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He was trembling as he held her in his arms. She was tiny. Just a few months old now, and yet she was still to him, so small and delicate. He didn't know if he might drop her. If he might hurt her. She was wrapped in the pink and lavender fleece blanket to protect her from cold, and even when he'd brought her to his world, with it's wind howling down from the mountains and waves crashing on not too distant rocks by his castle, she hadn't woken from her slumber.
She's just slept quietly, fussing only as he moved her blanket to make sure she remained protected from the elements. The tiny hat she wore covered the fine white hairs on her head, and he smiled when she moved closer to him. Aurora Xanis. She was only 5 months old.

Five months old and on her way to die by her own father's hand.

The walk up the mountainside was nothing new, he'd done it once a week ever since the first memory. Desperate to recall an instance where it didn't happen. Where it wasn't needed.
Yet each memory played out the same. Each time he recalled the blood cascading down the blade. The feeling of a tiny heart beat slowing so quickly in his hands. The cry of pure pain and a loss. Yet each time he'd done it. His people would cheer, celebrate. His king would bless him, thank him for pain.
Thank him for killing an innocent child because his world held no mercy for it's senshi.
His world did not teach with a gentle hand. It was a world that had raised warriors. His was the world that had demanded the strong to withstand it's might. To cast aside the weak. Compassion, love, mercy- all had it's place. Yet there would always be decisions to make. Sacrifices to be made. Life for life. Power for power.

Nothing would come without a price. Nothing could be given freely. You had to earn all you hand, to fight for all you would own.

Castor was a world of choice, a world of freedoms in so many ways- but it was a world that did not shy from pain or suffering. It was a world that would not shield itself from the cruelties and injustices that life would give rise to.

Castor would not allow it's senshi to live without knowing the greatest of sufferings. It would not be bound to a soul that could not stand under the onslaught of pain, of destruction that hail would bring. It demanded a senshi who would no matter how crushed, how injured, how deeply they suffered, would stand, would rise again and again and fight. A senshi that would face the howling winds, that would look to the sky and ice lanced their skin, and dare the world to do it's worst, for the senshi would not fear the pain or agony they would endure. Castor would endure.
Castor would survive.
Castor would overcome.

Each step was mechanical, the smell of salt in the air as the wind carried the ocean up until all that was left was salt and grass from the valley. To a place where land rose to the sea, and the sea waited until it would rise and fall with the winds and tide.
Rocks clattered underfoot as steel and leather greaves pushed against soil and earth, sending the senshi further up and away from the city that was all but ruins. From the castle- from the home upon his home. The sky was the shimmering soft white blue, and the clouds that rolled so far off shore swirled about in a hazy dark grey. A storm that was vanishing on the horizon.

There were no boars snorting on the rocky slopes, curiously approaching him to see what food he might carry, even after years of being abandoned their docile domestication still encoded to their DNA. There were no beetles, clattering and threatening with hisses ready to spit acid for his disturbing their herd as they roamed. Not a single owl flew overhead watching in silence, ever waiting for a figure that would never again appear.

There was no life here. The greenery fading away as he walked to the stone pedestal. To the dagger that he'd left in the crevice.
There would be no crowd in the valley below, waiting for the stain of red to drip down the rocky cliff side. There was no king to recite the demand and deed. There was no brother or sister nor mother or father to steady him as he laid his child, to lay Aurora on small hollow crafted for her. Crafted by hundreds, thousands of lifetimes before her. It was her place. It was always her place.
A soul born to be sacrificed.
A child, born to die for the sake of another.
Born again and again and again- all to satisfy the demands of a world that would never remember as anything more than the child of Castor.

He looked at her, so small, sleeping soundly in her pink and lavender blanket. Her tiny hat slipping to show the fine white hairs on her head. Her little nose that was from her mother, who had chosen death before ending the chance of a life for another. Her tiny hands reaching for him as he pulled away, catching his cloak and tugging with all her might.
To stay in his arms, to be warm and safe in his embrace.
She wanted him to hold her.
She wanted to be held by her father, a man who had brought her to his world to die.

Castor moved with a gentle touch, prying away each tiny finger before tucking her in her blanket, shielding her from the wind that howled in anticipation of what was to come. From the cold that would freeze the red blood to the grey rocks, marking for any to see and know that a price had been paid.

She moved as she lost his embrace, as his warmth was denied to her. As his protective arms no longer held her close.

As he lifted the dagger from the crevice and looked upon her, and she was left alone, her fate born of her blood and soul.

She cried out, begging for him, for the comfort of her father's arms, for the chill of his world to stop stealing the heat from her face, from the howling winds to not beat against her skin and drown out her cries to a place devoid of any who could comfort her.

She cried out, begging for the man who had brought her to die.

She cried out, as Castor drove the dagger into flesh, and the stone was stained red with his blood.

He looked at the blood that soaked the stone. and felt shame coiling like a serpent in his belly. He'd come this far. He'd come so far only to deny his world, deny it's desires. To deny his very world a part of himself he'd given it, time and time again.
He had felt the bite of the blade as it dug into skin and sinew, as it went past bone to greet the stone in a dull echo. He couldn't do it. He could not kill his daughter. Not again. He'd killed them so many times. So many times he'd brought the blade down, knowing he'd condemned his child to be born again only to die naught but a scant few months later.
A single soul, born with the reason to die. A life that would never be lived, experienced.

A child he'd never know, could never know. He'd done it lifetime after lifetime, unquestioning. Suffering in his guilt and sorrow and being denied a chance to raise them, to love them, to hold them. Power came with sacrifice, and he'd done it, always for that power.

Always for his world, never for himself. He'd never allowed his wants to override the demand.

Yet he couldn't. Not this time. This time he'd held her not as a man who had a people, but as a man who had no one left. A man who's legacy had been reduced to ruins, and whose heart had broken with the loss of a thousand souls. All he wanted was the one. To spare the single soul that was his- to save the single life he'd created.
The only life his world would demand.

"I swore." He muttered, letting his hand bleed, pulling the dagger out and letting it fall to the soil as his eyes fixed to the wound. He could, would, suffer this pain. It was nothing. Nothing to compare to the notion of killing his child.
Again.

"And I broke no oath." He remained hunched over the altar, letting the win dry the blood, let it crust and freeze to mark the rock as it had with each lifetime.
"I could not do it again. I forgot-" He choked on his words.
"I forgot the oath. I forgot my promise but even so I can't. They deserve a better fate, she deserves a better fate." Finally he looked up at Virgo, and his daughter in the senshi of innocence's arms, her pink and lavender blanket tinged with his blood.
"I spilled the blood of Castor but not her blood. She doesn't, shouldn't pay the price for my world." He reached out to touch her, but at the sight of his hand wounded, it felt to his side, useless.
"A child shouldn't pay the price of her father's destiny."

Virgo, - Elke-, held his child in a way he wished he could have. Gentle, free of the burden of a world's cold demands, of a knowledge that he was fated to repeat his past with her for yet another lifetime. She held his daughter and was able to look at her without guilt.

She put him and his heart to shame. He had been willing until that final moment. He'd been ready had plans for it, made falls backs, he'd set his course as to make the child be like they had never existed. Just like how his world would have acknowledged her. She was a soul that was of no consequence. She was the sacrifice, nothing more.

She was his daughter, and he'd been ready to kill her without a second thought.

"You did." He tried to hide his shame, his disgrace but it bore on his expression, twisted raw in pain and anguish. He had been trusted by that tiny babe, depended on, and he'd been willing to go so far, to betray her so deeper. She had reached for him-

And he'd forced her to let go.

"Take her from me. She doesn't deserve- she should not suffer a father who would give her up so many times." Blues eyes went back to the stone, the stain darkening in the air. "Gods, so many times. I-"
Like a dam, he felt the knowledge of what he'd done come rushing back, he felt the knowledge of what would damn him fill his mind.
He knew only that it might atone a small part of his soul, and damn another.
"She deserves a life. Not this." He couldn't handle it anymore. He wanted the altar gone, he didn't want to look at the stain, to be reminded of what he'd almost done.
"Take her, give her a life. Let her have just one life time. She's given enough- no- Castor has taken enough from her." He wanted to hold her.
"I don't want to kill her. I don't want to feel her die. Not again." He was shaking, his voice cracking as he felt lifetimes of sorrow rush back to him, and the guilt of each sacrifice bore down on his heart.
"Never again." The whisper of an admission. He had loved her, wanted to love her, to raise her and save her and give her the life that a father could give his child.
Yet each time he had obeyed his world without question. He had done his duty, done as he was commended.

Dark blue eyes looked to Virgo, begging in silence for some salvation, for a promise he could not make for himself.
That she would love his daughter, that she would protect his daughter. That with her, the child would live. That with her, she could live just one life, not fated to die for the sake of a world's power.

Alone on his world, he looked to the altar, to the dark stain on stone.

Once, Castor had begged his world to cease it's demand of devotion, to cease the show of his passion and dedication, to end the cycle that kept a single soul trapped forever in a fate of death. His world had answered with silence. His world had answered with a demand of blood.

Castor had always been born to his world, devoted and true. Castor had never failed, never broke after he had lost his child to ensure his world might thrive.

Elzo fell to the soil, his heart broken and shattered in sorrow and shame as wept for a daughter he would never know.