'Click' is a resounding sound that is faint and deceptive to those whose ears listen too hard or not at all. It is brief and dull to those creatures who pound the ground as they walk but ignore the world's whispers of the coming silence before the players move once more across their vast stage, murmuring their dialogues so such a small echo goes unnoticed, despite the weight it carries.
'Click' is the sound of something momentous, and often forgotten. The equestrian tongues call it 'eureka' when they have but a shadow of these. Immortal ears prick up in hopes of catching a fleeting hint of what is to come, provided they can hope to decipher the fragment.
There was no drastic variation to what was in this moment, it was the actions of those who brought about such events and the aftermaths that they forged that set new things in motion. Few had this occur in their life, for while they could acknowledge themselves as heroes in their own modest stories. The truth was they were far from even that, being bystanders at most, for their paths were plain as they were. Yet, there were those pony, god, or something else entirely who called the shots and obeyed no worldly script but saw fit to unravel whatever puppet strings that those who only appeared to be their peers held onto. This was in hopes of being guided to endings they gave little thought to, for they did not defy and their dreams were not made into something greater. They would not last, they would cease to transcend if they tried at all.
Each and every one of them would fail and continue to work out their small dreams and uncomplicated lives to which there was no remedy, until one day Fate's usually absent strings snagged them upward with a necklace of rope, and it would be there some amiable-seeming Reaper would collect them like flowers.
But the wayward burned and thrashed, refusing to cease even when they lacked any common restraints that would be the accepted burden to their placid kin. Those who fought nothing, gained nothing and those who sought nothing, learned nothing. Those who dreamed forever created nothing, and those who toiled forever duel wielding unnecessary humility alongside some other tool in hopes of creating something to represent themselves often never looked to see what they were, beyond the coat of a pony or feathers of a griffin.
Sombra was none of the above. He was neither bound by common order or a pony. He was the most wayward of all mortals.
And now he resided in what could have been nothing.
'Could have been' if he ignored the ever-present: everything, which had sprung from him in the first moments of what would be one thousand years as he sensed the cold that no ordinary mortal could hope to survive and that would even cause the gods to shiver, if they could in such a situation. Sombra's own presence would grow to fill most of this vast void that could rob almost every aspect of being and the mind from every sane soul that would face the same impossibly long stay, and one that would no doubt last longer than any mortal life.
Luckily, Sombra was one who had never known sanity.
...
This was a place where Sombra would never feel snow beneath his bare hooves, for there was no snow to fall, no sky for it to fall from, and no ground for it to fall upon.
Sombra also noted that he had no hooves as well. His body was gone, woven into shadow that appeared to have all but dissolved into an outer darkness, which he was then sent; alone. His body was gone for who knows how long, if there was a finite duration of time that one could be here. With his body gone, only he remained. And who was Sombra?
He had always been more, he was always better than what he was expected to be. Even in this otherworldly place that would not change. Sombra was a demon unknown to all but one mortal soul, and that was the soul of the child that had created him with a gamble, anger, and dark magic that had judged such a dim pony worthy of corruption.
The result of that corruption was Sombra himself, a defiant and reclusive sort who believed in the power of the mind and all the glorious insanity and genius that his had, something he had wanted to use in order to walk the world to find its farthest reaches, where no ponies plagued him with the misery their unwanted company brought.
Instead, the twisted desire of a crystal pony colt bent on unneeded vengeance and sadistic desire had held him hostage as the worst kind of weapon - one that could feel and see his own powers being abused and the blood that stained his hooves because of a lonely born-broken child who had never been properly dealt with, one whose impulsivity and utter stupidity was only countered by young Sombra's cold calculations and fierce intellect.
Those too, had been exploited by a twisted mind who wanted only to abuse power, ponies, and most of all Sombra himself - the demon he had unknowingly summoned and willingly stolen a name from.
And so begins the first year of the not-entirely-divided duo in the goddess-wrought void to house the two halves of the King.
...
There's a maddening dysphoria in no longer having a body or world to take shape in for all who lack more than one form. Sombra had always known what if felt like to dissolve into shadow.
It was better that way. The anger he felt now was a savage and all-consuming force that sharpened what senses still worked and etched every memory with the deadliest precision. Nothing would be forgotten for a long while. Later, he would ensure that nothing would escape his memory even if he wanted it to.
But for now, rage shook a realm with no boundary.
He was alive, at least.
And alone. That something that had always been a desire of his, an impossibility when the crown and another's dark wishes had dictated his life as much as the clinking of chains had governed the existence of crystal ponies. Now all of those things were gone, something that he would appreciate in time, when rage subsided and the silence after this storm tempered with his nature, and his ambitions were softened for much needed self-examination.
There would be plenty of time for that.
In time, there would be plenty of time for anything for somepony like him who had known only limitations and bitterness.
That would wait a long while. For one hundred years there would be nothing but the most brutal fury unleashed in a place where nothing could appear and time wore on in the darkness. His mind traveled forward with it, a world he could no longer see continuing to be outside the void where only the cold of ice seeped in and chilled him. Something far colder than ice would try to seep into his very mind and break it. Instead, he broke this otherworldly chill, defying it as he had defied everything else he had ever known.
When the horror of his fiercest and longest bout of temper - an anger that then was indescribable and almost eldritch in it's near infinite intensity - was able to be shaped into something else, his mind snapped to the task.
From nothing but the magic he was left with in this god-sealed prison made just for him, he wielded both his genius and his rage until his ambition-driven magic had forged the only thing he would need to remember everything...
...
Out of everything to focus on, one face was clearer than anything else. It was the face of a blue-coated goddess. She had beaten him and brought everything down with a single move. It was she he wanted nothing to do with - she was the younger one, the shadow of her sister.