Chapter 93 Eyes Wide Shut (3) The area he just stepped into contained dozens of Vestibulary. A necessary Alchemical tool used in growing and preserving delicate or dangerous living substances, which was not to be confused with a Nexus. Everything nurtured inside a Vestibulary were usually very insubstantial and would not survive outside of it. Rowan recalled he had a similar device in his laboratory, although it was far smaller than the one before him. He had used it to culture part of a Barbarian cell culture he was lucky to pick up. The Vestibulary he owned was around a foot long, and he had only five of those, they were placed at the far end of his laboratory, and directly across was the Warding Room. If he used his laboratory as a blueprint, then heading north would take him to the warding room, if there would be any place where he would find what held the other end of the Sigil, it would be there, and the Guardian would not be far. His Vestibulary was empty, for he needed to be able to wield Aether in order to effectively use it, but this one was not. The Vestibulary was a huge growth medium that resembled a giant test tube. Inside was a bubbling transparent fluid, and floating in that fluid was an arm. The arm appeared to be that of a male, decently muscular, and it had a clean surgical cut by the shoulders. The arm had a peculiar characteristic of spurting out tiny bursts of flames that stayed burning in the liquid for a few seconds. He wryly noticed that the fingernails were red. This was a telltale sign of the kuranes family bloodline. There was an open secret in the family about how the depth of the color of their nails affected the growth of their bloodline power. Rowan was not privy to the details of that hidden measurement used to determine the potency of their bloodline. But the fingernail on this arm was bright Scarlet and seemed to glow with a pearly luster. There was a strange attachment to the arm that resembled a rib bone that had been grafted to the side of the arm. The bone was gray and appeared to be ancient, a sharp contrast to the arm floating inside the Vestibulary. At once, Rowan felt a gush of familiarity, he stepped closer to the Vestibulary where he felt an intense heat emanating from it. He placed the Axe by his side and spread his right hand and placed it on the Vestibulary. The heat emanating from it penetrated his hand, and it brought a strange pain that disregarded his constitution, for this pain was felt only inside his soul. The floating hand seemed to move with an unseen current and drifted over, until its open palm aligned with Rowan, the only thing separating the two palms from touching was the Vestibulary. The heat that he felt increased, and his hand began to slowly release smoke. It hurt, but somehow the pain felt less than what he was feeling inside his heart. From the glabrous skin of the palm, to the deeper metacarpal bones, his eyes traced every single part of his arm, and he found them to be an exact copy of his, except it was smaller. "This hand is mine, and this strange heat that it is giving out is coming from this bone merged with it." Although he was now an Empyrean, his physical body closely mimicked his previous mortal body, except he was now bigger, his family and friends would still recognize him, and of course, he would also be able to recognize his body features if he saw it. What he was looking at, was his body, or at least part of it, it did not take long for him to remember where he once saw something like this. Putting his Spirit to work, he began murmuring to himself, "The lights were not the best when he had transmigrated, as he could not properly see all the bodies, nevertheless he could see various parts. So let's see what we have here…." "If I take a hand here, and a leg from there, part of the nose, a pair of open eyes filled with pain, a closed mouth set in determination…" If he placed all these body parts together. Then the person who would emerge from that was him. Rowan Kuranes. I awoke in a slaughterhouse, but the people who were butchered were all me? Rowan remembered his first memory, it was of a cry for help. It was a plea to his assaulter to stop killing him. His mind had been in a daze. It was broken and until now those memories still eluded his grasp. That memory of his cries was not borne out of pain or a desperate flight of fancy from a brain that had been stretched to a breaking point. He was getting killed. Multiple times and in various horrifying ways. Rowan knew Ouroboros resurrected him when he died, but he did not think it discarded the bodies before that, at least the two times he does that he was aware of, his dead body was not discarded. Rowan's knowledge of mysticism had large gaps. It was as if he knew enough to be aware of his situation. But not to understand them. It was maddening. If he escaped this place, he was raiding the largest library in the capital! If he had to make a wild guess, there must have been at least fifty bodies inside that room on that day. What had they done to him? Rowan wondered if he ever wanted to remember such a memory. For the sake of understanding… He knew he would have to. The mysteries of his Transmigration continued getting deeper, every door he opened lead to new closed doors. In his past life, there was a saying that when you have eliminated all the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So, what was the truth he was seeing now? The hand that he placed inside the Vestibulary caught on fire, burning with a bright yellow flame. He did not know if it was because of his presence that triggered it, but compared to the flames burning on his left hand, this one was milder and reminded him of Soul Flame. His own unique Soul burned with a flame like that, and he recognized now that it was that flame inside it soul that called to this one. The arm burned to ash, and the rib bone that was grafted to it, continued burning until only the flame was left, before slowly drifting towards him, he quickly crushed the covering of the Vestibulary and accepted the Soul flame. Rowan felt a warm wave of Soul flame flowed into him, as if it were a river finally merging into the sea, this Soul flame was different from any other that he absorbed before. This one felt like it was a lost part of him that was finally returning. The flame carried warmth and soothed an ache deep inside of him that he did not know he had. His soul felt more… Complete. It was as if he were a wall filled with missing bricks, and this soul flame finished off parts of that missing wall. The flame seemed like a part of him, yet it was not, and he gladly accepted it into his soul, for it felt right. With the flame, came brief flashes of memory. It was of a woman, but the woman was also him. After a brief flash of confusion, he understood that this memory belongs to this woman. This was part of her Soul, and he could feel a connection with his. That connection teased his senses, it was something familiar that they both shared. What was it?