Dion dodged the lunge on pure instinct, though there was no need.

  The headless body thumped to the ground beside him, limbs twitching in a final, useless rhythm.

  His mouth hung open.

  What the hell was that?

  He stared at the beast. It didn't bleed. The severed neck was clean and glassy-smooth, as if a blade made of pure absence had passed through it.

  And worse, the beast's head was already cradled in the figure's hand.

  Wait… when?

  The question echoed in a suddenly hollow silence.

  Dion’s vision swam. A wave of vertigo, deeper than exhaustion, threatened to pull him under. He steadied himself through sheer will.

  More than that he felt it. The sheer, oppressive weight of the figure's attention. Though the hood hid the man's face, Dion knew he was being looked at.

  No, more than that. He was being assessed.

  Each layer of his being, flesh, bone, the cold pulse of the Brine-touch in his veins felt open and laid bare for a silent, surgical analysis.

  The figure took a single step forward, the hem of his ash-grey robes whispering against the strange, crystalline flora.

  Dion’s mind, stripped of tactics and pride, scrambled for any anchor in this sea of silent terror.

  The shipwreck. The Titan. The Brine. The Skollynxs. And now… this.

  The sheer, monstrous scale of it all crashed down on him at once.

  He finally snapped.

  The forest….it felt like a madman’s forge, a garden cultivated by gods with a sick twist for distorting nature.

  The "trees" were not wood, they were gnarled pillars of iron and copper.

  The bushes were thickets of coiled, rust-colored vines that pulsed slowly, as if circulating some viscous, internal fluid, and the moss beneath his knees wasn't soft, but a carpet of minuscule, hexagonal silicate plates that glowed with their own sickly, phosphorescent light.

  He had no idea how many cuts he had sustained during the fight, only that his adrenaline had done its best to numb the pain.

  The figure, uncaring of Dion's internal turmoil, took a step forward.

  “A question,” the figure spoke, a dry baritone devoid of malice, but also of any warmth that might have offered comfort.

  It was simply one of pure inquiry.

  “You currently reek of a recent Brine-storm. A stench so thick with its residue….”

  He took another step.

  “You see, those who fall into that sea do not return the same…They come back changed….Hollowed.”

  His hood tilted slightly. “You are not Hollowed. You are conscious. Coherent. And you carry a trace of the Alkahest” he paused.

  “interesting”

  Dion’s mind, still reeling from exhaustion and terror, scrambled to parse the words. The figure’s question felt less like an inquiry and more like an indictment.

  “I-I don’t know what it is,” Dion stammered, struggling to muster any semblance of composure.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  It was impossible.

  The proof was clutched in the figure’s hand, the severed head of the Skollynx. And worse… it wasn’t dead.

  Its trembling pupils swam with terror.

  The dry voice pulled him back.

  “Of course you do. You’ve seen it by now. You should have a general idea of what you currently are.”

  Dion’s breath caught. He knew about the status panel.

  A faint, considering hum came from the hood.

  “Your reaction confirms it,” the figure mused, a thread of genuine interest now woven through its tone.

  He took another step, closing the final distance until the shadow of his hood fell over Dion.

  Yet the only thing the latter was able to make out was how the figure stood a full head taller.

  “Bearer of the Brine Alkahest,” he repeated, the words resonating with an unnerving clarity. “Truly fascinating. Demonstrate it.”

  The phrase was not a request. It was a command, delivered with the calm expectation of a master demanding an apprentice recite a fundamental theorem.

  “I can’t. I’ll die.” Dion flinched, expecting some sort of attack at the refusal. Yet nothing.

  Silence.

  The figure simply gave a slow, thoughtful nod.

  “The cost is too high,” he stated, easily deducing. His unseen gaze seemed to trace the tremor in Dion’s limbs, measuring his exhaustion.

  “A finite resource. The law of equivalent exchange remains inviolable. Most alchemical processes consume external reagents.”

  His hood tilted slightly, “You, however, appear to be both reagent and catalyst. You are being consumed in the reaction. A flawed, yet… unique, paradigm.”

  A pause lingered, heavy with appraisal. Then, a final, simple edict.

  “Come with me.”

  Dion was smart enough to know it wasn't a request.

  His gaze turned to Pello. It was a miracle the latter was even alive, the Skollynx had chosen to focus on Dion instead.

  If he thought of it from another perspective, the scavenger was a sitting duck, they could finish off whenever they wanted.

  Still it worked in his favour.

  Yet now he found himself in a conundrum.

  His initial plan was to go to the Residuum along with the scavenger.

  How did you tell someone with the power to end your life no… the answer was you don't.

  He had no choice.

  Dion’s gaze drifted back to the scavenger, and he noticed something odd. Since the grey-robed figure’s intervention, Pello had not made a sound.

  Dion wouldn’t have marked it, except the man had already proven himself the talkative type.

  Now he was utterly silent, coiled in on himself as if trying to vanish into the glowing, hexagonal plates of the forest floor.

  Leaving a dying man behind didn't sit well with him, especially knowing the Skollynx could always return to finish the job.

  Dion almost chuckled at the absurdity of it. Here his own fate hung in the balance, yet he was weighing the life of a man he barely knew.

  A thought crossed his mind.

  Maybe he wasn't as hardened as he'd believed.

  “What are you?” Dion asked, the words scraping from his throat. “What do you want with me?” If he was going to die either way, he had nothing left to lose.

  Surprisingly, the figure answered.

  “An Alchemist,” he said, his voice a dry rustle in the crystalline silence. “You may call me Physian Van Helmont.”

  Dion’s pupils constricted.

  Alchemist.

  He had heard the word again and again, each time, carrying a tone of fear, or reverence, or both.

  Now, he understood Pello’s paralyzing silence. To the scavenger, this was no different from standing in the presence of a god.

  “As for what I want,” Van Helmont’s voice snapped Dion back to the present, “you represent a phenomenon. A spontaneous manifestation of a principle, bypassing the established Paths entirely.”

  His hood tilted, a gesture of pure, clinical fascination. “A glorious anomaly.”

  With that, the Alchemist stepped back, granting Dion a sliver of space, and a moment to comprehend the scale of the web he’d just entered.

  Dion shuddered, sucking in a ragged breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The pressure of that dissecting gaze lessened, but did not vanish.

  Lorian’s hooded head turned, looking past him as if the gnarled pillars of ironwood and the glowing crystalline hills were mere illusions.

  His gaze seemed to pierce through distance and obstruction, fixing upon the distant, paranoid bustle of the Residuum.

  Even if Dion could somehow reach the Residuum, there was no longer a way in. Its gates were sealed tight, barring its residents behind walls and wards, shutting them away from the creeping horror of the Ferro-Locus, and shutting him out along with it.

  “I offer you a path. Come with me. Your existence poses a question. I would very much like to find the answer.”

  Dion wasn't fooled by the soft gesture of the figure before him.

  It was not an offer of salvation. It was an offer of purpose. Of being a subject of study rather than a piece of livestock.

  Would it be any different from being a slave?

  He couldn’t help but remember Seris’s words back in the cage:

  Once we leave these shores, you’ll be paraded like cattle, sold to whichever of those devil's decides your worth.

  A low, uncontrollable chuckle escaped him.

  Van Helmont watched in silent curiosity. Pello’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  Laughing in the face of a god?

  Perhaps the Skollynx had shaken something loose in Dion’s mind. Maybe taking all those attacks was finally taking its toll.

  Dion didn’t care if they heard his thoughts. He just felt the grim humor of it all, the way things eventually, inevitably, came back around.

  He was a prince without a kingdom, a slave wielding a power he did not understand. Fighting the alchemist would be pure foolishness.

  Dion had no doubt his head would join the beast’s in that robed grasp.

  There were no good choices left.

  Only survival.

  “Okay.” His voice was a dry rasp, but it was his own. “…But what about him?” He nodded toward Pello.

  The scavenger felt a cold lump form in his throat. Why bring me into this? He had been trying his best to stay invisible.

  Anyone who knew the tales understood the terror of an Alchemist. It was never wise to be noticed by one.

  Still, the latter felt a faint hope bubbling beneath. Unfortunately it was quickly snuffed out.

  The Alchemist gaze finally flicked to the wounded man as one might glance at a piece of dust on one’s sleeve. “His utility is at an end. He is extraneous data.”

  The finality in his tone was absolute. There would be no negotiation, no charity. The economy of this man’s world dealt in truths and questions, not in compassion.

  Dion looked at Pello’s pain-glazed eyes, at the selfish hope still flickering there.

  He knew he was a burden.

  Dion looked up at the Alchemist, meeting the darkness beneath the hood. He closed his eyes and exhaled, slowly opening them.

  “He comes with me,”

  It was not a plea.

  It was a condition. The first assertion of his own will since he had been thrown into hellscape.

  The figure didn't seem to respond for a time, when he did, he let out a soft sigh, a sound of what seemed like disappointment.

  He then turned, with a slow, deliberate pivot of his entire body, moving towards the scavenger.

  The latter gulped, a mix of tension and anticipation.

  He couldn't see the face of the figure, but he felt the weight of that attention, a pressure more vast than anything he had encountered.

  It was the feeling of being a specimen on a slide, examined by something so far beyond his own comprehension it might as well be divine.

  He bit his tongue, hard. The sharp, coppery pain was the only anchor he had, the only way to keep from slipping into unconsciousness.

  It was a feat the Alchemist might have noted with clinical interest, had he cared enough.

  Not many could withstand the presence of an Alchemist for long. Of course, this one was holding back. Considerably.

  The hidden gaze swept over Pello with detached, clinical assessment. There was no pity, only analysis.

  That gaze then lifted, and with a finality that felt like a sentence, settled on Dion.

  "Just die.”