Rowan pointed Envy at the statue, “So, you are alive… but, it would not for long.”

The eyes of the goddess statue blazed like the sun, the shielding around the statue lost power after it had all been drained away, it released its last few flashes of light before disappearing and then the jaws of the Ouroboros Serpent closed around it with a resounding crash.

The goddess statue exploded, and the top half flew in the air, her blazing eyes still gazing at Rowan with a mindless fury and wickedness that seemed to carry weight, when the second Ouroboros Serpent came from behind and swallowed it.

There was nothing in creation, these Serpents would not eat.

They both roared and turned to the last altar, where they fought to grab the biggest bite. Rowan pondered, what was that creature? Was it a golem or the statue of a goddess?

The body of Maeve went still in his hands, and her breathing ceased, Rowan checked for any signs of life and saw none, he did not know what to feel right now, as he had been expecting something like this, and in his own way he had mourned her.

The vision that Envy gave him, allowed him to come to terms with his intuition and resolved a bit of the concerns he had.

Rowan gently dropped her behind him, when he had checked her body for life signs, he had noticed many cracks on it, inside her body, her heart had shattered to pieces, he could see fragments of Sigils around it.

The part of him that was of the prince began to mourn, and Rowan clenched his teeth and turned to the blue stone. Whatever grieving he would do should be outside this place.

The blue stone that the statue held aloft, seemed to float for a while, defying gravity, it rotated slowly in the air, as if a malevolent will kept it afloat, not wanting it to reach his hand.

Rowan filled his Axe with Essence and swung it at the floating stone. With a shrill scream filled with rage that emanated from all around him, the blue stone fell and cracked open, leaking a noxious yellow fluid.

Rowan began to walk towards it, as he readied his Axe.

His mind was in chaos about what he had seen, and the awareness that his paranoia was correct. The roots of the Sigils were deeper than what the surface revealed.

He suspected that Lamia knew how truly deep this pile of deception went, but she used him as a pawn, as long as he caused more destruction inside the Control Hub, she would find ways to escape.

There was a deeper reason why the General thought he could lure Rowan down into the depths of the Nexus if he mentioned the presence of the people Rowan was protecting.

A reason why, even though he was in a protected and sealed location, he was relatively left to his devices to discover and fight the monsters inside.

A reason why the people around him were so self-sacrificing. They gave their all, even their souls, to protect him.

It was all so glorious, the speeches, the battles, the sacrifices, the tales of loss and sorrow, it was all so beautiful in its performance, enough to bring tears to the eyes.

Yet, it was all smoke in a mirror. It was a carefully crafted fantasy, and it all had a singular purpose, to drive into his heart a love of this place and its people.

It was how the Sigil works, it was how they could tie down pages of the Primordial Record. If the host of the Singularity allowed all this emotion inside of him, accepted them and kept them in his heart, they would have a stake inside the Singularity.

Willingly or not, he had been condemned to be their pawn.

Rowan the prince was a perfect candidate, he was a despised and weak prince, who lacked the fundamental attributes to succeed in this world—Power. He could not walk the pathways of power, he was too weak to hold his birthright, as the descendant of a god.

Even though he grew to be emotionally intelligent and resilient, it must have been really hard for him to cope at first, to see others easily succeed when you are destined for failure.

To have no friends among the nobility, no lovers, only the solace of cold books on rainy nights.

He had only two people who cared for him, his mother and his maid, and they all tried to fill his life with light and love, and he took them as his source of strength and contentment.

Yet, Rowan was never a bitter child even as he grew to adulthood, he was intelligent enough to be content with what he had.

He may never experience the joys of feeling Aether roaming in his veins, may never get to hold out his palm and allow a fireball to appear out of thin air, he had seen his mates do the same, and those younger than him, he was cursed to be a mortal, in a family of gods.

But for the prince, he had enough, a good mother and a loyal maid, who had sworn to protect him, until he grew old and his mortal life ceased. He was okay with the short span of years that was his dues as a mortal.

He did not expect to marry or bear children, he did not expect positions or adulation, it was enough for him to wake up and be with his books, while knowing he had the love from his mother, it may have been a dull life, but Rowan the prince loved it.

When all those were ripped away from him, he fell into despair, and he became destabilized.

When he was provided an opportunity to change his life, to save his mother. Who would blame him for choosing that option?

He left all the comforts he had come to know, and entered a world he had little knowledge of, only to become a tool for his father to grow his powers, he died in despair believing he had failed, but someone else had taken his place.

To reinforce the control over him, as far as he could tell, the plan was for him to be given a semblance of power, and a tragedy for him to manage and control, they gave him a people he could protect and care for.

All for the purpose of using him, not only to access his Bloodline Source, but to control the Singularity.

He was the doorway to access the Primordial Record, and his emotions were the backdoor the Sigils used to control him and the Singularity.

There was only a single mistake, a one in a trillion-chance event that happened, a new soul came to reside inside the body of the prince.

He became Rowan Kuranes, yet he was not, and his descent brought with it, new variables, abilities, and bloodlines. He became a square peg in a round hole, he was unable to fit the mold given to him.

Which was a good thing, for it gave him time to breathe above the surface of the lies, but terrible news for him, if it were to be discovered by anybody else, at least until he could defend himself.

From the first moment he felt his body begin to react under his father’s touch, and his emotions going haywire, it was the first time in his life where he felt a total fear that was impossible to articulate.

Even waking up in a pile of bodies bearing his own face was not as mind-bending as feeling his body work against him. From that moment on, Rowan knew he had to prepare for the worst.