The Book of Prophecies
Terms and lore
Daybreak Town. The town where the Master taught and the Unions worked, built in blue and white stone on the water, with a fountain square at its centre and a purple star worked into the paving. Its clock tower stands across a bridge and is closed to ordinary wielders. The six apprentices met in a room inside it.
The Book of Prophecies. Written by the Master of Masters himself, not found and not given to him. He wrote down what he saw through an eye that gazes into the future. It is not a complete account of what is coming. By his own description it holds only what the Keyblade he gave to Luxu sees, and only the parts he judged worth writing down. Five copies went to five apprentices. Its final passage is the one that frightens everybody who reads it: "On that fated land, a great war shall transpire. Darkness will prevail and the light expire." His own plainer gloss on the same passage: the entire world will be lost to darkness.
The Gazing Eye and the No Name. The eye is the Master's own, set inside a Keyblade made for the purpose. What the eye sees travels back to him, which is how the book gets written. The Keyblade travels forward, carried by Luxu and then handed from apprentice to apprentice after him. The blade has no name of its own. Luxu assumed "Gazing Eye" was its name, was corrected, and called it No Name as a joke. Nobody corrected the joke either.
The Foretellers and the Unions. The five apprentices given copies of the book, each leading a Union of Keyblade wielders: Ira over Unicornis, Aced over Ursus, Invi over Anguis, Gula over Leopardos, Ava over Vulpes. Each Union's animal is on its Foreteller's mask. The Unions are kept apart and kept competing, and alliances between them are forbidden, on the reasoning that imbalance makes people hungry for power, and that hunger is how darkness gets in.
The assigned roles. Ira to lead and to succeed the Master. Aced to stand at Ira's right hand, and to step forward himself if Ira ever proved unfit, which is the clause that tears everything apart. Invi to watch the others impartially and mediate, told to be fair and not to be afraid to speak up. Gula to find the traitor among the six and stop them, and to trust nobody, with a test to go by: whoever departs from their assigned role is the traitor. Ava to forget the notion of Unions, find wielders with potential, and build a separate organisation. Luxu to carry the Keyblade and the box forward, and to watch without interfering. His own summary of it: "Watching. That's my role."
The black box. Heavy and black, with thirteen locks, given to Luxu to carry forward along with the No Name. He is never, ever to open it. When he asked what was inside, the Master told him, and it went no further than the two of them.
"May your heart be your guiding key." The Master's constant parting words, said so often they became a way of ending a conversation. Luxu says them in his own form, "May my heart be my guiding key," as he leaves the town. Aced says the same before he turns his Keyblade on the other Foretellers.
Lux and Darklings. Lux is the light that comes off Heartless when a wielder defeats them. It is gathered and counted, and each Union's total is ranked against the others'. Darkness can take a wielder's lux. When it does, the wielder does not die. They become a Darkling, something that comes back wanting more.
Chirithy. Small round creatures the Master made, one to a wielder, to walk beside them and tell them what to do next. They reach their wielders through dreams when they cannot show them the way directly. If a wielder's heart is tainted by darkness, their Chirithy turns dark and becomes a Nightmare. The Master delivered this rule as an afterthought, prefaced with "Oh, right, before I forget."
The bangles. Bangles that draw darkness into whoever wears them, quietly and over time. They came through the Moogle's shop behind the fountain, traded in by something that looked like a Chirithy and was not one.
The Lost Page. A page missing from the Book of Prophecies, held by Gula because the Master gave it to him along with the task of catching the traitor. Its text: "Imbalance observed, strength misplaced, a future filled with sorrow. Words of truth misunderstood as they explore the secret of tomorrow. With a single strike, toll the bells and herald the end, bringing war upon us, as fate did intend." It names the traitor only as the one who bears the sigil. Gula's reading of it: the traitor is the catalyst for the events that lead to the world's end.
Kingdom Hearts. Summoning it is forbidden. Gula meant to do it anyway, certain it would bring the Master back to explain the page.
The Dandelions. Wielders gathered by Ava from all five Unions, chosen for ability and for a resistance to darkness that she tested by putting darkness near them. They were trained apart and told to hide rather than fight when the end came, so that they would remain after everyone else was gone. She named them for the seeds on the hill above the town: "Let the wind carry you far, far away. My Dandelions." She did not count herself among the survivors.
The Keyblade War. The war the book foretold. It began when Ava's and Luxu's Keyblades met and the bells of the clock tower rang across the whole town, and it was fought in the badlands outside it, where the ways met, between wielders of all five Unions. Afterwards the ground there was a graveyard, full of the Keyblades of those who fell.
The backup of Daybreak Town. After the war, almost everyone woke in a copy of Daybreak Town made as data, "a backup of the real one," with their memories of the war removed on Ava's instruction, a job Ephemer carried out. The worlds had come apart in the war and were recreated as data so that they could still be reached.
The Union leaders. Five wielders Ava chose to lead the Unions once the Foretellers were gone, each given a rulebook and allowed to keep their memories of the war: Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, Lauriam and Ventus. They kept the Unions in name only and ran them as one.
Darkness. Ancient and formless, older than the town and older than the book. It cast off its own form long ago, and while it has none it cannot be destroyed. To be killed it must first be inside something with a heart strong enough to hold it. It spreads by going at hearts, and what comes out of people's worst feelings is Heartless. There is more than one. It stated its own plan in one word: "Infection."
The lifeboats. Person-sized pods with a door hinged at the top and a heart-shaped window, kept in the basement of the clock tower. Seven of them. They were built for crossing between worlds rather than through time, and can do either but not both at once. Travelling through time costs the traveller their body. At the far end there must be something to build a new one from, and somebody there who remembers them. The Master's line on what their departure means: "When all seven of the lifeboat's pods depart, this world will end, and a new day will dawn."
Sleep. The choice offered to a wielder's heart after death. It is what became of most of the Dandelions, whose hearts sleep on, each guarded by what was once their Chirithy, now in another shape. The other choice is to go on instead, into whatever hearts go on into.
Scala ad Caelum. The city built on the ruins of Daybreak Town, on the same ground, which is why the purple star is still in its paving. A statue above its fountain shows a boy holding a Keyblade. Sigurd names him to Brain as the town's founder and the first Keyblade Master: Ephemer.
Characters and where they stand
The Master of Masters. Cheerful, offhand, and impossible to read. He hands out the end of the world in the voice of a man reading a delivery schedule, and he is plainly fond of his apprentices. He disappeared without warning before the war, and neither Ava nor Gula found any sign of where he went.
Ira. Earnest and dutiful, the one who asks only what he should do. Certain a traitor sat among the six, he built a theory around a missing page. He fought in the war, and in it put himself between Aced and the wielder.
Aced. The strongest and proudest of the six, and the least willing to wait. He carried the second half of his role until the day he decided to use it. In the war he declared the Unions one and himself their leader.
Invi. Fair and careful, and certain Aced's heart still belonged to the light. The part of her instructions about speaking up, she kept and never spent. She fought in the war, and in the middle of it wished someone a good long life.
Gula. Obedient to the letter, which made him look exactly like a traitor. He trusted nobody and carried the Lost Page in secret. Wounded, he set out to summon Kingdom Hearts and bring the Master back. In the war he said that perhaps they would meet again somewhere.
Ava. Warm and hopeful, the only one of the six holding an instruction the others had not heard. She built the Dandelions in secret and sent them away before the end. She went looking for Luxu, asked him who the traitor was, and attacked him when he told her. After the war, Ventus called for her in an empty house, and she did not come.
Luxu. Wry and patient, the apprentice who watches. He kept his promise to carry the box and never open it. As the copy of the town failed, he sent a figure in a white cloak forward in a pod as "the true Dandelion," then took Brain's body for his own. He walks the graveyard of Keyblades with the box and the No Name.
The wielder. Quiet, steady, and loyal to Ephemer. When four Darknesses tried to take them, the wielder only pretended to be possessed, then sealed the four away along with themselves. Mortally wounded, they refused sleep. Their heart and their Chirithy's became one heart, and it went away from all of it.
Chirithy. The wielder's own, fussy and earnest, and firm that it is not a cat. It kept the wielder from remembering the war when Ephemer and Skuld asked it to. At the end it went with the wielder, and the two hearts became one.
Ephemer. Curious and restless, the one who asked why the Unions competed, and made a friend outside his own Union anyway. He stayed behind in the failing town with Skuld: "It's enough to keep me from giving up hope." Scala ad Caelum remembers him as its founder and the first Keyblade Master.
Skuld. Direct and decisive, quick to take a side and slow to let it go. She gave her place in a pod to Lauriam and stayed behind with Ephemer.
Strelitzia. Gentle and underestimated, with better magic than her brother. Chosen as a Union leader, she was struck down from behind in an empty house before she could deliver the message she carried. She later appeared to Lauriam in a white coat, and Elrena's Chirithy saw her walking with a figure in a black coat. Brain believes someone got at what remained of her in the data.
Lauriam. Proud, and slow to see his sister as his equal, until she was gone. Since then, relentless. He left by pod, still looking for her.
Elrena. Forthright and sharp. She lost her memories of before the war like almost everyone else, and helped Lauriam search anyway. She left by pod.
Brain. Clever and dry, and the one who worked out on his own that the town was data. Ava gave him a copy of the book and a note from the Master, to be opened when he needed it. He chose to stay behind for the sleepers, and Luxu took his body. Brain himself woke in Scala ad Caelum, the only one of those who left to come out in that time, and a man named Sigurd was waiting for him.
Ventus. Kind and earnest, and uneasy at the thought of wielders fighting each other. He took Strelitzia's place among the five with a Darkness inside him. He claimed her death as his own, then forced the Darkness into a shape that could be fought, and nearly died of it. He left by pod, unconscious.
The sorceress. She came into the town from outside, meaning to change what was written, and was told it could not be done from inside the copy. She beat Lauriam in the clock tower's basement and left in the seventh pod.
Sigurd. A man in Scala ad Caelum who was expecting Brain, and met him.
Questions
What is in the black box, and what did the Master tell Luxu about it?
Who was the traitor Luxu named to Ava?
Where did the Master of Masters go, and will he come back?
What does the Master's note to Brain say?
Who struck Strelitzia down: Ventus, or the Darkness inside him?
Who was the figure in the black coat seen walking with Strelitzia?
Who is the figure in the white cloak that Luxu sent forward as the true Dandelion?
Where did the pods carry Lauriam, Elrena and Ventus?
Will the sleeping Dandelions ever wake?
What does the sorceress want to change in the Book of Prophecies?
Where did the wielder's heart go?
What does Luxu mean to do in Brain's body?
Fun facts
Six deadly sins. Every apprentice is named for one of the seven deadly sins in Latin: Ira for ira, wrath; Aced for acedia, sloth; Invi for invidia, envy; Gula for gula, gluttony; Ava for avaritia, greed; and Luxu for luxuria, lust. The Foretellers' mask animals match the animals the medieval Ancrene Wisse uses for the same sins, except Gula's. The Ancrene Wisse gives gluttony a pig, and Gula wears a leopard.
Definitely not a cat. Chirithy insists it is not a cat, but the developers designed it around a Scottish Fold.
One story, told three ways. This entry draws on a game that began in 2013 as Kingdom Hearts χ, a free browser game, and was remade for phones in 2015 as Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ, then renamed Kingdom Hearts Union χ in 2017. A feature-length animated film, Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, was released as a companion to it.
Gone from the stores. The game's online service ended in June 2021, leaving an offline version that could still replay the story. As of August 2024 it has been removed from every app store.