Cera
_{How long will you play this game? Will you fight or will you walk away?}

Like a moonflower, he has grown in the darkness permeated only by the silver light of the sole Goddess above, while all other wilted with the absence of their light, their Gods. The invasion had torn them at the core, but they were resilient, they would carry on. So long as they had each other, they would lift their weapons and wings, shove shoulder beneath each other and rise higher, fight on until every leg and limb was broken. Even then, their spirit would never be crushed, for it was a brilliant flame that burned everything. If you did not turn to ash beneath the weight of them, they would still leave you with burns. They were tied irrevocably to each other. Brothers and sisters for life. All blood had touched that sand, painting it a deeper shade of crimson. Unicorn blood, believed to be royal...it was all the same when it sprayed the ground in battle.

So Cera had returned to the forest of shadow and silver light. The Basin invading had reminded him of sensitive matters. Horned, all of them. Precise steps drew him closer, until those endless boughs tangled like a jigsaw puzzle overhead. The scare upon his slim chest was bright beneath the netherlight, as if sensing that this was the place where it had been created. Shadows haunted him here, both within his mind and in the realm he had walked into. A scream, a spray of blood, his blood. And pain. So much pain. Cera shook his head frantically, heart constricted. He had forbidden Ilaria from going with him, not wanting her to suffer through his emotions and memories. She'd been so young then, hardly but a cub, and she'd witnessed her bonded being torn to ribbons so close to vital organs practically moments after their union. Cera would not subject her to that. She had been furious, left behind with Midas and Fina, but he had been firm with her. She barely remembered...what if he triggered her?

Despite the subtle warming of Birdsong, there was a chill upon his spine. The ghosts of his past, was that the phrase?

And then his jade eyes alighted upon that form.

The imposter. The fake. The devil

Cera was not afraid. Not this time. Not here, where his heart had pumped out his life blood helplessly upon those pale leaves.

"You!" he snarled, leaping forth, uncaring of the foliage that pricked at him as he shoved forward towards the doppel of his father in a sudden lunge. "Leave, you imposter! This is not your home, leave us at peace, return to wherever you were spawned!" In his near-adult age his voice bellowed far lower than normal, emerald fire within his eyes, uncaring of the condition the fake Midas displayed.

This is not your father. Do not pity him. Do not pity him!