The doors took a little over three minutes for them to be devoured entirely, and while devouring the doors, Rowan took the time to scrutinize the embodiments he saw on them.

On the doors was a familiar image; in fact, it was one of the foremost things he saw when he first came to this world. It was a peculiar entity that had burned itself into his mind. It was the mermaid with three pairs of arms.

The image on these palatial doors was covered with dust, and by ordering the Ouroboros Serpent to blow it away, the true portrait of the Mermaid was revealed.

The face of the mermaid had been left blank, but a closer examination would reveal that it was not always the case; sometime in the past, someone had chipped away at the face of the mermaid.

In each of her hands, she carried little sleeping babies; as she had six arms, she held only six babies. A closer look at the babies, and you could notice there was something wrong with each of them.

The babies all appeared human, but each of them had certain distinct features that were wrong in various subtle manners, and although the babies appeared human, they all seemed dissimilar to any babies he had ever known in a manner he could not yet describe.

One of the babies had three eyes, but the eyes were vertical; the second had no eyes and two noses; the third was missing its mouth and ears; the fourth had no toes on the leg; the fifth had eight fingers and toes on each limb; and Rowan paused at the last baby, where a cherubic figure lied sleeping.

This baby had no visible deformity like the rest, except she had long, luscious hair, and intertwined with the hair were hundreds of tiny eyes.

Was this Lamia and her sisters?

He remembered that Augustus said that she was different from the other Abomination Core. She was a firstborn. What did that mean? How old was this embodiment? If this was Lamia, then how old must she be if she was among the first Abomination Core in Trion?

Was this mermaid their mother? And did Lamia not claim the Abominations were the original rulers of this world? One of the visions he had when he consumed that soul flame was of an Abomination Champion Vorsher who served a Core called Myrrah.

He had said not to forget, for the world had betrayed her first. Who was he speaking about? Was it about one of Lamia’s sisters or this mermaid—the mother of abominations?

There were so many mysteries and so many questions he needed to ask that it was a good thing his lifespan was measured in tens of millennia; otherwise, he would never be able to find the truth.

Rowan had come to realize that everything inside the Nexus served a purpose, and nothing placed here was done out of convenience. Behind every face may be an important piece of the puzzle that was the madness of this Nexus.

What was the image of the Mother of Abominations doing inside a palace deep inside the ground? Why would the other end of the sigil be kept in a place like this? Except that there was another entrance to this location, this door appeared to have not been touched for centuries.

It was a good thing that the Ouroboros Serpents were indestructible, and he could use them to enter various dangerous locations without any fear for his life, for there was something wrong with this place.

Even with the filter on his senses through the Ouroboros Serpent, this place just screamed its strangeness, but for his freedom, he would be willing to enter hell itself, and he would slowly understand everything hidden from his sight.

The Ouroboros Serpent made sure it devoured every single bit of the gate, and Rowan tried to ignore the fact that the doors were bleeding, but of course, the Serpents did not care; they were busy slurping down every single drop.

Rowan was a little exasperated because he wanted the Serpent to proceed quickly into the palace, but this door was like a mouthwatering delicacy, and it lost itself for a moment in pure bliss.

He could not really blame the serpent, though. Rowan shared its sense of taste for a moment and discovered a depth of sensation that nearly broke his mind. He quickly stopped the merge.

Even if the mind of the Serpents could tolerate whatever was blasting into it from those doors, Rowan still had much of his humanity left to casually indulge in those sensations. If he did for long, there would be nothing left of humanity inside his body; he would become a being of pure gluttony.

The adverse effects on the serpent were non-existent, for they were monsters that Rowan had hardly begun to comprehend.

After it came from its food coma, the serpent entered the palace and discovered the space it entered was ample. And it resembled a temple. The floor was made of a black stone that seemed to absorb any light, and yellow crystals illuminated the area.

The crystals that illuminated this place failed to light up the ground, as they were scattered all over the far walls and the ceiling that was far above him. The light from them seemed like dead yellow stars.

The light they brought was just enough to paint this temple in dusk, but still left the floor in darkness. If not for his spectacular eyesight, Rowan would have thought that he had been transported into the void of space; he supposed this must be the effect the creators of this temple were hoping for.

He called it a temple because of the three massive altars inside this place; they should be fifty feet tall and at least seventy feet wide, and they were made of greenwood.

The knowledge of the type of wood from which the altar was made came to Rowan: oaken trees—a massive tree that had all but become extinct, their leaves scraping the clouds, and their trunks could not be encircled by ten thousand men linking hands.

There were three massive sacrificial bronze bowls on the altar, and it were filled with decaying bones.

The altars were arranged in the shape of a triangle—one in front and two behind. In the center of the triangle, standing above them was an enormous alcove with four outlets above it where water poured down, and inside this alcove was a statue of a warrior goddess.

She was made from white marble, and the yellow light touching the statue almost made her appear to be alive.

She was armored in golden armor and had a sword sheathed at her waist. Her hair was black, and when the water falling from above touched the hair, an optical illusion almost made it seem like they were undulating and waving. Her arms were held upward, and she held a blue oval stone cupped inside them.

If not for the size, the unfeeling eyes of stone, and the posture that no living being could hold for any length of time, he would have sworn this statue was alive.

And her face—her beauty mocked any he had ever known.

The smile from a mother, the grin from a lover, the wink of your first crush—she encompasses all those ephemeral qualities of beauty and makes them part of her own physical beauty. A beauty beyond what every man or woman would ever know.

This was the face of a true goddess!

But Rowan’s focus was on the blue stone held by this statue because inside of it was buried the other half of the sigil.

The void inside his heart suddenly shuddered, for kneeling before the statue of the goddess was Maeve!

At the edge of his hearing, he thought he heard the swishing of waves.