Put Your Trust In Me

"Prove to me,

I'm not going to die alone.

Put your arm 'round my collarbone,

And open the door."

Zenith has always been there for Morkeleb, as he always has been for her. They're each others' rock to lean on, someone to confide in while their parents' careless eyes aren't on them for once. Although they may come from different mothers, Morkeleb never knowing his past infancy and Zenith taken from hers by her father, they share one awful thing, and that awful thing runs in their very blood. It's what binds them, but at the same time makes them resent themselves and their lives. Vallos knows this, but he doesn't much care. As long as the two pose absolutely zero threat to him he could care less what they do. But they have potential, something that keeps Vallos on his toes. He doesn't want them finding this potential and using it against him. Hell knows they would, for all the shit he's put them through trying to stamp out that potential.

Vallos has always been closer with Morkeleb than he ever was with Zenith, but Zenith is more of Carnage's daughter. While Carnage may have been born female, he refused to associate himself with his born identity, and the trauma he associates with it. Vallos became aware of this soon after Zenith was hatched, living a rough few months with Carnage before taking Zenith under his "care" and sending him away, unable to deal with his resilience and stubbornness any longer. Morkeleb was there to witness this all happen, being a couple years older than Zenith, and has been through his own traumas with his father as well; hostility, neglect, and the brutal honestly of his father's harsh words and criticisms.

Eventually, once they were old enough, Morkeleb and Zenith end up leaving the castle for their own sanities, but Morkeleb has his ambitions set ahead of his morals. He had managed to get access to Vallos' library, a wealth of unlimited knowledge, stuff long since removed from public access. There he learned of an ancient entity, one rumored to be able to bring about a revolution, one that could bring stryx back to a long forgotten order; a primal order, one where stryx roamed free and had no restraints or handlers to hold them back. One where they were creatures to be feared, not found and tamed.

Zenith, her moral compass being completely busted due to the mistreatment in her early years warping her perception of reality, decided to join him on his journey. Eventually, once she found her own purposes and ambitions, she said her forlorn goodbyes to Morkeleb for the time being. From there she traveled the lands searching for a purpose, having been stripped of all individuality by her father over the years. Eventually she returns to him, having found nothing but the cruelty of the world and its inhabitants, but instead of being welcomed by her familiar brother with open arms, she's met with a vile, bitter, hardened version of a once-familiar harpia, one who know runs a cult under the radar, one that's dedicated to some "great cause," as he puts it.

Zenith isn't so much mad about the cult part, she's more upset by the fact that Morkeleb, in the presence of said cult members he's managed to scrape together so far, he acts like he's above her in every way, as if they had never shared their most vulnerable moments together in that damned castle, consoling each other after pouring their hearts out together.

Zenith and Morkeleb eventually stopped communicating, instead leaving each other to their own lives, but god damn if Zenith wasn't bitter about what he'd done. But deep down, some part of her missed her brother, and the ways they'd connected back in the castle all those years ago. Not that she'd ever admit it to anyone. She'd rather push it down and let it rot in her core forever.