Vault of the Dark One

"The vault will only restore the Dark One in exchange for another life."

- Belle French to Emma Swan

The Vault of the Dark One, also known as the Heart of Darkness, is an Enchanted Forest location featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It first appears in the fifteenth episode of the third season.

Trivia
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On-Screen Notes

 * The symbols on the vault includes the tomoe, the triquetra, the triangle, the Eye of Providence (one of the symbols that Guinevere presses to open the vault), the pentagram (which Guinevere also presses) and the sun (which Guinevere also presses). Circling all the other symbols is the Ouroboros, which represents cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself — a reference to the way the Darkness is inherited from one host to the next, and the Dark One's eternal life.
 * The Vault of the Dark One is only a day's ride from Camelot.
 * The vault appears in the title card for "Birth".
 * The scene where Hook rises from the vault, is a combination of new footage and recycled footage from the scene where Emma rises from the vault in "The Dark Swan". The shot where the darkness begins to manifest into human form, the following wide-shot where the transformation continues, and the following close-up shot where the camera pans up the manifesting darkness, are exactly the same in both scenes, the only difference being the lighting, and the third shot being shorter during Hook's scene (in Emma's scene, the camera pans up to Emma's face; in Hook's scene, the shot ends before it reaches the face).
 * -|Set Notes=

Props Notes

 * The cover of the book which holds the key to the vault shows an image of the Gnostic deity Abraxas. The text and the image is a replica of the engraving on one of the Abraxas stones.
 * The page with the key is a transcript of a page from Book VIII of De Civitate Dei (The City of God), a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by early Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century.
 * The page contains part 1, and the start of part 2, from Book VIII. An English translation can be found on Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45304/45304-h/45304-h.htm#Page_305
 * The book that Belle used to identify the symbol on Neal's hand is written in Latin.