There's still a faint tie of the soul-bit to her, but there's absolutely nothing attaching it to the coffin. There's an obvious place for the soul-bit to go, it's just not obvious how to hook them together. Hm. And... she thinks that if she got too far away from this soul bauble of hers, it'd leave the diamond and return to her. It just... it feels like it would. Like she's stretching something, but with only so much force. The state it's in is fragile, at least in the sense of it being apart from the rest of her. It's being held inside its container, but like a water droplet resting in an indentation. If she moves too far away, the whole thing shifts, and the bit of soul follows something akin to gravity and returns to the whole. Which isn't bad, just. It also isn't what she needs.

So, maybe the small diamonds are anchors? Is there an obvious way to... use a small diamond to magically anchor the soul bauble to the coffin?

Hm. Yes, it seems so. If she threads blood essence through the diamond, then the filled soul bauble, then the coffin, then back into the diamond, she can make a solid loop. The diamond glows a faint red, and feels sturdy, and the shape of it looks... correct. Except now she thinks that if she gets too far away from her soul bauble, she'll just entirely rip it off of herself. But there's a second diamond, so... she threads another loop, this time through the bauble and her own soul. Yes, that looks like it'll keep it from being ripped entirely free of her, and extend the distance besides. The fragile connection of the soul is reinforced by a stronger thread of magical life.

All diamonds are carefully set into the coffin. Her master had hidden them inside the coffin lid, and maybe that was better for defense or something, but. She has them inset on top, visible in the darkness. Two little pinpricks of crimson, and one burning of bright teal. It's prettier, feels more honest, and she's not trying to hide the mechanics of souls and coffins from any curious slaves, now is she. All together, the construct feels correct. Hers. Like it'll catch her if she falls. But it's best to test that in a safe environment, so she attempts to return to her coffin.

It works perfectly.

She smiles for the first time in what feels like her entire life. Ha.

Her mental and physical safety now more assured, she departs the basement. Just to be safe, she makes sure the tile covering the stairs is returned to its correct place, and then she leaves her very tiny castle to see about figuring out what to do next. It's not really clear what that should be. There's no one telling her what she should be doing, now, and no obvious goals to work towards. So... what does she want?

It's obvious what she doesn't want. She doesn't want to be enslaved again. She wants to stay alive. She wants to learn things and figure out interesting problems. She doesn't want to spend too much of her time in pain, or to hurt or hunt humans. It would pain her if the world were... made worse by her being in it? Yes, that seems pretty definitive.

Following that train of thought, she thinks she wants the world to be better for her being in it? Killing horrible monsters is... kind of nice? Then they don't exist anymore and the world is better because there are less things that needlessly cause pain in it. Building a little house that's actually for real entirely hers, not to be snatched away from her at the last second, definitely appeals. She wants... probably to expand it? Make it nicer and more comfortable? And prettier, she thinks she wants to live somewhere actively pretty. She had a garden, in her sire's castle, but it was a brutally efficient thing. All ratios of necessary alchemical reagents and plants that would grow best in certain conditions, and rows and rows of soulless little garden plots. Growing the amount of plants needed to supply the appropriate potions her sire wanted of her. Maybe she should have a flinch response to the entire concept of alchemy itself, but she doesn't. She'll probably have another alchemical garden again, once she tracks down the appropriate herbs. The idea of having things only for one brutally cold, efficient purpose, though? Absolutely not.

Oh. Oh, she knows. She.... had a name. Her sire basically never used it, in favor of things like 'darling' and 'pet' and 'sweetling' and the like. But she had one before. What was it...?

He'd sometimes call her 'his little Io,' which she'd liked then, but has now decided that she despises. Still, it leads her down the mental process of remembering the correct set of sounds. Iovetra. Yes. That was it.

And if anyone tries to call her their little Io she might actually rip their heart out and eat it in front of them. ... Or probably just, you know. Ask them to not. One of those. Depending on circumstances.

Logically speaking, expansion of her home (and she decides she likes this name for it) will need to wait until she has a better feel for the overall world. If nothing else, she needs to know how secret she needs to keep it. Yes, she's obviously quite isolated, but... maybe this area is regularly patrolled by the local powers? There's a scale of secrecy, from 'painstakingly only build an underground bunker' to 'don't start a massive forest fire and put up signs announcing that there's a new local vampire.'

Exploration it is, then.

She soon runs into a snag.

When she'd done her cursory exploration, she'd been careful to always keep track of where she was in relation to the place she awoke, never venturing out too far. She used the ruins of the previous castle as a landmark to return to. Now that she is a bit more free to roam without concern of getting lost, she is free to, well. Get very lost indeed. She can just return to her coffin whenever she gets too turned around, but... this level of misdirection is not normal. It's not just that there is no native way to navigate, though that certainly doesn't hurt. She's been in plenty of situations where she was without a compass, and the stars weren't visible for whatever reason. At least then, the landmarks remained static. This... is not a guarantee in this place.

The omnipresent mist makes sighting anything difficult, but after a while it starts to become clear that the trees are moving when she's not looking. Not... in an obvious way, they don't sprout legs and play musical chairs, but they slowly shift and twist to make new shapes. Their thorns move, their trunks warp, their branches shift. Obvious knots and lumps that seem very distinctive will form and make themselves visually obvious, and then disappear within the next hour. They also abhor any attempts to mark them. If she ties cloth to a trunk, or to branches, it will be ripped to pieces by thorns when she next comes to it. If she scratches markings into the bark, they heal over completely, or in one memorable instance, move the marking entirely. It is less like trying to navigate a deep forest and more like trying to navigate in a moving, shifting ocean, but all around her. Not quite a malevolent one, but certainly not friendly.

Eventually, dawn approaches, and she gives up trying to navigate her way home through ordinary means before she can burn to death in the sun. It'd probably be avoidable even at noon, the tree canopy is thick, and the mist probably offers some protection, but she's frustrated enough at the living maze to not want to chance it. She returns to her coffin, taking small comfort in the fact that this means good things for the security of her home. It's still very irritating to have a forest play tricks on you, while also constantly assailed by vicious monsters, but it's something.

So, she needs a method to find her way home, if for no other reason than that she needs some kind of landmark to navigate by. Her home is also the one most likely to apply to her immediate needs. The danger there is something that someone else could maybe use to find her home, but there's got to be something that can balance paranoia with her goal. She's already got a bit of her soul stashed away in here, surely that can be used to give her, and only her, some kind of sense of direction. Something along the lines of, what, being able to pick up on the color of the wearer's soul and pointing to detached pieces of it? That seems a nice balance of letting her find her way back home and not letting someone else use it against her. Even to her somewhat spotty magical education, it sounds actionable enough, given the correct materials.

Which she mostly doesn't have, now that she thinks about it. She doesn't have any more diamonds left. Her nebulous understanding implies that materials matter very much for enchanting. She could maybe manage to rig something up by breaking one of her glass baubles for storing blood essence, but she'd rather have more replaceable testing materials. Glass was easy enough to come by, before, with her sire's castle neatly equipping her with whatever he thought she needed, but now she's in the middle of the woods on her own. Best to be conservative and experiment with things that are more plentiful. At least she has the full day to figure out this puzzle, and the canopy's shade is thick enough that she can pop outside for a bit to grab things without immediately bursting into flames. It's a bit uncomfortable, but she doesn't mind. She doesn't need to sleep, and a bit of pain from stray beams of sunlight is preferable to boredom.

Her first successful experiment is a ring made from bone. She can tell it's not the best material for what she wants it to do, but it does... sort of end up as she wants. After a lot of false starts and ruined bits of bone dust littering the floor. It does in fact point her in the direction of where the rest of her is. Just, it doesn't look like it'd do it from particularly far away. It's like it's too weak, the materials are too unattuned to the job she's asking of them. Bone seems... more appropriate to manipulating flesh and bone, like with her coffin, not this soul based wayfinding. Still. It's a success, if a marginal one. Better than nothing, and she can experiment with materials over time.

The sun's set by the time she's got it put together, which means she is free to explore again. This time with a bit more ability to safely roam. With a bit of a leash, but it's a longer one than always being careful to keep the castle's ruins in sight.

She'll make a better one, soon enough. But that'll require better materials, which can hardly be found sitting around here experimenting. Besides, she's antsy and wants to explore. It's a wide world, and she's only just barely seen any part of it.