"Mom! Kai won’t share!” Dea squeled as she hung from our mother’s arm.
Mother told me off for hogging my apples, telling me that my little sister Dea was the only family I had left besides her. While mother was scolding me I saw Dea gloat at me and the apples, she knew getting mom involved had been the right choice. Little witch.
My mother stood after handing Dea one of my apples “I’ll be heading off to the forest to collect some herbs, you two take care of each other, okay?”
After our father died during a hunting trip in the Sacred Forest we had to depend on mother to provide for us, she collected herbs from the forest and made them into medicine to cure the sick. Because of this mother wasn't home often, if she wasn't collecting herbs she would be in the shack, working on her remedies. Me and Dea only had each other.
As mother left Dea grinned at me and bit into her apple.

While I was preparing dinner for myself and Dea a sudden worry crept up on me, it was a given that nobody stayed out in the forest after sundown, but mother had still not returned.
Dea gave me a weird look as I put the plates on the table, mother was late.
And then I heard it, soft at first but louder with time. Dea and I looked out of the window and saw that the villagers had gathered at the opening of the Sacred Forest. The Sacred Forest was a well respected place for this village, we gathered herbs, hunted, and lived there. Usually not die, but it was also vast and easy to get lost in, full of night terrors. One of the nigth terrors was the Bahamut, there were a lot of stories about the Bahamut, he was seen as protector of the forest, but also stealer of children. To keep him away from the village a local priest cast spells and sold charms as protection. Mother didn't believe in those charms. I looked at Dea, it couldn’t be.

We ran towards the villagers, hand in hand, both craving some kind of comfort even though we hadn’t heard any kind of confirmation yet.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the toy shop owner, Troy.
He looked at me, sympathetic, but it was obvious that he didn’t know how to tell me. I looked at the sun, that was slowly going down and willed it to stay in place, it seemed to only go down faster. Troy’s voice echeod through me “Boy, she’s not going to make it before sundown.”
I held onto Dea tight, but she was struggling to get out of my grasp.
“Let me go, Kai!” She yelled.
“No-” I tried to refirm my gasp but she was already running towards the Sacred Forest.
“Dea!” I yelled, I wouldn’t be able to bear the feeling of losing Dea too, and yet she was running towards the same forest our mother was last seen in. I felt multiple strong arms wrapping around me to hold me back from running after the only family I have left. And then the sun went truly down and deep in the forest something awakened.

The next morning I woke up and stared at the ceiling. The rising sun had taken all hope from me. I was alone.

“Troy!” I yelled, standing outside of his toy shop “Get outta here.”
After a few seconds the door unlocked and swung open, and there stood a tired Troy, complete with bags under his eyes, but I knew I looked worse. “Hey kid.”
That was all he said, Troy had also lost loved ones, he knew that nothing he said would help right now.
“I need you to get me some weapons.”
He seemed to instantly wake up at those words.
“You can’t go in there by yourself.”
“You know I have to.” Tears threatened to spill onto my face.
He nodded “Wait there.” And he closed the door again.

I held the sword in my hand, a firm grip on it as I entered the forest, leaving the chilling silence of the villagers behind me. The only thing that Dea and mom hadn’t had before entering. I was stupid enough to think it would make a difference. I didn’t look back at Troy as it would only ruin what I had told him, I would return with my sister and mother or I wouldn’t return at all.

At daytime the Sacred Forest was glorious, lush greens balking in golden sunlight, colorful birds singing songs of nature, and trees gently swaying on a breeze. Not a single hint of the terror it released at night. I slowly walked through it all, cautiously holding the heavy sword in front of me. The rare times our mother had taken us with her on one of her gathering trips Dea couldn’t stop staring at all the colorful flowers. Despite knowing better I hoped Dea was still alive, I'd let her grow herbs behind the house, like she had always wanted to.

At dusk things started to look threatening. It was still beautiful, with everything painted in the colors of a sky on fire, but it also meant long shadows and a promise of total darkness. It meant that I was coming closer to my family.

Before I left for the forest the village priest offered me a charm, I hadn't taken it because my mother and Dea didn't have such an advantage either. Now I wish I had taken it.

I trudged on through the darkness, I had given up on the sword and was holding a lantern in front of me instead. If something attacked me out of the total darkness I wouldn’t have stood a chance anyway. I wondered how far Dea and mother had gone into the forest. I kept on walking.

Everything around me started to change, like the forest had gone from summer to winter. The birds weren’t singing anymore, the trees were still swinging on a ghost breeze but it looked more eerie than during the day. The forest started to thin around me until I had walked onto a clearing. My mother lay in the middle, limp in the arms of my sister. I wanted to run towards them but a looming feeling was holding me back. My little sister Dea was staring up at the sky, sitting in the bright moonlight she probably couldn’t have seen me standing between the trees. I wanted to call out her name but a rustling from the other side of the clearing stopped me. An enormous hoof stepped out of the trees, into the clearing and ultimately towards my mother and sister. Dea was in such a trance that she didn’t even seem to notice the approaching threat. The thing that came out of the forest stepped into the moonlight and into clear view, it had the head of a lion, the snout of a boar and the body of an ox. It was the biggest and most terrifying monster I had ever seen and it fit every description of Bahamut I had ever heard. My little sister Dea just glanced at it with little interest when it was standing next to her and my mother's limp body. Dea had always had an unusual interest in Bahamut, she asked th epriest countless questions about the monster, endlessly asked them to tell her the stories. I never would've thought she had actually believed those stories about Bahamut stealing kids away from their parents and raising them as his own. The only thing those kids had to do was go back and kill their parents. Only then did I notice the blood that stained Dea's clothes and the bloodied rock she was clutching in her hands. Dea had found out mother in the forest, alive, and had dragged her to this glade to offer her up to Bahamut so she wouldn't have to be parentless anymore. When I tore my eyes away from the terrible monster I saw Dea staring at me, she was grinning, like she was enjoying one of my apples. I turned and ran, ran, ran.

When the sun came up I didn't stop running, when the trees around me got swapped for my village I didn’t stop running, when Troy called out my name I didn’t stop running. I ran straight home and even then I was to terrified to do anything but cry. When I did come out Troy was there, he shook me and I saw his mouth move but his words were completely lost on me. Everything was lost on me from that day on.

“Kai, so you're saying nobody can go into the forest again?”
I just nodded, I wanted them to close up that place, I told myself and everyone around me that Dea was dead, that I had seen her body laying next to my mother’s in the monster’s clearing. Maybe one day I could join them again. But I wouldn’t let anybody else go into the forest. The Sacred Forest would from then on be known as the Forbidden Forest of Paragon City.