Page 1 of Alchemised

Prologue

H ELENA WONDERED SOMETIMES IF SHE STILL HAD eyes. The darkness surrounding her never ended. She thought at first if she waited long enough, some glimmer of light would appear, or someone would come. Yet no matter how long she waited, there was nothing.

Just endless dark.

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.

It floated inert and unresponsive except when jerking violently as the surges hit—jolts of electricity tearing through her, beginning at the base of her neck and making every muscle in her body seize violently.

As suddenly as they came, they’d be gone. They were her only sense of time.

They were done to ensure her muscles couldn’t deteriorate altogether while she was in stasis. Helena remembered that detail. Remembered that she’d been placed there as a prisoner, kept preserved, but someday, someone would come for her.

At first, she’d counted the time in between surges to calculate their frequency. Second by second. Ten thousand, eight hundred. Every three hours without fail. Always the same. Then she’d counted the surges, but as the number grew and grew, she stopped, afraid to know.

She forced herself to focus on other things, not the wait. Not the endlessness. Not the dark. She had to wait, so she gave herself a routine to keep her mind fresh. Imagined walks. Cliffs and sky. Visited all the places she’d ever wandered. All the books she’d read.

She had to endure. To stay alert. That way she would be ready. She had to stay ready.

She would not let herself fade away.

**

Sometimes Helena wondered if she still possessed eyes at all.

The darkness was so complete, so seamless, that it felt less like the absence of light and more like a shroud deliberately drawn across her existence. She told herself, at the beginning, that if she only waited long enough, some faint glimmer would break through—perhaps a crack in the walls, a distant footstep, even the breath of another living soul. But no matter how long she lingered in that hope, the result was always the same.

Nothing.

Only the void.

Her body was still with her, or at least the shell of it. She could sense it, rigid and heavy, wrapped around her like a cage she could not escape. She tried, again and again, to summon movement—to twitch a finger, to flex a hand, to open her mouth and scream—but her flesh refused. It was a husk under lock and key, inert, drifting in stasis.

Except when the surges came.

They struck without warning, jagged bolts of electricity erupting at the base of her neck and rippling outward, setting every nerve alight. Her muscles would seize, contorting her frame into violent spasms. Her jaw clenched until she thought her teeth would shatter, her chest locked as though iron bands had closed around it. The agony was sharp, merciless, absolute.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it would vanish—leaving only the suffocating silence in its wake.

Those surges were the only measure of time she had left.

She remembered why. This regimen was intentional: a mechanical cruelty designed to preserve her body, to prevent decay while she lay confined in her suspension. It was not mercy, but protocol. A prison disguised as preservation. She could recall the moment of her entombment—the sterile light, the monotone of machinery, the sentence passed down. She had been condemned to wait, sealed in the dark, until someone, someday, chose to retrieve her.

At first, she counted the intervals with ruthless precision.

One second. Two. Three.

All the way to ten thousand, eight hundred. Exactly three hours, every time. Never once did it falter.

Then she counted the surges themselves. One hundred. One thousand. Ten thousand. The number became monstrous, a tidal wave swallowing her in its enormity. Eventually she stopped, afraid of what the growing tally implied: that her imprisonment might stretch on until eternity itself withered.

So she forced herself to let go of the count.

She built routines instead, sculpting order out of the nothingness. In her mind she rose from the darkness and walked. She retraced every path she had ever known: cliffs that overlooked roaring seas, forests whispering with leaves, the cobbled streets of her childhood town. She reopened every book she had once read, reciting passages to herself until the words took form and filled the empty void with imagined sound.

These rituals were not indulgence; they were survival. They were her battle plan against erasure.

She could not allow her mind to collapse into silence. She had to endure, to remain alert, to sharpen herself against the grinding eternity of confinement.

Because one day—she clung to this with all her remaining strength—one day, someone would come.

And when they did, she had to be ready.

Even if her body was a cage.

Even if time itself was the weapon used against her.

Even if the dark had no end.

She would not fade.

She would not surrender.