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Helena hardly remembered the time she was a child younger than school age. There were blurs of moments that came and went that didn’t come paired with much context. She recalled a time sitting in a tall chair as her father fed a soft, sweet spoonful into her mouth. There was another time when she was somewhere on her childhood property in Etras, sitting in tall grass staring intently at a grey bunny chewing by a bush. Between each of these young memories was a blur of darkness that cut through time. One moment, she was maybe three years old. Next, she was five.
That’s how time seemed to pass while in stasis, except there were no imageries to accompany her waving consciousness. She often wondered if she even still had eyes.
Another jolt of electricity surged through her body, contracting her stiff muscles—preserving her body. The involuntary seizing was almost a comfort at this point. It reminded her that she still owned one.
‘Owned’ wouldn’t even be the right term. She was a prisoner; she knew that much. And with the ever-present lumithium cuffed around her wrists, she wasn’t even an alchemist anymore.
Helena did not even dare to venture what other memories were left in her mind. It took too much energy. Energy that she no longer had.
Even in such a preserving state, she was so tired.
Her mind must certainly be starting to deteriorate when she hallucinated a glimpse of light. However, that light became rapidly brighter and brighter, immediately burning any sense of sight she possessed.
Soon enough, it was like her brain was being split open.
This must be the end. This must be how the body responds to shutting down, the soul detaching and spiraling away. After all the fighting, all the blood and tears, her body had finally given up.
She assumed it’d be less painful, but it was like a drill being pierced through her eyes and into her skull, swishing around her brain matter.
There was screaming.
“Helena!”
Her name sounded so distant. It was hard to hear with the roar in her ears from the fluid.
Cold hands gripped her arms, completely wrapping around them. She was most likely just bone at this point. She’d be lucky to have any layer of skin strong enough to protect her insides.
Was she not dying?
Helena was swiftly dragged upwards. Air hit her lungs, crushing her chest as if she were just being born again. The pressure caused her to cough. Everything pouring out was so warm and thick, it could have been blood. Something was pulled out from her back.
“Fuck. Helena, can—can you see me?”
Someone was here. A warden? A guard? All she could make out was that the voice was probably male.
And they knew her name.
But what man would save her? Luc was dead. The entire Eternal Flame was gone.
She remembers the cages. The smoke and blood. The reanimated bodies. How the skin would be peeled off like ribbons from the Resistance members. Dead General Titus Bayard eating the skin off his wife.
And she watched it all. She no longer had anyone. Who would ever come back for her?
Helena’s heart dropped at the realization.
They had preserved her, kept her alive, and now they were going to use her body.
The mere thought had Helena lunging blindly toward the voice once she felt stone under her hands. Ignoring how her body shivered and ached, she slashed her hands out, feeling some sort of fabric graze the edge of her fingertips. Whoever this man was had just placed her on the ground with no restraints. Even as she squeezed her eyes shut, the light still seeped through the skin of her lids, digging into her pupils.
The figure stumbled, but did not fall. It was enough for her to try and crawl away, her hands tearing on the stone floor searching for anything to grab onto, before she felt hands on her shoulder, heaving her upwards. She shouted, her throat weak and raspy after being out of commission for gods know how long. Her hearing was so dulled, Helena wasn’t even sure if she was making any sound.
She attempted to kick, but was unsatisfied when it was met with only air. Squirming, she clawed out with a hand, hoping to hit somewhere on this man’s body to buy her enough time or at least provoke him enough to maybe kill her.
Helena would not be a necrothrall or a lich. She’d rather die.
Before she could make another move, delicate fingers slid over the back of her head, and the piercing light had disappeared.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
When Helena could feel the control over her eyelids once more, a light had returned. However, this one was softer. Dimmer. It stung but didn’t pierce. The light aided the seeping consciousness back into her mind, allowing sensation to slowly trickle into her nerves.
She quickly noticed how she was lying on something warm and soft. There was silky fabric underneath her fingers. She must have been in a bed.
Wherever she was, it was silent. No footsteps. No voices. Just the eerie void she found herself falling into the longer she lay here.
Cautiously, she peered through her lashes, looking down and around the room. It was stark and cool. There was a door directly across from where she was on the bed that was shut. At least, it was a blurry figure of a door. She couldn’t exactly make out the other shapes around the room. Though she assumed it was just ordinary furniture.
A thin grey dress draped over her, buttoned up from the front. It was clean and fell to her knees. The thought of a stranger dressing her was buried away, no longer the prioritized concern.
Her eyes scanned around her sluggishly. There was a strain behind them that could potentially grow into a headache if she wasn’t cautious in how she moved. Her wrists, she noticed, were bruised. No longer cuffed, but the bands of mysteriously altered lumithium remained, stifling her resonance. Not a surprise.
She gradually slid her arms back to lean on her elbows, the bone digging into the bed. A groan escaped her dry lips as she felt the soreness of her torso bending, her arms barely strong enough to hold her weight.
She felt utterly vulnerable and weak. It sickened her further.
As if her movement had triggered some sort of notice, there were hurried footsteps echoing from outside the room, growing louder and louder.
Helena’s heart quickened. While she didn’t know where she was, no longer being in stasis didn’t mean she wasn’t still a prisoner.
Before she even had time to think of a plan or move, the door swung open. A tall, fuzzy figure stood in the doorway. The only colors Helena could make out from them were black and white. If it weren’t for the muted colors of the wallpaper, she would’ve figured she had become colorblind.
Clumsily, Helena scurried herself to the headboard, ignoring the aching pain buzzing throughout her body, until there was no more room to tuck herself away. With her knees towards her chest and arms holding her to the side, she stared at the figure, afraid to merely blink in fear it would be standing next to her once she opened her eyes again.
The figure sturdily leaned against the doorframe, returning the stare.
After finally having the courage to blink the dryness of her eyes away, Helena swallowed.
“Who…where—where am I?” Helena asked, her voice hoarse and quieter than she’d imagined.
There was no answer for what felt like a very long time. She continued to blink, the figure slowly sharpening into focus with the aid of the room's dim, soft lighting.
The figure was a man with hair so silver, it looked as if it were painted with moonlight. He walked towards her, his gaze never leaving her direction. Her heart pounded at the thought of him coming anywhere near her.
“P-please,” she begged, not even sure what she was asking. Mercy? Death? She didn’t know anymore.
Even if the Resistance was still out there, how could she ever help them in this state?
Her vision sharpened as the man now stood a few feet from the bed. She could make out the sharp black uniform he wore. It was pristine. His silver hair was the brightest part of him, but his face was almost as pale. She squinted her eyes, hoping to make out more detail.
His shoulders sank. “Do you remember me?” he asked, his voice low and hard, but for some reason, Helena did not deem it dangerous.
Was he truly here to help?
She shook her head. “I…I can’t really see you.”
“Would you like me to step closer?”
The question caught her off guard. He sounded sincere despite how flat his tone was. Still, she hesitated to answer.
He could be asking just to make her think she was the one in control. Giving prisoners options can give them a false sense of security. Lumithium still restricted her after all. She had no real defense against him. He could be one of the Undying or liches for all she knew.
“Helena, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, as if he read her expression like a children’s book. “You’ve been unconscious here for a day. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have already.”
She so desperately wished she were able to read his face. In the end, she reluctantly nodded her head, giving him permission to come near her. For every step he took was another second she held her breath.
As he came closer, he steered over to the left side of the bed. There was no rush to his stride, as if he were waiting for her to change her mind.
He was standing a foot away from the side of the bed when Helena’s eyes widened in horror at the realization of who was standing near her.
Kaine Ferron’s face remained unchanged as she scooted away, her hand gripping the edge of the headboard so tightly, her knuckles turned white.
For a second, she had thought it was an older man from the hair alone. The Kaine she attended the institute with had a boyish face with dark brown hair. The man in front of her had grown out of his young skin. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollowed, and his stance lean and sturdy. Even with all the differences, she knew that face.
Kaine Ferron, the Ironguild heir, murderer of Principate Apollo, an Undying, was her rescuer?
No. She had not been rescued. This was just a different cage. An iron-gilded mind-numbing cage.
Ferron’s gaze lowered. “You don’t remember.”
His arms were relaxed at his sides, but his hands were taut in fists.
Helena frowned. “Remember what exactly? I assume it was you who got me out of the tank.”
His jaw clenched. “Yes, but you look at me like a stranger.”
“What could possibly explain why you’re standing here now? What would I have to remember to explain why you’re keeping me as your prisoner?”
Ferron’s eyes immediately shot up, a spark of anguish flickering in his silver slits. “You are not my prisoner.”
“These would argue otherwise,” she retorted, holding up her lumithium-banded wrists.
“You tried to attack me when I got you out of the tank. I wasn’t going to risk you harming me or yourself by taking them off prematurely while you were still possibly hostile.”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Well,” he said, smacking his lips. “You still barely can, and even now, you still look like you want to throw a dagger at me.”
“You’re a murderer,” Helena spat, not caring what words she threw at him. She wanted to hurt him. Even though she was at his mercy as long as she had the lumithium manacles on her, she did not care. “You started the godsforsaken war. You serve Morrough. You are everything the Eternal Flame stood against, and you expect me to thank you for getting me out of a prison to place me in another?”
Ferron’s gaze was elsewhere now, seeming to face the floor. Even though he was close enough for Helena to properly analyze his face, his expression remained unreadable
“Where did you even take me?” Helena asked.
“You’ve been…” His voice trailed off. Silence filled the air for a while. He didn’t look back at her when he finally started to speak. “How much of the war do you even remember?”
Helena was about to answer before she started to reel back in on her time during the war. Flashes of memories jumped out at her, but it was so disjointed and overlapped that she couldn’t tell where one memory began and where another one ended. There wasn’t a clear timeline she could go off of, either.
How long had she even been in the tank? Time was so contorted. The curtains were drawn mostly shut, so it was not probable she would be able to view the nature of the outside world. Ferron had certainly aged since she last saw him. He looked like death.
“I remember,” she started, swallowing a lump in her throat. Her head began to throb. She looked down, hoping that would ease some of the pain. “I remember Lila.”
Ferron raised a brow. “What about Bayard?”
“She… she was returning to her duties. After she–”
“That was last year, Helena.”
Helena frowned. “Why should I even tell you anything?”
His expression didn’t so much as twitch. “If you still think this is some sort of informal interrogation, then perhaps I underestimate your alleged brightness. Now, use that brain of yours and tell me what you remember.”
Jaw clenched, she looked away, refusing to let the contradicting actions of Kaine Ferron further mess with her logic. There was a large chance he could be lying. Though what choice did she have? He was a known vivimancer. Ferron could’ve easily forced answers out of her, but he was simply asking.
That matter alone convinced her that there may be a sliver of hope regarding Ferron actually helping a former Institute peer—a ridiculous thought.
She shook her head, trying to think back, even through her headache. There was a blur of moments, yet she couldn’t recall anything besides usual hospital shifts and ordinary conversations. Helena closed her eyes as she brought a hand to the side of her head as if she had just been knocked out. A flash of Luc’s face made its way to the front of her mind. His armour gleamed, even inside the building. She saw Jan Crowther’s scowl. Lila’s desperate eyes. Timemarks that didn’t have any context continued to flood the spaces in her brain until it started pounding and pounding. When her eyes fluttered back open, she could’ve sworn her vision went red for a split second.
“That’s enough,” Ferron said, his eyes cold and tone dripping with some sort of frustration.
Perhaps it was a good thing she didn’t remember. She had nothing to give.
“What year is it?” Helena asked softly.
“1787. Decembris. You… had been in stasis for four months.”
Helena found herself grateful it was still the year when the war supposedly ended. However, she almost wished she could go back.
Then she remembered the bodies—the cages. The horrifying images of dead Eternal Flame members being puppeted with necromancy. Luc kneeling in front of Morrough—begging.
Her lips quivered. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
Ferron’s expression revealed nothing. He simply took a step back before placing a small vial on the bedside table and sauntered back toward the door. Before he left, he turned to face her from the doorway. She could see him a little more clearly now. His gaze fell to the floor.
“That will help with the pain,” he said, lazily gesturing towards the vial. “Whether you remember or not, it doesn’t matter anymore. You will be escorted out of Paladia in three days. I can’t risk you staying here longer than that. There are arrangements for false identity papers and a location far south, off the mainland. You’ll be safe there. You are incredibly lucky that there were no reports or accounts of your existence while imprisoned. So take what you can get and stay out of Paladia once you’re gone. Do not come back. The war is over, and you’ve lost. There’s no taking anything back.”
Helena’s brown furrowed. “What do you mean? You’re just discarding me at the edge of the world? What was the point in going through the hassle of getting me out of imprisonment if there’s nothing left here?”
She scooted closer towards the door on the bed, eager for any information on the world she had obliterated from her mind. “Why did you help a member of the Eternal Flame if not to save what’s left here?”
His lips pressed firmly together. “Trust me. There’s nothing else left in Paladia worth saving.”
Confusion was an understatement to describe what Helena felt. Her mind swarmed with questions and speculations about what went on while she was in stasis. There were pieces of a puzzle missing from a picture she never began to solve. It was as if she had awoken into a lucid dream, another universe, where she was trapped in a realm for the supposed gods to punish her for crimes she didn’t even remember committing.
Before Helena could utter another word, Ferron left, leaving a dampened silence as footprints.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Ferron didn’t make an appearance for the rest of the day. Helena wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to see or speak with him before their supposed departure from Paladia. Her food was brought to her by a necrothrall servant who reeked of rotten flesh and preserved chemicals. Eventually, she finally got a glimpse of the outside world through the window once she gathered enough strength.
The outside nature was disturbingly dead. The land was covered in white; it was clear that it had recently snowed. The trees twisted towards the sky, no longer holding leaves. Lumps of gray loomed throughout the sky, casting gloomy shadows over the property.
From where Helena was peering through, it was clear she was somewhere on the second floor of this house. It faced the main entrance gate with a shoveled-in trail leading to the front doors.
She had thoughts about escaping. Earlier in the day, she had tested the doorknob to her room, but it had been locked. Perhaps it was an idiotic thought when Ferron had blatantly told her he was helping her escape Paladia and from the ruins of the war. That was the part she was stuck on the most out of the whole situation.
What was in it for Ferron? There had to be some sort of reason why he would help her, out of all people, escape the grasp of Morrough. There had to be an ulterior motive. He hated her. He hated the Eternal Flame. He especially hated Luc and any members of the Holdfast family. She wanted to ask him so many questions, but wasn’t sure how truthful he’d be with her from the start. Was he even telling the truth to begin with? Was he truly helping her leave?
Helena cursed her cloudy mind and inability to think straight. She couldn’t even remember the war or how long it had been since she had been captured; the last thing she was confident in was her own judgment and intuition. With her resonance dampened, it was impossible to even rely on that. From the metal bands around her wrists began a dark abyss that never seemed to end. Her mind was falling and falling and falling down a dark corner there was no freedom from. The war had stripped any self-preservation she had left.
With her piercing headaches and systemically weak state, it was hard to manage to get out of bed just to look out the window the next morning. Since she was barely able to sleep through the night, she was desperate for some colored imagery to distract her—or even just the faint touch of the warm rays the sun would provide. Her eyesight was still adjusting to this world of light and color. So, she sat on a chair just to be able to catch a sight of the sunlight sprinkling through the misty clouds. Her heart twitched at the thought of walking back to bed. She made a trip to the connecting bathroom and cringed at the figure in the mirror. Her skin was taut and shrank against her bones. Her eyes dropped with such heaviness, it was as if they were being pulled down by weights. The curls of her hair looked like a mangled mane. She attempted to comb through it with her fingers, but gave up halfway and tied it back with a black ribbon she found instead.
It felt like she was a shell of the woman she once was.
How could she live outside of Paladia alone like this? She had no one. Her friends had been murdered. Her parents long gone. She didn’t even have the comfort of knowing herself by her side.
If Ferron kept his word, did he really think the best case for her would be going mad in a land she didn’t know? How could she rebuild something that was shattered and tossed into a vast ocean with no hope of return?
Helena Marino was now remarkably alone in this cold world.
Not caring how loud or messy it was, she sobbed on the floor against the bed, not even making it to the mattress.
She cried and cried until her respirations were rapid and uncontrolled, causing her a feeling of dizziness her brain could not afford with such pain. The vial Ferron had supplied had run dry hours ago, and the result was this overwhelming sense of dread and aching that Helena could not find the roots of. They were buried too deeply.
As if already forgetting, she reached her hands to her temples, attempting to feel her own wounds with her resonance. The lumithium must have clogged any tunneling, because she was lost in her own twisted mind. It curved and spiraled in nonsense directions that led to solid walls, as if rerouted into dead ends. This must have been a false sensation, caught within the webs of the lumithium.
Her intuition vibrated throughout her head. She ignored it.
She dug deeper with what little weak link she could grasp. It didn’t take much before her hands fell in exhaustion and a sting circling around her wrists, cradling her nerves throughout her fingers.
Her excessive breathing did not ease, even with the more controlled tears. Helena knew going into respiratory alkalosis would only worsen her confusion and mental status, but she didn’t seem to find herself caring enough to stop it.
There was a squeezing sensation in her chest with a dense pressure that grew and grew until Helena found herself gripping onto the fabric of the dress resting above her breasts.
Helena, a name whispered into her ear like a comforting flame. She held onto that rare sense of home as her head tilted forward, the breathing more forced and numb. Her sight grew scattered and blurry, going in and out of focus every time she blinked. It was hard to tell if it was the tears or just her sensitive eyes.
Her voice rasped out as the pressure in her chest grew tighter and tighter until it ran out of room in her heart and radiated to her arms, and then her stomach. It started to suffocate her lungs as well.
As she crouched over, her entire body feeling like it was being simultaneously crushed, she looked up and saw Lila’s familiar, desperate face. The paladin primary crouched with her, her hands hugging the lower quadrants of her stomach. When Helena went to reach out towards her, her figure fizzled away into smoke, turning the room into a cave of black.
“She was pregnant,” Helana muttered within her sobs, the realization straining her head even further. “Lila was pregnant.”
She remembered. Helena had promised Luc she would protect Lila and their baby. She promised, and she had failed.
Another figure stepped out of the dark. Soren walked limply, his golden hair washed with red. He carried Luc’s helmet in his arms, staring blankly into the void next to Helena. His skin was slashed and rotted. The once glimmering eyes held nothing but a pit of death. It was only for a moment before he, too, vanished.
There was a rapid thrumming pulse in her neck when the scarce light in the room closed in on her, allowing the darkness to swallow her whole.
Helena attempted to shake her head out of this madness. She was supposed to be doing something. What was it that she was supposed to be doing? Waiting. Right. She told herself that she would wait. She promised to.
The shadows closed in, causing Helena to fall back, her head hitting the footboard. The room continued to shrink.
“We’re losing the war,” Ilva Holdfast’s voice wisped through the air.
“We already lost,” Helena whispered the answer in such sorrow—her eyes unable to squint shut any longer.
There was a muffled sound in the room that grew closer and closer, causing Helena to scrabble her fingers over to the top of the footboard in a hopeless attempt to escape, but she was too weak to pull herself out of whatever hell she was experiencing.
A glimmer of silver hair stepped into the light with sombre eyes that glanced all over her with such warmth and caution. He urgently kneeled beside her, grabbing onto her shoulders. Helena couldn’t tell if it was actually Kaine Ferron or the ghost of him from her past.
“Helena,” he said, his voice wavering in such a way she had never heard before.
No. She had heard it before. A long time ago, in a memory too barred away for anyone to access.
It was attached to a feeling of a sweet, hard kiss. She really was losing her mind.
“Helena, breathe.”
She couldn’t. She had forgotten how, and it was crushing her body even more.
The same hands that gripped her shoulders snaked their way to the sides of her jaw, forcing her gaze onto Ferron’s wild, moonlit eyes. It flickered from one of her eyes to the other, entirely focused on her existence alone. His lids were widened and brows furrowed, deepening the creases on the bridge of his nose.
Helena became captivated by Kaine Ferron’s eyes. They were hypnotic in the way they stared her down with something she had not thought he was capable of feeling.
Admiration. Desperation. Concern.
It was the first time since coming here that she was able to read something from his body.
His hands cradled her face gently. It was the only thing keeping her from collapsing. She could feel his resonance pour into her, no doubt attempting to figure out what was happening to her.
It swirled inside and went up and up into her brain where the fire had roared the loudest. She could feel it burn more and more as if the linings of her skull were being shredded and torn. She screamed, but heard nothing.
Ferron’s lips were moving.
A blur swished in the darkness.
And then there was nothing.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
“I have warned you, that 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.”
The first thing Helena saw when she woke up was the endless silver beauty of Kaine’s eyes. As much as she thought her own eyes were her favorite feature, Kaine’s eyes had always been her’s. She had never told him such a truth.
The rest of his face was still a slight blur from her eyelashes obscuring her sight, adding fuzz all around. Under her fingertips grazed the familiar soft fabric of the bed. The mattress had a steep dip in it from Kaine’s weight sitting beside her, his hands firmly rubbing her knuckles one by one. It was the same massage her own hands had taught him.
Kaine’s eyes met her’s the moment Helena sucked in a breath at the sight. His hands stilled, his entire body seeming to be frozen in place.
Helena was able to glance down at her arm since her head was propped up by a soft pillow. An intravenous drip was inserted through her wrist, connected to a bag hooked on the wall beside the headboard. While her eyes strained from trailing the IV tube, she no longer felt the burn and piercing pain that possessed her head.
Her eyes found Kaine once again. He was analyzing her, wondering if she had still forgotten all about him.
When she smiled, his shoulders relaxed.
“You came for me.”
His face softened as he brought a hand towards her jaw, this thumb simultaneously stroking her cheek and brushing back a loose curl.
Kaine’s familiar voice was finally heard after such a long period of darkness. “I always do.”
With a heavy sigh, Helena leaned back into the pillow, soaking in a moment she never thought she would have again as her throat closed up. She wondered if he felt the same way.
Even in that void of black within the tank, his presence was in the back of her mind. She had been waiting for someone, and here he was, taking care of her like he had always promised in her ear all those late nights together.
Her hand closed around his, a warm drop running down her cheek. Kaine gave a small, tired smile in return. There was a dark cloud weighing down his shoulders. It was clear Morrough still tormented his days. Helena’s stomach twisted at that idea.
He was alone this whole time, looking for her while Morrough pulled him on a razor-lined leash.
Even then, he found her.
Despite it all—all the odds and trials—they were still standing. They were still them.
They just had to stick it out for a little longer.
She only had room for one thought: I’m going to save you, Kaine.