“Among the many errors committed by those who speak loosely of alchemy, the most persistent is this: they believe alchemy to be the manipulation of substances.

  This is false.

  Alchemy is the re-education of transformation itself. All substances change.

  Only the Alchemists decide how and why change occurs. At the heart of this decision lies a force older than method, subtler than soul, and more tyrannical than will. This force is called Archeus.”

  —Paracelsus, On the Hidden Forces of Nature.

  ___

  Wield the Alkahest properly.

  What the hell was that?

  Dion knew the thought was his. He felt it rise from the same voice that had carried him through the pit, through the cold, through every moment he should have broken but didn't.

  Yet it also felt like something else. Something older. Something that had been waiting, patient and still, in the dark of his blood.

  His heart thrummed. Not in fear. In recognition.

  Whatever it was, it had everything to do with what he currently was.

  As if reading the silence itself, the alchemist spoke.

  “You bear an Alkahest.”

  The words hit like a key turning in a lock. Dion's mind snapped into place.

  The Titan. The sapphire orb. The cold that had swallowed him whole and spat him back out changed.

  Silence stretched between them, thick with unasked questions. The alchemist did not wait for them to form.

  “There is a hierarchy to the Art. A Path called the Alkah-Realms. The Seven Gates of Transformation.”

  His voice shifted, becoming clearer, like that of a lecturer addressing a promising yet backward student.

  He began to list them, each word carving itself into the heavy air.

  Calcination.

  Dissolution.

  Separation.

  Conjunction.

  Fermentation.

  Distillation.

  Coagulation.

  A pause. Letting the weight of a thousand years of knowledge settle between them.

  “An Alchemist,” he continued, “is one who has ingested an Alkahest and survived the first Gate. These are the stages. The transformations. Each one breaks you down. Each one rebuilds you into something else. Something… more.”

  Dion felt the implication settle into his chest, cold and bright.

  “Am I… one of you?” His voice was quiet, but it carried.

  Silence. Then.

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  “No.”

  The word hung with absolute certainty.

  “You are an anomaly…you exist outside of the path.”

  Those words again. Dion thought.

  "Every gate requires its corresponding Alkahest to pass the trial successfully," the Alchemist continued, his voice methodical, a lecturer dissecting a theorem.

  "The First Gate, Calcination demands the Ash Alkahest. It is the breaking down of ego, of form. One who survives it learns what it means to become ash."

  He paused, letting the weight settle.

  "The Second Gate Dissolution requires the Brine Alkahest. It is the drowning of what remains. The dissolving of boundaries. The self, already broken into ash, must learn to flow, to merge, to lose itself completely in the primal solvent."

  His hood tilted slightly.

  "With each successive gate, the trial becomes progressively harder to comprehend, let alone survive. The Alkahests themselves grow more elusive, their natures more abstract. Most who attempt the path never leave the First Gate. Those who do spend decades, lifetimes preparing for the Second, and then centuries preparing for the Third."

  A beat of silence.

  "And then, you are an anomaly that exists outside the scope of the path. You carry an Alkahest of the second gate, yet you have never touched the first. You have never been calcined."

  His voice dropped, almost imperceptibly.

  "Yet, you embody the Gate of Dissolution. Entirely. Completely.”

  Boom.

  The word hung in the air like a verdict.

  For Dion, the string of words came so fast he could hardly wrap his head around what he was hearing. Calcination. Dissolution. Trials. Gates. Alkahest. The terms felt ripped straight out of a fantasy book, the kind the royal tutors would have scoffed at.

  But one thing stood out. One phrase that cut through the noise and lodged itself in his chest like a splinter.

  Alkahest.

  Was that the name of the sapphire orb of light currently residing somewhere deep in him.

  He couldn't feel it most of the time, but in moments like this, when fear or focus sharpened his senses, it pulsed like a slow, patient heartbeat waiting for his command.

  Dion finally asked.

  The silence stretched. When the Alchemist spoke, his voice carried something Dion had never heard from him before, something almost like reluctance.

  "I don't know."

  Dion blinked.

  Surprise flickered through him, then disbelief. Somehow, he had expected this man to hold the answers to everything. To be the one figure in this nightmare who actually understood.

  And now he was telling him, he was clueless?

  Dion doubted that. He doubted it very much.

  "I can tell you it is power in its rawest form," the Alchemist continued, his tone shifting, almost contemplative.

  "I can tell you it is the language of creation. The residue of the unknown. The first cry of existence before existence had a name."

  He paused.

  "I can tell you it is a curse. A gift. A disease. A key."

  Another pause, heavier this time.

  "Yet none of these words do it justice. Because the Alkahest is not a thing to be described. It is a thing to be experienced."

  "My knowledge is vast," the Alchemist said slowly, "yet… incomplete."

  His focus returned fully to Dion, sharp and analytical. The weight of that unseen gaze pressed down like a physical force.

  "And then there is you. Anomaly. Untrained. Yet you do not merely express it. You exude it. A raw and terrifyingly direct form of the Alkahest. Unfiltered. Unrefined. Unearned."

  He paused, then leaned forward. His hand rose to the hood.

  For the first time, Dion caught a glimpse beneath it.

  The fabric pulled back, revealing a face that defied every expectation he had carried. The most distinct features were his hair, half white, half black, split cleanly down the center like two opposing currents frozen mid-collision.

  And his eyes. They mirrored the same duality.

  One pale as bleached bone, the other dark as polished obsidian. Both held an unsettling, crystalline quality, as if he were looking at precious stones set into a human face.

  But what struck Dion hardest was his age. He looked young. Mid-twenties at most. His skin was smooth, unmarked by stubble or the weathering of years. No wrinkles. No scars. No evidence of the lifetimes of knowledge he claimed to carry.

  Van Helmont was not what Dion had imagined. Not old. Not withered. Not monstrous.

  And somehow, that made him more frightening.

  Dion steeled himself for the final question.

  "What do you want with me?"

  His words landed.

  The Alchemist regarded him for a long moment, those dual-colored eyes unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was calm. Clinical. As if stating a simple, observable fact.

  "Every time you manifest the Alkahest, you give off a delicious scent. Alchemists like myself are drawn to it."

  His crystalline eyes seemed to glint with something like a flicker of hunger before it vanished, and he was once again the stoic, impassive figure Dion had come to know.

  Dion shivered involuntarily. A cold knot tightened in his stomach.

  Yet the Alchemist was far from done.

  "Observing you. Understanding how you manage to absorb an Alkahest, yet bypassing the Path entirely. This is the key to mastering the Alkahests in their purest form."

  The truth settled over Dion, colder than the stone table beneath his fingers. He was neither a student nor a slave, at least not in the traditional sense.

  He was a key. A living, breathing cheat code for a power this Alchemist could not fully wield on his own.

  The Alchemist made a simple motion, squeezing his palm. On cue, the crystalline rock, caught between solid and liquid, reverted to sludge. The next second, it burned out of existence entirely, leaving only a faint shimmer in the air where it had been.

  Dion watched the whole process. He took a breath.

  Somehow, the air felt different in his lungs. Colder. Sharper. The petty frustration, the princely indignation, the lingering heat of pride he had been clutching onto like a drowning man, all of it evaporated.

  Burned away by the cold, stark truth now settled deep in his chest.

  He was not what he thought he was. And whatever he was becoming, it was no longer measured in titles or lineage.

  It was measured in what he could do.

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