He felt heat and he smelled something sweet, and Rowan felt as if he had just woken up from a long dream. A dream that seemed to have no end. He could hear the sound of laughter, it sounded like a child, no multiple children, both male and female, and a tantalizing aroma of what should be a delectable food, and warmth surrounding his body, and he did not want to open his eyes, he simply wanted to preserve this moment as it was. The laughter of the children rang out again, like the lovely chimes of a silver bell, and he became curious, some things were meant to be explored, and so he opened his eyes and saw that he was surrounded by children. They were grinning, their pearly white teeth flashing in the gloom, but there was something about their smile that was a bit off-putting. Maybe it was because he had just woken up from a long sleep, maybe that was the reason why their eyes seemed to be dead, as their laughter, as lovely as it sound, did not reach it. He was lying flat on his back, and they had surrounded him; they sat closely together, two of them even sitting on his lower body and also on his two hands; they whispered among themselves and giggled, their laughter almost making him smile. He could not seem to help it; there was something about that sound that triggered unknown memories inside of him, which made him want to smile alongside them. There were eight of them, and for a moment he did not recognize who they were, the knowledge was at the tip of his tongue and he was about to acknowledge them when the feeling of warmth on his body intensified, and a new smell entered his nose, beside the aroma of food he could smell something like rusted iron, and this smell triggered his caution because he knew that this was the smell of blood. Like a series of puzzle pieces fitting into place, as soon as he realized what he had smelled was blood, he began to see it everywhere. The children sitting on his body and around him were bathed in red. Their hair was caked to their bodies, and except for their eyes and teeth that still showed some white, everything about them was red. How could he have ever found their smile to be entrancing? His eyes quickly searched through their bodies, but he could see no sign of injury. He could not be sure unless he checked more closely, and he decided to stand while gently nudging them aside, they seemed to be having fun, and he did not want to be the one who spoiled the party, yet he needed to check them for injuries, this was too much blood, but he discovered that he could not. He could not stand, not even his fingers could move. Something strange was happening, but his mind seemed like it was still in a dream, and his thoughts could not be effectively guided toward action. Yet it was still odd that he could not move his limbs; Rowan had faint memories of being powerful enough to hold a universe in the palm of his hand; why could he not simply lift a couple of children off of his body? Another wave of warmth washed over him, and he began to struggle to stand, pushing his titanic willpower against his flesh, forcing it to move, in his struggles, he made a new discovery; he could not make a sound, not even to tell the children that he wanted to check up on them and see where all the blood was coming from. His struggles caused him to raise his head a few inches so he could peer down on his body, and for a moment, there was a dissonance in his thoughts between what he was witnessing and what he knew was real. This was because what he was seeing was equally strange and shocking. From his throat down to his stomach, someone seemed to have taken a knife and sliced him open, and his skin was stretched to the side, revealing bones and internal organs. His ribcage had been cracked open to reveal his beating heart. He also discovered that the reason he could not move any of his limbs was because they had been sliced off at the joints, his arms were no longer connected at the shoulders and his legs were no longer connected at the hips, however, for Rowan, such a sight was no cause for concern; he could not feel any pain, and even if he did, this level of injury would be too minor to phase him. What was surprising to him was the aroma emerging from his flesh; it was delectable, equaling the grand feast he had made not too long ago, and as he wondered how that could be possible, the children pushed hands into his open wound, and they began to eat. As they did, new organs were rapidly regenerating to replace what was lost. Another lock seemed to be broken, and the smell of the feast became replaced by a harsh metallic odor, and the laughter of the children became nothing but moans of gluttony and greed as they ate his everlasting flesh. Rowan’s eyes squinted in thought as he stopped struggling and placed his head down; once he saw where the blood and the smell had come from, and he could now hear the sound of chewing, the haze over his mind began to slowly fade, and more conscious thought could be made. ’What is this? Where Am I? Am I still in a dream?’ Barely above the sound of the children’s hearty feast, Rowan heard a tapping sound, he did not need to move his head, only his eyes to the side and he saw a window covered by glass, pressed against it was a face that held a wide grin and was tapping on the glass with a long black finger, ’Let me in.’ the face whispered, ’I too want to feast. LET. ME. IN.’ ® Rowan opened his eyes to a dead universe. A faint memory brushed across his consciousness, but he could not remember what it was, he reached for it, but it faded away. Placing this oddity aside for later investigation, he focused on his body; if the suppressed rumbling from his body was any indicator, he should have succeeded in the creation of the first portion of his Origin Land. He had discovered that to truly excavate the potential of his Origin Land, he needed to be much stronger than the fifth-dimensional level. However, he was able to carve out a bit and begin this process. The rumbling in his body was like a suppressed volcano that continued building up pressure until it seemed there was nothing to stop its explosion, but there was a thin sheet of Will that still held everything in place. Before finalizing the process, he needed to make sure that everything followed his vision. Even though he was not actively looking inside his dimensional space, Rowan could still perceive massive vistas a thousand times larger than any fifth-dimensional space was supposed to be, and yet this was simply a tiny fraction of his Origin Land, it was all he could excavate from it, and of this small portion of land that he could claim, he made a utopia. In the center of this utopia he created was a grand city. It represented his history and his noble bloodlines, all the way from the Palace of Ice to the City of Sheol. It combined all the aesthetics that he had admired from all the transformation that the City of Sheol had made in a manner that was not chaotic but incredibly orderly; it helped that the city was so vast that even a galaxy would be lost if thrown into a random street. This was a city meant to hold the population of multiple universes. Rowan called this a city because he could see the entirety of it, but anyone else would call it a supermassive dimension that was almost the size of Doom Star, an eighth-dimensional Eternal Realm. This city contained stars, worlds, all manner of heavenly bodies that the mind could think of, and a mortal or even a god; while inside the city, would think they were in a supermassive universe, but this was still a city in the end, and it was only when viewed from a great height that transcended the dimensions of space and time would its true shape be revealed. Surrounding the city were nine great mountain ranges and nine great oceans, but at this time the oceans were empty, and the mountain ranges were hollow. Even though the city was massive, the mountain ranges dwarfed the city on an order of magnitude, and the oceans equaled the size of the mountains. These mountains were meant to hold his new Essence, and the Oceans were to hold his new Aether.