Death is cold. Something he is very familiar with. Being surrounded by it almost his whole life. His only companions were the lifeless bodies of people long gone.
Veyne's soul floats in the black eternity. A growing light begins to glow below it. Could this be salvation? No, the light turns out to be hellfire with the hands of demons reaching out to devour his soul. The light isn't growing, he's just slowly sinking towards it. The very beings he utilised in life would be the ones to eat him in the afterlife. A very fitting end indeed.
Lower and lower he sinks. But just out of reach of the many hands, Veyne's soul stops. Behind it a green astral chain attaches to his soul. But it can't be. All the backups I had were destroyed in that blast. What is this? Should I resist? The link feels extremely weak like it was made by an amateur. If I wanted to, I could break away. I don't have much of a choice.
…
Without resistance, Veyne lets the chain pull his soul away and out of the darkness. Nerves take hold as he will be at the mercy of whoever or whatever has bound to his soul.
Blurry light touches Veyne's eye. Everything is black and white. Something is wrong, he can only see out of one eye and he can't close them. Extreme pain shocks every part of his body.
"A…-…o..-"
I can't talk. I can't scream. I can't even feel my tongue. In fact I can't feel much of anything. Veyne struggles to lift up his left arm. He sees his arm rotten. Skin almost nonexistent, muscles degrading and the tendons holding on by a thread. I-I'm in a dead body. He uses all his willpower to fight the pain and sit up. Shaking back and forth he raises his head only to see the rest of his body. His chest hole ridden, lungs punctured, right arm and leg pure bone and his left side not much better.
His head falls back. I'm going to die again. Who the hell brought me here? Losing all hope, he just lays there to accept his painful demise once again.
While cursing his current situation he notices something familiar about the ceiling. But how can I be here of all places? Something clicks and starts frantically looking around the room. If I'm right, it should still be stored around here. Gritting whatever teeth he has remaining, Veyne grips the side of the stone bench he's laying on and rolls off it. His body hitting the floor, the pain somehow becomes even more unbearable. Scraping his way along the stone tiles towards a small cupboard, dried black blood seeping out of his many holes.
Making it across the floor to the cupboard, he starts banging on it with all his remaining might to try and knock something off it. A minute passes and his hits are getting weaker and weaker. I can't do it. The vision in the eye is so blurry that he can no longer see out of it. Laying on his back about to accept his fate once again, he decided to do what he does best and analysis. No sight, no strength and no magic. How can I reach it? If only I could use my other arm! Wait, an idea has formed. Veyne grabs his right arm and wrenches it off. One last try. Feeling his way up he reaches above the cupboard, positions the arm and drops it.
Hearing something fall next to his head and with no time to spare, he grabs it and stabs it into his throat. Breath leaves his body and he goes still. Suddenly he gasps. The feeling of warm blood fills his body. Muscle and skin reforms over the rest of his body and finally his eyes too. He takes a deep breath as the pain subsides.
"It worked! I'm alive!"
Veyne gets to his feet and pulls out the unicorn horn from his throat, healing the wound as it exits. The horn cracks and crumbles away and Veyne is left standing alone, naked in a new body. He grins and clenches his fist.
"I need to take stock of the situation before doing anything else."
"First things first, my location. This little room I'm in is the very first lab I ever created nearly one hundred years ago. I noticed the ceiling I used to look at every night."
Veyne looks down at his body and rubs the shoulder stub where his right arm would be.
"Next is this body. Looks like if the limb isn't attached when you administer a unicorn horn, it won't grow it back from scratch. Who's body is this anyway?"
He walks over to a fireplace with an old cauldron in it. Above it over the mantle hangs a dusty mirror. He wipes it down and sees a face all too familiar.
"Ah, the first man I ever killed."
Ninety nine years ago, Veyne at sixteen made this lab on the far outskirts of his village. Here he gathered and learnt all he could about magic, beasts and his type of affinity. Knowing that necromancy is a frowned upon magic, he started out experimenting on making undead insects and other small beasts. For three years he collected and grew as a mage, until one day a man caught Veyne and threatened to expose him. So in an accidental rage Veyne killed him. He decided to detach from his feelings and use the opportunity to cultivate his skills further. Learning how to preserve a body, raise the human dead and most importantly, how to bond his soul to it.
This being his first time bonding a soul he was sure that he had failed. One day while in the middle of looking for ingredients to match with his newly acquired unicorn horn, a large platoon of soldiers from the neighboring town stormed the village in search of a suspected necromancer in the area. Making the quick decision to flee and leave behind his lab to make sure he wasn't caught, never to return again.
Back in the present, Veyne looks back at the bench he woke up on and thinks about how bad he was at preserving bodies back then.
"Currently I have three major issues that I need to address before I can move on from here. First the underground entrance to the lab has caved in over all these years. I'll need to clear that out to have access to the natural resources outside. Next comes my arm, I'll need to find a way to reattach it. Then comes the biggest hurdle. This body has no magic. If I am to take my revenge on my killers, I'll need to build an arsenal from scratch and train this body's magic."
Veyne looks around the room to formulate a plan with the resources on hand.
"I'm restarting from the very beginning, but this time I have the knowledge and experience of over a century. I'll hunt down and kill them all no matter the cost!"