Alchemised

by SenLinYu

She had a body; she could feel it wrapped around her like a cage, but no amount of effort or determination could make it move.

How could she outwit someone like that? Could he see memories alone or her thoughts, too?

Helena had saved his body and learned the bitter lesson that a mind was a thing apart and she had not saved it. She’d tried and failed for years to fix what she’d done. Somewhere in the hidden spaces of her memory, Elain Boyle had materialised, a cure in hand, a procedure then used on Helena as well. Now the Undying had learned of it.

Perhaps that ouroboros dragon was not merely a pretentious decoration but something the Ferrons prided themselves on. An omen of a destructive, insatiable hunger which left nothing but ruin in its wake.

The Faith said that a soul and body remained joined together as one until cremation. It was only when fire consumed the flesh that the ethereal soul was untethered from the crude earthly form. A person who had lived devoutly and without vice would release a pure soul that could ascend to the highest of the heavenly realms.

She looked up at him. “You’re a monster.” He raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, have you?”

Her mind cleared slowly, that suffocating terror gradually ebbing away, allowing reason to seep back in. It was almost worse to be rational again, to sit knowing her fear made no sense. It didn’t matter. The part of her that was afraid did not care about being rational.

Flipping between dissociating and not in a time where both are uncomfortable

She sounded irrational. She was irrational, but there was no help for it; there was a schism between her reason and her mind, a fault line shearing them forever apart. Her mind did not care whether the fear made sense; it just wanted to never go back.

So beautifully written