The first time he saw Azkaban, his heart reeled with the darkness that infested the place. It was not so much the darkness of the Dementors, but the ghosts and shadows that clung to its rocky walls. He had touched darkness, hints and edges of it as his ancestor had dreamed of it, but this, this was midnight and the shadows long before dawn.
People spoke of the werewolves and vampires as Dark Creatures, but they were foolish, no better than Muggles. This place, these things, were Dark.
They were his.
He, who had danced with the shadowy dreams of Salazar Slytherin, whose name he did not dare claim, now lay claim to older prophecies and darker powers. Like iron chains, he bound dark secrets to his blood and called to the true darkness, to seek secrets unknown even by that meddler, that fool who huddled amongst the children in his moldy castle and lonely forest.
He called to them, the Dark Creatures, and they scorned him, seeing not enough light in his soul to feed on, and not enough darkness to follow.
"What are you, little mortal, who does not nourish us and does not lead us? You have killed? We have done worse. You have hated? We have inspired fear."
With only scared, frightened little men behind him, he feared he could not win this war. He turned then to the misunderstood, the feared, the hated. And he met little but the same response. A wolf, a blood-drinker would follow him, but the others would snarl at him, not trusting him to hate them any less. They saw the Slytherins about him, and their hatred of impure blood, and built up the legends of his purity, his hatred, his darkness.
Wizards feared to speak his name, but he saw he was little better than the petty Muggle that had inspired the greatest war in their own history.
What had he but pain, fear, and death? That was not evil, not darkness, so still did the darkness scorn him.
The days he spent wandering, near-death, he saw ghosts and shadows no more powerful than he. And when he clawed his way into a half-life in hopes of returning eternally, he found himself bending to the basest of methods, lower than the dirty-blooded werewolves and vampires his followers reviled so. Even they would not kill a unicorn.
The shadows mocked him, when he fled that crumbled corpse of a man. He was base, unclean, and still nothing more than a human. What could he do, if he could not stand the touch of a child, if the thestrals' call still filled him with terror?
To fear death is to be mortal, to accept it to be light, to abandon it entirely is to allow the darkness to take you.
Death could not take him; this realization, however, gave him none of the false confidence it might instill in lesser men. It filled him with cold certainty. Death would not take him until his task had been completed. Not until the darkness walked with him and the earth bled...
On the day his father's bone and his enemy's blood granted his deathless soul a body, he traveled to the dark home of the shadows for the second and last time.
"I have inspired fear in man and beast, and given them reason to fear. I have haunted the dreams of a generation and they still fear to speak my name. I have incited friends to betrayal and sundered family. I have assaulted my greatest enemy time and time again, and every time, strike not at his body, but at his soul. Now, will you join me?"
And the darkness gathered about him, drawing uselessly at barely-remembered dreams of joy, watching his face untouched by their nightmares.
And the man untouched by their power was given a task, an unholy mission to show to them his power. He would do what they themselves could not, and thereby forever earn their loyalty, until the day his soul should pass beyond the veil.
To many, it seemed an accident, a chance curse and a moment's clumsiness. But when so many mourned the strange and permanent passing of a true friend and loyal man, a man, apparently beaten and licking his wounds within an army of close-minded pureblooded wizards, appreciated a victory that bought him more than any could imagine.
Who else could have bought so much for so little? His direst enemy broken in mind and heart, vulnerable even beyond the boundaries of his family's wards. His power increased a hundredfold by the joining of true darkness to his army.
And he demonstrated to the world the price of attempting to cheat him, the Dementors, of their prize.
And finally, he became what he had always dreamed of. Salazar Slytherin was a fool, and the Death Eaters more so. They embraced fear and death and torture to banish their own fear. The Dementors reminded them of everything they had to lose.
Voldemort was already dead. He cared nothing for life, or the false purity his followers so loved.
He was the darkness, as much as the Dementors.
Soon, he would not need any man save those lost already to the darkness.
The rest were blind and could not see what he knew.
He knew that this was more than some mad old woman's Seeing, more than a wicked wizard and the wizarding world's golden boy.
This was the war the shadows were waiting for. And now that it was his war, as well, he would see it through to the end.