After his quick review, he went back to studying the entire room, this time with a more critical eye. Starting with his new mother, he studied her physical appearance first. From head to toe, she was paper white, almost like an albino. She was wearing loose, brown furs over her body, which gave some contrast to her skin, but the only bit of color he could see on her body were her eyes, a striking ruby red.

While her entire pale body caught the eye when compared to the gray of the stone room around them, or the brown of the furs she was wearing and the dark furs she sat upon that were made into a soft couch, her ruby red eyes drew his attention the most.

He’d never seen such a natural looking red coloration to the eyes. While he knew there were some conditions that could give humans red eyes, he also remembered seeing images of how unnatural it looked. The red coloration in humans wasn't caused by a red pigment in the eyes, but instead caused by visible blood vessels. It wasn't the same for his mother, instead looking like two sparkling gemstones.

‘I really hope I get those too. That would be so cool.’

He also looked at her soul shape again, but found that in his stupor state, he saw all there was to see. For whatever reason, he couldn't interpret much about how she was doing at all. Without practice, he could probably even tell more about how she was physically by looking at her with his eyes instead of his soul sight.

Instead, he decided to look around the room

Truly, it looked incredibly comfortable and homely. The walls and ceiling formed an almost perfect semi-sphere shape to contain everything. On the walls were various drawings, resembling something like cave paintings with how they were made out of a singular brownish pigment, except for the fact that they were incredibly detailed.

The shading gave depth to each drawing, and he felt like he could even see light coming from the paintings that depicted flames, but studying it closer revealed it was a skilled optical illusion. In the paintings, he recognized a few paintings of his mother, but far more paintings of a burly looking man in different positions or settings, as well as a boy and girl, usually sitting around the burly man.

‘Thats probably my father, and maybe my siblings too? They look way too young to be family friends.’

Taking his eyes away from the decorated walls, he noticed many, many animal skins used to form a sort of carpet on the floor, along with animal furs line the furniture sparsely decorating the room. He noticed stone chairs with a fur cushion around a stone table, a fur bed with two stone nightstands on either side which were both lined with fur along the edges, and three fur couches surrounding what appeared to be a fireplace dug out through the wall.

Looking at it closer though, it was no fire at all. Instead, it was a fire-shaped rock that let off light. He didn't know if it let off heat too as he couldn’t feel anything, but based on the metal guard around it, he would have to say yes.

There were three doors in the room, each with tanned hide over the doorways rather than wooden or stone doors. One had the sounds of people talking in a guttural and halting language, while the other two were on the opposite side of the room, and he didn't know where they led.

He tried to move towards the two doors that were deeper into his family’s house, but just before he reached the door, a force stopped him. Something in his body was tugging him backwards, and he knew that he had no chance of resisting it.

He thought he knew what was going on, but just to be sure, he pulled up the description for his new skill, [Astral Projection], which he really should have done sooner.

[Astral Projection - Level 1 - Soul Affinity

A confluence of Mind, Body, and Magic, the Soul is made of the cracks between all three. It is both the divider that separates components, and the glue that makes them greater than the sum of their parts. While identity and a sense of self is not required for survival, what is life without a witness? Who you are gives purpose to your survival, but what if your identity could reach beyond the base components of life, and experience a second life of its own?

Allows for the physical manifestation of one's identity into the realm of spirits while still maintaining a link to the main body of the soul. The vanquishing of one's identity will lead to irreparable soul damage, and inevitable death. Identity of the soul can move away from the body at a distance of 7 meters per level.]

His new spell looked cool as fuck, but he did indeed have a limited range on how far he could move from his main body. It also looked like it wasn't his entire soul that he was moving while he was in his body, just the part that dictated his sense of self.

There wasn’t much to do, other than look around at things, but he was content with that. He went over to the couch and sat next to his mother on it while continuing to study her, but after a few seconds he also noticed that he was actually sitting on the couch, and wondered why if he was limited by the laws of physics. After all, he thought ghosts would phase through objects, but that apparently wasn't true, right?

He stood up and pressed his hand into the couch again, watching as it phased into the furs slightly. While he wasn't moving the fur at all, his hand was molding around them to move deeper into the fur.

‘Interesting, I wonder if I can press myself into it more.’

So he sat there, pressing down into the couch, and watched as his hand slowly moved into it. Once he was about a centimeter down into the couch, he quickly pulled his hand up.

Instead of the entire hand rapidly coming out, he watched as the palm of his hand was partially sheared off, yet no pain or discomfort accompanied it. Before his eyes, he saw that a gaseous white substance slowly exited the couch and made its way back into his hand, until eventually, he was back to his complete form.

‘Thank goodness, I got worried there for a second that I’d just hurt myself.’

As he was studying his reformed hand, he suddenly heard the flap open behind him, and turned to look. Three familiar figures that he’d seen in the painting came through, and the two children said the same thing while quickly moving towards his new mom, their mom too if he had to guess.

His mom opened her arms while the two kids ran into them, and she gave them both a squeeze. The first one, his sister, was around eight, while the second, his brother, was around five. They both had the alabaster skin and ruby red eyes, same as their mother, and were covered in animal hides too.

‘Seems like a very primitive society, that's for sure. Animal skins for everything and stone buildings? Admittedly very well made stone buildings, but still.’

His new father, on the other hand, had the characteristic tan that people usually had, along with black hair and brown eyes. Whatever condition his mother and siblings had, his father did not.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Leven noticed his father carrying the sheath of a sword on his left hip, a quiver of arrows on his right hip, and a wooden bow on his back. Looking closer at his siblings, he could just barely make out tiny sheaths to hold small daggers on each of them.

His new family talked for a long time, both children prattling on as much as they possibly could in a single breath before the other could talk over them, sometimes shouting over each other at the same time, until their mother gave them a raised eyebrow and they went back to taking turns talking.

After half an hour or so, his mother said something in the halting fashion of this new language that reminded him slightly of Russian, and both kids made out some whining words, before being sent towards one of the two doors in the back of the house.

His mother and father talked in a more serious tone for a bit longer, before his mother stood up and hugged his father, then moved towards the same door as his siblings. His astrally projected soul was dragged along with them, and the new room he was in was obviously a kitchen, with another two door flaps that led deeper in.

In the kitchen, he saw as his siblings got some dishes ready from some stone cabinets, then moved to carry small bags from deeper in the house, placing them on the countertops around the woodburning stove he saw, before stepping back and watching as his parents started cooking something.

He watched too, it it looked like a hearty stew with some hardtack bread on the side

‘A classic’

He continued to observe his new family, feeling a pang of longing for the family he left behind the entire time. He knew that there was little to no chance of him ever making it back to them, so he reminisced about them, but accepted that these were the people he would spend the rest of his time with, these were the people he would call his parents and siblings.

There wasn't any point in mourning about a past he could never go back to, so he decided to lean towards his future. He would never forget his previous family, but grieving their loss would simply be delaying the inevitable.

Still, he knew it would be a long time before the hole in his heart stopped aching.

Eventually, his new family finished their meals and headed off into yet another section of the house he didn't know about. He watched as his siblings went to one room, and his parents went to another that had a shared bed, along with a stone crib on his mothers side, yet to be used by him, but perhaps a hand-me-down from his siblings.

He watched for a bit longer, but didnt feel like standing guard all night, and reached out towards his mother.

The moment his hand made contact with her belly, he snapped back into the void of darkness that his body was still contained within.

‘I think I’ll get some rest too, even if I don't do much, it's still taxing to think about my past and the situation I'm currently in.’ And like that, he allowed a trance-like state to overtake him.

When he came back to his senses, mentally rejuvenated, he decided he really needed to get [Growing Pains] under control soon, because his mother was definitely close to giving birth.

He could now see his soul without it being damaged, potentially from gaining [Astral Projection], and he studied it closer. There were four areas that stood out to him along the story his soul told, and he could surmise that they were the four areas that represented the skills his body had rejected. He moved to the first one, the first spot in his soul that sang a discordant melody to his ears.

“TAJ!” heard a version of himself shout “Give! It! Back!”

‘I know this memory, it's the very first time I lost my cool, the very first time my Wrath affinity tried to make me lash out’

He watched it play out with a disconnected sense of aloofness, but it began to distort the further it went along. He felt as his vision, his connection to the memory, became more distant the further he went along the memory. When his teacher caught him in her arms, it was almost an unseeable mess of mana and pain. As his view became more and more like television static, he quickly lost track of what was happening as his head started to hurt, but he kept watching until eventually, the static receded, and he could see the face of his previous mother as he slowly came to, looking up from his head resting on her chest.

‘I probably formed Pandora’s Box while in my teacher's arms by refusing to release my Wrath, and my body slowly formed a way to store the buildup in my body, rather than letting it run loose.’

It was painful to see the his mom, the mom he would never be able to talk to again, so he left the memory behind and moved to the next discordant notch in his soul.

Closing in on the next fuzzy section in his soul, he saw yet another familiar memory

“Today, I’m going to teach you meditation and breathing techniques to calm yourself down, and we are going to start working out together…” he heard his father say.

‘This is probably the memory I’m looking for, it's the first time I channeled my anger into working out’

Weirdly, the fuzziness didn't start with the exercise, but with his breathing techniques. It was still recognizable what was happening in the memory, but there was a thin film of static over the entire section of his memories on meditation, breathing, and bringing his mental state back into balance. It felt like an almost-skill, but not quite.

‘I’m running out of time to fix my muscle skill, I’ll need to put this one off for later, but it looks promising.’

Eventually, he got to the part where he and his father began their weight training. The further into the training they got, the more distorted the memory became, similar to his previous skill formation.

Instead of letting it run its course this time, he paused the memory, and started from the beginning of the workout. He moved his view outside of the window he saw, and looked around. Outside of the direct vision of his memory, Leven could still see the room in a fuzzy grayed out way. He knew how the room was, even if he wasn't directly looking at it. More than that though, he saw more branching memories throughout the memory, of times when he was looking at that particular part of the room.

His soul was a maze of memories and experiences, of theories and ideas. He could lose himself easily if he wasn't careful, so he stopped and turned back to the memory he needed, bringing it back into focus.

Now with a new perspective, he slowly went through the memory, watching as his body as a child did something with the anger contained within it.

Peering through the static that slowly overtook the memory, he watched the process of the mana within his body being weakened. The amount of mana within his child body stayed the same, but the anger from each ‘point’ of mana was being removed, and that is what was being used to power his workouts.

The reason working out helped relieve pressure, but never actually got rid of the anger, was because it was bringing the affinity of the mana down to a more basic level, towards unattuned mana, but it became harder and harder to strain it out. Not only this, but the pressure of uncontained mana in the body still put a strain on him, so when he had another incident, it was still difficult to contain his Wrath.

With an understanding of what was happening in the skill, he felt a thrum reverberate through a different section of his soul- through his Affinity for Wrath.

He reached out, through the static in his memory, and watched as it parted. While it was hard to conceptualize, he felt as his avatar took hold of the memory, and began drawing it into himself, pulling it through the haze that coated it.

Suddenly, faster than he could process it, the haze came alive and converged onto the version he saw of himself as a child.

The memory, the portion of his soul that contained the skill, was suddenly ripped away from him. The portion of his soul that carried his Wrath affinity pulled back, laying claim to the skill and refusing to let go.

His skill was halfway between his soul and somewhere else, and he was contained within that halfway point too. He did not want to find out what would happen if his memory got ripped away from him while his sense of self was within it, because it would probably be lethal.

The static that converged into his child self suddenly exploded outward, dyeing the entire memory red, all except for Leven, and the child spoke.

WHO

ARE

YOU?