Chapter summary: A boy awakens to the light.

He wakes up screaming.

Bright hot panic suffused with the visceral need to move—to survive—forces his body into action, uncoordinated as it is; anything's better than lying prone and helpless—easy prey. But precious seconds are lost uselessly fumbling with the soft bonds tangled around his limbs, tripping him up. No sooner than he's freed he's falling, tipping over the edge of a raised platform and the tumble painfully jars something cold and hard against his right shoulder. What he doesn't know. He's half blind against the searing light—a realization that refuses to stick in his muddled brain.

There is no light in this place.

It's a deep knowledge, settled down in the very marrow of his bones. The darkness should have shrouded everything—concealing all sorts of unfathomable horrors just out of sight—yet it's so bright his eyes water. The inconsistency is almost enough to slow his rapid fire breaths and drain off some of the pure adrenaline pumping through his veins.

But before he can make any sense of the odd disparity, there comes a whoosh of displaced air followed closely by a gasp—more than enough to clue him in to his new audience.

The gasp is a distinctly emotional expression and he really hopes he hasn't been discovered by one of the more evolved heartless or worse, someone else trapped down here with him. The World of Darkness does things to people after all. He twists around and blinks at the moisture blurring his vision, trying to make out the figure standing in a doorway, but the light spilling in past them is even brighter than what he'd woken to. By the time his eyes adjust they're already advancing, stalking him with cautious movements. And as much as he is tired and in pain he isn't ready to surrender—to let the darkness consume him after everything he's been through; he has to keep fighting. He doesn't quite manage to get his feet under him so much as prop himself against the wall at his back, but he has his arms up and voices a strained warning growl for good measure.

The tactic seems effective. His visitor stops in their tracks at least, a look of pure concern reflected in shimmering eyes of lapis blue—not yellow?

"Shiro?"

The voice is soft, almost gentle, and tinged with the slightest touch of fear. That more than anything makes him take a closer look—nothing down here is ever scared of him, pathetic as he is—and finds a girl watching him, hands held out placating as if he might bolt at the slightest provocation—as if he can. Without the artificial lighting of this strange place burning away at his sensitive retinas he can make out the chocolate tones of her skin and the long, pale curls of starlight draping down the length of her back. Further details come into focus the longer he stares: the pointed tips of delicate ears, the contrasting pink tattoos at the corners of her cheeks and just beneath her startling vivid eyes. The effect is of an otherworldly aesthetic and undeniably beautiful, even if he hasn't spent the last eternity lost in the darkness. He can't help the absurd notion that he's been saved by an angel.

At any rate, she's certainly not anything he's been expecting and he can't stop the sudden release of tight tension that's been holding him up, a slightly hysteric relief blooming in his heart. He can't relax exactly, not while registering the four solid planes that close him in and give him nowhere to run even if he could've managed to do so. He is in a room of some kind, an oddity in itself, but rendered utterly foreign by the immaculate whites and cheerful blues adorning the walls. The space is obsessively neat and tidy with nothing out of place save for the crumpled sheet he must have tossed to the floor in his waking. Everything is so pristine and bright. Where is he?

The girl speaks again, weaving her words of the same gentle tones. "Please, be at peace. I promise no harm shall come to you here, Shiro."

She seems sincere; her expressive eyes will him to believe her. Pushing air out of his throat awakens all sorts of raw aches and pains no doubt brought on by long disuse and his earlier screaming. He sounds rough and weak, a complete contrast next to her soft-spoken confidence, but he wants to know.

"Who's Shiro?"

So this little preview is the result of re-watching the whole of Voltron: Legendary Defenders—experiencing all the ups, downs and what-could've-beens, then running headlong into Kingdom Hearts III and coming away with some really unexpected parallels. This will most closely follow the Birth By Sleep game in the Kingdom Heart series but won't be so much a retelling with VLD characters but more of a fusion of the two lores where no one character is completely interchangeable with another. As of right now Shiro, Allura and Keith are planned to receive the most attention but the rest of the paladins will be along for the ride.

I have a few other big projects I'm trying to finish up at the moment so it may be some time until I'll be able to give more attention to this story but a couple chapters are in the works so they may pop up soon. If you enjoy this and would like to see more then please let me know!