and more hearts built up, the orb become more and more covered--and the hearts began to form into one enormous heart, centered on the place where the orb floated in the air.
Now, hearts had a place to go after death--no longer doomed to transform into destructive insects, only to be destroyed again, causing the process to repeat almost endlessly until the heart's energy was so drained that it would simply dissipate into the air.
The wizards from the Twilight World decided to name this place "Kingdom Hearts."
"It was... Kingdom Hearts was...", the girl stuttered, barely coming through over the radio.
"It was what?", Vexen said, turning to the radio and--again--feeling somewhat silly about it. "Is it any surprise that an object with such a definite shape was not naturally-occuring?"
"Well," she said, "Yeah... that's the problem... I had always thought there was more to it than that."
"You shouldn't confuse something's origins with its importance," Lexaeus said, trying to read some of the scroll for himself to pick up on the language more. "If you look at it that way, we Nobodies are just the byproducts of a Heartless' meal. And you, Zexion, and any others like you..."
"We'd be nothing," I finished.
"But we're not."