Heartbeat in the Land of the Heartless

Before there was time, before the was anything, there was emotion. Not any of the emotions we know today, such as happiness or sadness, but just empty emotion, like a blank canvas before being painted. This all changed 12 billion years ago, when the Big Bang expanded the universe as we know it. This event dissipated emotion from its emptiness, and the Emotional Spectrum was born, allowing all living beings to experience the emotions of life.

However, even after all living beings were given their emotions, there were still leftover emotions in the Spectrum, which were left simply floating aimlessly around the universe. The leftover positive emotions ended up coming together into emotional stars.

It is incredibly rare to find those stars, as they hide in the furthest reaches of the universe. Instead of simply glowing, those emotional stars pulsate like gigantic hearts of light. Because of this, they were given the name 'Beatstars'. Legend says that once every thousand lifetimes, a bolt of light will fly out of a Beatstar, and that whoever is struck by this light will never be the same, ever again.

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The light of the full moon illuminated the cold of the night in a suburban neighborhood. All houses had their lights turned off, and the place was silent. In the second floor of one of those houses was a small room, where a little boy slept. He was not sleeping peacefully, but instead rolling around the bed with an expression of struggle. He suddenly opened his eyes and sat up, breathing heavily. It had just been a nightmare. The third one he had had that week. The boy turned to his door, as he was sure he had heard footsteps.

"Mom?" The boy called, his only response being silence. The boy slowly got up from his bed and made his way to the door. He breathed heavily for a few moments, and flung it open. It was just an empty corridor. There was nobody there.

The boy carefully closed the door and turned back to his room. There was no one there but him. He began to calm down as he made his way back to his bed. He reached for the covers, when a hand suddenly came out from under his bed and grabbed his leg. The child screamed as he tripped, and then looked at the creature. The place was dark, and he could see nothing but a pair of massive yellow eyes, without any pupils or irises. The child once again screamed in terror and began to cry, when the door suddenly flung open and an adult woman wearing a sleeping gown ran in.

"Jimmy! What is going on?" She asked.

Jimmy looked back to the creature under his bed, only to see it had vanished. He continued to cry, as his mother gently took him in her arms.

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Not only positive emotion was leftover. There was also negative emotion, the type of emotion we all try to avoid. Hate, sadness, despair, fear, guilt, envy. Those emotions also came together, but they evolved very differently. Instead of becoming Beatstars, the negative emotions gained new life, and thus the Heartless were born.

The Heartless are known by many names. Boogeyman, Bloody Mary, Changeling, Ghoul, Kappa, La Llorona, Mothman, Sack Man, Slender Man. The Heartless are the thing hiding under your bed when you are a child. They are that thing that you thought you saw moving in the darkness. They are that thing you thought you heard in the cold of the night. Whenever you are alone, but you feel like you're being watched, the Heartless are the ones watching you. They are terrible creatures made of nothing but pure and utter evil.

A small group of Heartless stood at the top of a large hill, overseeing a city in the middle of the night. The Heartless varied in appearance, but those in particular were small creatures, only about as big as a human 14-year-old. Their bodies were humanoid, but covered by reptilian scales, which were colored pitch black. They large pointy ears, as well as sharp claws, and sharp fangs that made for a large wicked smile, which made a perfect combo with their devilish blank yellow eyes.