These voices in my mind….

Making me despair…

This memory was not from his father, but he knew it was deeply connected to him.

Somewhere deep inside of him, as if it was a reflection of himself that he had forgotten, but now, knowing that this reflection was his own, it brought back its own set of memories.

It was as if he had always had a left hand, but the knowledge that he had such a limb was taken from him, and so every day he had always been dimly aware of that hand, but had never bothered to associate it as part of his body.

Truly knowledge was power, and for someone like him, all new knowledge shed light on the massive structure that was his body and mind. He was like a building that had a thousand rooms, but he had always been locked inside one room, and therefore always thought he was just one room.

This memory was merely a new light shed in the many rooms that made up his being.

He saw himself laid down on a black platform that stretched for hundreds of miles. The Platform was made from a weird mixture of wood and metal, and it contracted and expanded as if it was breathing, and below him was a lake filled with red water.

The water was thick and warm that emanated a stream of purple mist, there were numerous large creatures bathing inside it that frolicked with a manic intensity. Rowan saw that there must be influenced by something, as acts of intense sexual acts were being performed by the creatures inside the river. The sounds coming from the river were horrifying, not at all pleasing to the ear. If Rowan had ever wanted to know the sound of uninhibited lust, this was it.

He looked up to the skies and saw fourteen moons, but two of the moons were being dragged away by enormous tentacle-like branches. He had read from the books given to him by Circe, that once Trion had fourteen moons, but the God King took them… was it possible that what he was seeing was that event playing out?

The sight was shocking but he had seen greater, nevertheless it distracted him enough to address the constant pain he had been feeling.

“At what time did it happen? When did pain become so normal for me, I have to force my mind to focus on it?”

He saw himself, but it was not his facein fact, this face seemed to be ever-changing, first it was of a man, then a boy and then a woman, before transforming into different creatures and then back again, Rowan thought he recognized some of the faces he changed into. This should be his abilities in the past.

Rowan could understand why his father could be so arrogant and dismissive of him, even though he must be holding within his body the most powerful item in the universe. It was because so much of himself had been taken away, he had been lied to and manipulated, his truths were falsehood and he would never be able to live to his full potential without understanding who he truly was.

He was a Titan that had been brainwashed to believe he was an ant. How could he fight his enemies, when he did not even understand his own powers?

His attention was soon drawn to the source of his pain, and he saw that it was only his face that was free from injury. From his neck down to the sole of his feet, his entire skin had been flayed away.

His muscles had been sliced open, each strand separated evenly, his veins and arteries had been arranged in a manner where he could trace each one of them like highways in a city.

He found his beating heart laid to the side, and besides it the pale flesh of his brain.

“Oh there you are!” His mind called out cheerfully. He was wrong about his head being unharmed after all, for the top of his head had been sliced off and his brain lifted from his skull.

His beating heart shivered and pumped out a healthy spurt of blood that flew for more than a hundred feet, and it did not take long for him to understand that the red river below him was not a weirdly dyed water, it was his blood. How long has he been like this?

“Where is it? Where could it be hiding? I have searched every single atom of your flesh. Where is my singularity?” A low voice that felt like razor blades in his ears spoke beside him.

It took a while for the voice to give rise to a shape, and it would seem that his earlier conjecture of a razor blade speaking was the right term to use for this creature, as it appeared… disjointed, as if it was made of roughly glued together scrap iron.

It was all sharp edges and tarnished glow, and the best thing he could describe it with was a man shaped thing made from pieces of broken blades sticking out like nails.

What made it weird however was the carefully structured human mouth in a face made up of countless metal.

The figure was familiar, where had he seen it before.

Then it came to him. His earlier recollection of the memory he stole from the Third Prince, his father. It reminded him of that hand that broke into reality after countless eternities of effort. The greatest thief and abomination… His father.

That figure brought up a misshapen hand and dragged it down his body, creating bright sparks of pain that made the soft flesh of his brain tremble.

Like a machine that was all fury but also precise control, his body began to be dismantled further, each piece of flesh, veins, arteries, blood, hair, tissues were being pried open. The pain was horrendous. He had been melted down into atoms before, when he was discarding his Mortal shell to become an Empyrean, and that pain would have destroyed most minds, but this one was somehow worse.

It was because of the feeling of intense violation. His Ouroboros Bloodline sought to change his body and the pain was a welcomed side effect, but this… just wanted to rape every single part of him.

“WHERE IS IT!!!” The horrifying scream blasted his consciousness apart.