Alias woke up frantic, immediately stumbling to his feet and looking wildly throughout the room where he had slept. He was in his rebuilt home, in his and Alana's room, but Acacia was nowhere to be seen and again the bond had gone silent. The last memory he had of her was of her body thrashing as if she was being drowned in power, just as she had been upon the elders' test. Had they somehow found a way to reach her in the above world, so far away from Community?

But he doubted that. They would never be powerful enough to reach them at such a far distance, and what he had felt through the bond was the same flash as when she had come into contact with her divine self, and by what he had seen of his house and the neighborhood told him that she had used a large amount of her godly power. Had it harmed her? Had she been taken back?

He lurched to action, striding through the room and knocking over the same plain furniture from his old life that stood miraculously put together.

"Acacia!" He yelled, pausing for an answer, and when he received none he went further into his panicked fueled daze.

He paced out of their room and into his parents, having to stop for a short moment as he was assaulted by images of himself as a young child, running into their room for comfort in the middle of the night when he was plagued my nightmares. His dad would pull him onto their bed and his mom would envelop him in her arms, her floral scent surrounding him in comfort, and he would snuggle into her.

There was no one to comfort him now when he woke up in the middle of the night to scenes of his dead sister.

"Acacia!"

He trudged further, looking under the bed for her, in the closet. He was surprised when their clothes were not too in place. The furniture and structure stood, but it was empty, gone was the life he had once known. But that was a fact he had grown accustomed to for quite some time now.

He stomped out of the room, down the hall; heart racing as he looked to the kitchen, a hazy blur of memories from when he had showed Alana to cook swirled in his head.

He hesitated before flinging open the cupboards, wondering if she could somehow have fit into them. She was thin but tall, willowy. He doubted her long frame could fit into one of them, but he still checked, still called her name. But she wasn't in a single one, not in a single corner, and as he rummaged through the rest of the house, flinging objects throughout, he found no sign of her.

"Acacia!"

He bounded out of the house and glanced at the surrounding houses. There would be no reason for her to wander into them, but the nagging voice in the bag of his head said that he had to check every possible option. He hurtled into them, carelessly fumbling through their rooms and possessions, but there was no sign of her, no sign of life.

He ran down the stone trail that led into the ghost of a city. His body tense as he neared the building that once had been town hall and another that had been their medical center, one of the most developed sections of the town. He entered the town square, rubble and ash throughout it, and he could see his parents burning in front of them, hear their screams. Somewhere in all of the debris, there they lied.

He clasped his hands over his ears and clenched his eyes shut and ran from it all, leaping over wreckage and hurtling down the paved road. He passed the remains of the market; saw the charred remains of what once had been stands and foods and trinkets and clothes. He tripped over a pile of rocks, what once had been the fountain, and grounded out a few curses as he scraped his hands and arms. He got up to his feet again and pushed, the world tumbling out of focus as he ran and ran and ran. Farther and farther away from all of the ghosts.

"Acacia!" He screamed. "Where did you go?"

He gritted his teeth as he shoved himself further, reveling in the burn in his veins, in his muscles that flinched at the strain, but he had to keep moving, had to find where she went to.

A conversation too long ago flashed through his memory.

"I woke up in a forest surrounded by violets and roses. I ran through it until I came to your town, to your cave, and then to you." She had said.

In a forest surrounded by violets and roses. He knew exactly where the nearest forest was, where she had to have entered his world, and knew that if she had disappeared to somewhere, that had to be where.

He kept running, yelling at his body to keep up through the pain and the burn that tumbled through him. He had to keep going, had to get to her.

His vision began to blur as he sprinted farther and farther from the village, let it become a tiny spec behind his shadow as he hurtled through the dark world. He didn't stop to catch his breath as his lungs heaved and burned, his lips chapped, or when his legs reduced to jelly.

He didn't stop until he reached the edge of the trees, staring into their gloomy shadowy depths. No bird cawed out, no rabbit hopped through the brush. It was silent and still. The only noise was his heavy pants as he leaning over; resting his hands on his knees and his gave his body a moment to rest. The dead leaves and grass crunched beneath his weight as he slowly stalked through the forest, engulfed in their shadows as he pressed on further.

He could remember the first and only time he had ever ventured through them, and it was when his dad had brought him hunting, had taught him how to use a bow and arrow, and when he had shot his first kill, he remembered how it had broken his heart. As a young boy he had begun to cry the moment he had seen the arrow penetrating the limp corpse of the tiny, pitiful rabbit. It had crushed him as a child to think he had killed something so sweet, and when they got home he had made his father burry it in the backyard. He never went hunting again after that.

Not until the pits, but that was another kind of hunting.

He heard the unfamiliar sound of water rushing, and headed towards it, knowing he was vastly dehydrated. He didn't know if it would be clean or in a salvageable state with the condition of almost everything in the current world, but as he neared it, he watched the dim light reflect across a clear surface, and with renewed strength, he rushed forward.

He came upon the purest water he had ever seen. It gleamed despite the gloom, soft rocks and sand lied across its floor. The stream rushed through the woods, lively and liberated, clean and fresh. He kneeled against the bank, cupping water into his hands and letting it run down his face, and then gulped it down. When he was sated he looked out at the person who stared back at him, and almost jolted back when he saw the stranger.

This person was past boyhood, he had lost all of that innocence as his features were now sharpened, but he seemed not yet completely a man. His eyes were black as coal, the pupil blended into the dark mass, an eerie sight to behold. Inhuman. There were mildly dark rings beneath his eyes, hinting that he struggled to grasp complete sleep. The hollows beneath his cheekbones casted a shadow against the planes of his face. His lips were drawn tight and thin and he glared back at himself. But what troubled him most of all was his almost auburn hair, tinged so dark that it held no resemblance to his once red hair that he had inherited from his father, but this was a dusty bronze, almost all of the red chased away. He freckles were long gone, as was his childhood. The stranger scowled back at him and he resented the hardened look in his eyes.

He stood up and marched through the stream, not daring to glance back as he trudged on through the forest, walking blindly through the dizzying array of identical trees that surrounded him. He began to run again, rushing past and onward from the trees, her name rising once again from his throat.

"Acacia!"

He tried to tune into the tie, to sense something from her, but the connection was frazzled, and so he pushed and pushed, growing more lost in the labyrinth of trees. The sky grew darker, and he knew that night was upon him. He didn't know if any other creatures roamed the strange world, but the forest remained still. He kept his ears alert to any sound, any clue of movement, but the only thing he could hear was himself quietly rustling through the deadened brush and bare trees.

It was hours before he spotted a glowing light in the distance, and as he cautiously crept towards it, skepticism second nature to him, he began to become aware of familiar warmth as he crept from tree to tree, concealing himself.

He heard soft, shallow breaths, in and out. As the light engulfed him, his eyes adjusted to its magnificence, and he became aware of the field of roses and violets. They were all hues of yellows and reds and purples, baffling to the eye that such radiance could exist. And all of the flowers were coated in a light layer of snow, peppering them all in a white frost. In the center of the field lied a familiar tangle of limbs, dressed in a white gown, and silvery hair tumbling over her face.

He propelled towards her, gathering her into his arms as he brushed her hair from her face and looked down at her worriedly, desperate for some sign of life. "Acacia?" He said, voice tight.

Her eyes moves beneath her lids, until they gently lifted and her translucent eyes glowed up at his. She smiled softly at him, gingerly sitting up from his hold and running her hands through her hair. She looked around the meadow and frowned. "This is where I first entered your world."

"Did you just reenter it?" He frowned.

She turned her head back to look at him, perched up by her hands flattened against the bright green grass. A gentle glow emanated from her as she sat there, watching him, illuminating the dark forest. "Yes, I believe I did. I met with mother."

He frown deepened into an outright scowl. "Is this 'mother' of yours a goddess?"

She sighed at his disdain towards the gods, or more precisely her god. "Yes, she is, but she is not of those who did you wrong. She is one of the gods that still stand on the side of man, and want to help. That is why I am here." She met his eyes, his black ones contrasting her nearly white ones. "Alias, you must understand that I am like that. I am partially godly, and if you have an issue with the divine ones, then you have an issue with me."

He fell silent, lost in his raging thoughts of his rage towards what the gods had done to him, to his family, to his people, to his world. The evidence always slammed him in the face wherever he went, every moment of every day. How could she not expect him to harbor contempt towards them? They had destroyed everything he had ever loved.

But as he took in the bright, beautiful girl in front of him, it caused him to pause. She had never shown anything but kindness to him, had remained patient and understanding through his awful treatment of her, and had saved his life. She sought to help his people, and he respected the way she cared for them as if they were her own. She might've been otherworldly, but destruction went against her entire nature. She healed and created, never hurt or tarnished.

"I am not angry with you, but with those of your kind that destroyed me. This 'mother' you come from, if you are crafted as her, she cannot mean an ill intent, but I know there are others who do. I know you are not part of them, but I hate the ones that did this to my people, to my world. Do you not hate them too?"

"Mother has been angry with them, but we do not hate. We take pity, we understand. We may not agree, but we understand their nature and the error in their ways. I am here to try to fix it. I sent myself here to fix it. I am starting to remember, but some pieces are still missing. I do have warning to deliver to you, that we must tell your people, or else there will be much suffering." She stated. She spoke so smoothly, so melodically that her grace rendered his mind silent. He was entranced by her, the same yet so different. She had grown, matured, found herself in the course of time that she had been gone. He was beginning to see her sophisticated nature, who she was meant to be and should be, who she had lost. He had misread her all that time ago, wrote her off as weak and vulnerable, and some of that had been true, but she was never daft or incapable. She was never pitiful. She was strong and assured and confident, and she had come to save them all, to give them hope.

"I...am beginning to understand." Alias said carefully, the new awareness still strange to him. "But what is this warning?"

She sighed, eyes growing fierce but face tired. "The others know of my plans and they are angry. They have sent their monsters from the hell you were in, all of them, to fight the final war."