Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“This is elaborate, beautiful, professional work. A vivimancer manually rewiring the human consciousness.”

All she knew was that as long as those manacles remained locked in place, she wasn’t an alchemist at all.

Someone—has disassembled the pathways of her mind and created alternative routes for them.

cannot simply be regenerated; the mind and spirit must forge them.

“The war is over. What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours?”

“You know,” Ferron said, jolting her from her thoughts, “when I heard it was you I’d be getting, I was looking forward to breaking you.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think it’s possible to exceed what you’ve done to yourself.”

“I will die before I lose her,”

“If I’d known what pain you’d cause me, I never would have taken you.”

“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.”

He wasn’t kind; he simply wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t as monstrous as he could be. And for Helena’s fracturing mind, an absence of cruelty was sufficient solace. For her starved heart, it was enough.

“Then we’re going to lose,” she said in a dull voice. “And I’m going to be the one who puts you back together, over and over, until I have to watch you die instead. And we still won’t win.”

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

“I swear it, on the spirits of the five gods and my own soul, Kaine Ferron, I’m yours as long as I live.”

“How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”

“if anyone had told me you’d become so lovely, I would never have come near you. I was rather blindsided when I saw you again.”

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,”

“I wonder what you could have turned into without the

“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”

They were the inverse and counter to each other. A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

You don’t get to make up history to suit your preferences.

You’re torturing him to death on a lie.”

“You don’t get to lie to me and then get angry when I make the mistake of believing you,”

“In the future, perhaps tell me what you want instead of expecting me to fail where it’s convenient to you. Maybe then we’ll both end up less disappointed in each other.”

“I’m tired of this war. I’m tired of trying to save people and watching them die anyway, or saving them only to watch them die later—in a worse way. It’s the same cycle, over and over. I don’t know how to get out, and I don’t know how to keep going, either.”

His expression guarded. His mouth held in that hard, flat line. But his eyes… She could tell— He was hers. The realisation broke her heart.

“After you nearly bled to death here, I thought, at least I can keep her alive. She deserves to have someone who cares enough to try to keep her alive.