Alchemised

by SenLinYu

His gaze lifted. “Come here.”

Her eyes moved jerkily, startled at Ferron’s cruel features, at how alien and unnatural he was. She realised sluggishly that he was in her mind, looking at himself through her eyes.

If a body was not burned, the soul was left trapped, unable to ascend and in danger of becoming tainted by the body’s putrefaction. Left too long, the impurity of the body could metamorphise the soul into maggots and insects, plagues, and other grotesque forms of evil, doomed to sink beneath the surface of the earth to be consumed forever in the dark wet fire of the Abyss.

sponsored births.

Lapse, a child of alchemists who never manifested resonance.

She began to search her body carefully and found more scars.

He paused and leaned against the bedpost, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side.

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you if you swallow it like a good girl.”

Tucked into the shadow was an eye encased in glass. It swivelled, the pupil contracting, as if it were still alive, and stared straight at her.

unspoiled by the inferior environment and contributions of a female womb—the source of all humanity’s flaws.

signet rings

slender, dark metal ring on his right hand.

This process was the method of alchemisation that Cetus’s early writings referred to.

It had created a perpetual cycle of grievances in which everyone found the current circumstances unfair, but no one would agree to a solution.

she began to suspect that some were living people who’d powdered and oiled their skin in imitation. As if it were something to aspire to.

Ferron’s lips remained pressed against Aurelia’s, but as he kissed her, he raised his eyes, and his gaze locked onto Helena’s face.

While their bodies were the necessary vessels for birth, it was their blood that was the source of all defects. Both vivimancy and necromancy were regarded as a corruption of resonance caused by a “poisonous womb.”

But there was a price. Were they to marry or bear children, they had to give it all up. Lumithia was a virgin goddess. Mothers and married women were not welcome at her altar.

I will strive to do better.”

“I will die before I lose her,” Ferron said, his grip tightening.

“The West Port Laboratory was Bennet’s experimental research site.”

One the third day,

Typo

“The Undying. You’re his source of power, and the Resistance—we figured that out, didn’t we? How to kill him. How to kill all of you.”

“So it’s all revenge, then?” It was the nervous voice again. “Durant, Vidkun, and all the rest, those are the Undying who were there that night. The rest of us are safe.”

“You were supposed to be mine. I’m the one who caught you while you were busy gutting Atreus. When I saw you in the ruins of the lab, everything in flames, the sky blazing, and all those thralls around you. You looked like Lumithia born from fire.”

“Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered.

She knew he wouldn’t. He only hurt her on certain days, and this wasn’t one of them, so she sat very still.

Ferron will come. Ferron will come.

you have a natural talent for it. In another life, you could be a healer.”

When he saw her, he seemed to almost turn, as if to walk out. She started to reach a hand forward, then snatched it instantly back, clenching her fingers into a fist. The movement was enough to still him.

He looked strangely mortal. She wished he didn’t. She looked away.

She was trapped forever in winter, in the season of death.

“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.” His face was so close the words brushed against her lips, and his mouth crashed against hers.

She was not as stilted and blank as Helena was accustomed to; she moved more like a lich. Under Helena’s scrutiny, she slowed and grew more mechanical

“You’re pregnant.”

power was so great, he’d claimed every drop of his mother’s life while still in the womb and was birthed from her corpse upon the funeral pyre.

“I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat. It is a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s. If you die, I will kill every single one of them.”

Bayard

Defo the Weasleys

“Whether you win a battle or lose it, all I see is the cost.”

Healing came with the highest cost; that was why the Faith considered it a purifying act and allowed its practice while forbidding all other forms of vivimancy.

Becoming a healer would slowly carve away Helena’s life span, like a candle being burned at both ends.

Crowther only scoffed. “I’m sure Ilva has filled your head with pretty stories about your importance, but you’re easily replaced. We already have several candidates under consideration.”

‘talismans,’

The higher the rank, the darker the uniform. The generals wore all black.

He flashed a quick grin, the expression slicing like a scythe across his face, more a wound than a real emotion.

“I swear,” he said, exaggeratedly reverent, his breath ghosting across her neck, “on the gods and my soul”—he laughed as he said it—“I won’t interfere.”

first kiss, because it was her first kiss.

By the time he was released, Kaine had been born.”

would have noticed something was amiss when he returned after his father’s execution.

“It’s an elixir that’s bonded to the surface. The coating bends light to make things hard to notice unless you know to look for them.”