Helena’s darkness is suddenly disturbed by light flooding the chamber where she is being held. She hears panicked voices discussing her time in stasis and their surprise that she is alive and responsive. She feels pain but is put back to sleep. When she wakes again, the voices, including a new woman’s voice, are discussing other prisoners and the High Necromancer. They discuss the fact that Helena appears to have been “stored wrong” and how that fact coincides with the lack of records about her. They discuss moving her to “Central,” and Helena hears people leave the room. The woman, who remained, tells her to stop faking unconsciousness. 

The woman confronts Helena with the fact that she has two Prisoner numbers but no records attached to either one, but Helena is too disoriented to answer and doesn’t remember what happened to her. The woman summons two Necrothralls (reanimated corpses that are used as laborers in the novel’s universe) to move Helena to Central. She passes out from the pain and light, but the woman revives her with something in a syringe and begins to question her. Helena is strapped to a gurney, and the woman informs her that her name is Helena Marino and the records regarding her transfer to stasis are confused, resulting in the fact that, for 14 months, she has been stored in stasis without any record of it.

The woman asks Helena where she was before stasis, and suddenly, she remembers being captured near the Alchemy Tower and caged with her compatriots. They were all forced to watch as their leaders, the losing side of the war, were killed and then reanimated into necrothralls and ordered to kill their allies.  She struggles to address the woman before her, who punishes her when she cannot answer. Helena realizes the woman is a vivimancer, an alchemist able to reach into and control (to differing degrees) other people, when the woman places her hand on Helena’s head and sends a shock of pain through her. Helena begins to remember more—that she was part of the Resistance and loyal to Luc Holdfast and his kin—the lead family in the Resistance against and leaders of the former government—but doesn’t know why she is in captivity.

When the woman probes her mind again to attempt to find the answers, she is shocked by the pathways in Helena’s brain, which indicate that another vivimancer has rerouted the pathways of her brain to remove her memory. The woman hasn’t seen anything like this before and says that a vivimancer would have to be incredibly skilled to do it. 

The woman reminds Helena that Principate Apollo Holdfast, formerly the head of the country before the High Necromancer took power, was killed. She continues to probe what Helena remembers about the war. Helena reveals that the side she was on, the Resistance, was led by the Holdfasts in an attempt to take back the government from the High Necromancer and his immortal followers, known as the Undying. Helena’s memory continues to return, and she remembers that the Resistance lost and the leaders where executed. Morrough, the High Necromancer, killed Luc, Apollo’s son and the new Principate, who was leading the rebellion. A devastated Helena, who was one of the Resistance’s leaders, used her vivimancy skills to heal Resistance soldiers. She can’t believe she’d forget Luc dying. 

She remembers arriving from her home country of Etras to this country, Paladia, to study alchemy at the Alchemy Institute; she and Luc had instantly become friends. She can’t feel her resonance (power) now, as the manacles she has worn throughout stasis suppress her power. They are made of lumithium, which “bound the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire together, and in that binding, resonance was created” (23). She reflects on resonance, which is considered “a gift […] to elevate humanity” (23). Before the war, about 20% of Paladians had some degree of resonance, and their alchemy powers were generally centered around power over metals and inorganic compounds. However, in a few, resonance manifested as vivimancy, the power to control others, and necromancy, the power to create necrothralls. She concludes that the manacles are somehow tuned to suppress her without the usual accompanying pain, and she realizes that until she gets her resonance back, “she wasn’t an alchemist at all” (24).

The woman leaves, and Helen appears to be alone, but she knows there is a necrothrall nearby, she can smell it. Necrothralls are used by the Undying for menial tasks and labor, as they are like “puppets,” easily controlled and perfect for menial tasks. Then someone whispers, “Marino?” and looks through the curtain surrounding Helena. She introduces herself as Grace, a Resistance hospital orderly. Helena is shocked by deep knife scars running down Grace’s face, but the woman tells her that all the Resistance that are still alive have them; they are self-inflicted, meant to make themselves unattractive to the Undying, who are permitted to do whatever they want to the former Resistance.

Grace tells Helena about the end of the war. Everyone in the Order of the Eternal Flame, the leaders of the Resistance, is dead except Helena. The Undying, under the command of the anonymous High Reeve, who reports to the High Necromancer and acts as his executioner, have taken over. She reports mass executions, with the High Reeve, whose identity isn’t known, using resonance to kills them. Helena can’t believe what she’s hearing. 

They hear someone approaching, and Grace disappears. The woman vivimancer and her necrothralls , Doctor Irmgard Stroud, bring Helena to Morrough. Helena recalls watching him kill Luc. As her gurney travels to Morrough, Helena realizes that the High Necromancer has moved into the Tower, the headquarters of the Alchemy Institute, where she once trained. 

The vivimancer, revealed to be Dr. Isabel Stroud, takes her to a new room where another man examines her. He says what has been done to Helena’s brain is “scientifically impossible,” but when another man speaks from the shadows, the doctor trembles. Morrough appears—Helena recognizes him—but she sees that he is now almost skeletal, with black holes where his eyes would be. He wants to know if it is possible to recover what has been hidden in her mind.

Another man, named Shiseo, joins them, and the group discusses how to “transmute a healer’s mind” (26). (Helena is considered a healer for how she uses her vivimancy.) He replaces her outdated manacles with updated bands that completely suppress her resonance—it is like losing her senses. Morrough has Mandl, the warden who appears to have put Helena in stasis, brought to him, and he berates her. She explains that she wanted to torture Helena by keeping her alive and conscious in stasis, but she was then transferred. She sees Helena, who was a vivimancer like her but working with the Resistance, as a traitor. As punishment, Morrough reaches into Mandl’s body and pulls out a small metal piece. He then places the piece into a nearby necrothrall, and Helena realizes that he has moved Mandl’s consciousness into the reanimated corpse.

The group then realizes that Helena’s ability to survive such adverse conditions is a sign of her marked resonance, and the doctor posits that she performed the changes to her mind on herself. Stroud is disbelieving. They wonder about the possibilities of altering the mind and soul, speculating that the Order of the Eternal Flame had an animancer—or person who could enter someone’s mind and heal it from within—to help Helena shield her memories from them. Stroud has heard the name Elain Boyle connected to Luc’s name as a healer, and they speculate that the Resistance had discovered how a vivimancer could essentially conduct what Morrough calls “soul transference.” He becomes convinced that Helena’s mind hold the answers. Shiseo believes the transference would have to happen over time, with numerous sessions that increase the entrance and length of time so that Helena would have time to get used to it. Morrough decides to send Helena to the High Reeves’s home, so that he can begin learning about the transference process on Helena.

Helena is taken back to Central, the prison where she’s been held. On the way, she pays attention to the different floors of the Alchemy Tower and remembers its past. Before the Alchemy Institute and the Holdfasts, alchemical practitioners were “figures cloaked in myth and mystery, like Cetus, the first Northern alchemist” (44). The Tower held all the activities of the Alchemy Institute, from classes to research. 

Dr. Stroud places her in a locked room and leaves. Helena is no longer tied to the gurney, but she is too weakened from stasis to stand. Helena reflects that she doesn’t remember anything about transference or animacy. She has never heard of Elain Boyle, and she would’ve known if there were other healers besides her in the Resistance. She resolves find a way to escape and live up to Luc.

Dr. Stroud continues to examine Helena sporadically, finding scars and nerve damage that Helena doesn’t remember getting. Helena does her best to protect her memories while extracting information from Stroud, but she admits that she didn’t know she was a vivimancer when she joined the Resistance, and after they discovered it, Luc didn’t care and forced the others to accept her. The Resistance, after all, was focused on the idea that vivimancy and necromancy were aberrations of alchemy, and those who had such powers needed to be destroyed. Meanwhile, squabbles emerged between the various alchemy guilds who wanted to legitimize all forms of alchemy. A Guild Assembly formed to combat the religious elites; led by Artemon Bennet, this group planned to form a “New Paladia” where magic would be regarded as science and not sin. Morrough emerged amid this political turmoil, revealed himself as a necromancer, and gained followers by promising them immortality.

Dr. Stroud brings someone new, a man Helena recognizes as Jan Crowther. Helena is relieved to see Jan, who was a member of the Eternal Flame Council, until she realizes that this is an Undying wearing Jan’s corpse. Although the Undying are immortal, if their bodies are damaged they begin to decompose, and the Undying are forced to transfer themselves into reanimated corpses, leaving each behind as it decays. They make plans to transfer Helena to the High Reeves.

Helena travels with Stroud by car to an undisclosed location outside the Tower. On the way, she muses on all she’s learned about her circumstances and realizes she has no chance of escape. She decides that the best course of action is to goad the High Reeve into killing her before her hidden memories can be revealed. She arrives at a manor called Spirefell, the property of a powerful iron alchemy family, the Ferrons. A slight woman named Aurelia greets her. Inside, Helena meets Aurelia’s husband, Kaine Ferron, whom she recognizes from her time as a student at the Institute. However he has changed—his black hair has turned “silver-white” and his skin has paled.. The couple gets into an argument about Helena staying at Spirefell, and she realizes that she will be held prisoner here while the High Reeve attempts soul transference.

Kaine uses his resonance to examine Helena’s brain and finds it fascinating. She blocks her mind out of loyalty to Luc and the Resistance. She deduces that Kaine is the High Reeve, and and his powerful resonance and abilities are Morrough’s secret weapon.

Aurelia shows Helena to her room, a small dark corner of the estate. She is given the bare necessities and scratchy, thin clothing, and her food is “pig slop.” Feeling lonely, she reminds herself that she must survive. She muses on her past interactions with Kaine. He was her classmate and academic rival at the Institute. She swears to beat him now as she did in school. She tries to leave the room, but the hallway is dark and reminds her of the stasis tank, and she cannot go out. She spends her time trying to remember everything about the Ferron family and her own history.

On the second day, Helena creeps out of her room, but the hallway is dark and reminds her of the stasis tank. She has a panic attack and when she wakes, she is back in her room. Aurelia enters and scolds her for not washing. She tells Helena that the first transference session with Kaine will happen that night. She leads Helena to another room to wait for Kaine, but Helena realizes that it is his adjoining study and Aurelia is sabotaging her. She discovers a collection of curious papers, but Kaine’s appearance interrupts her snooping.

Kaine abruptly begins the transference session, using his resonance to access Helena’s mind, memories, and soul. Helena fights back despite the pain of the intrusion. Throughout the session, various images and memories appear in her mind, many of which upset her. When he leaves her mind, she collapses, and he yells at her to leave. She stumbles back to her room. She decides to try to throw herself out of her window, but Kaine catches and stops her. He casually looks through her mind again, which is not painful like the transference; in fact, she is surprised that she can barely feel him and realizes that he must be very skilled.

Helena is in a fever for a few days after the process, and they decide they have to slow down Kaine’s practice to once a month. Helena realizes that she might be a prisoner there for a long time. Aurelia gives Helena new clothes per Kaine’s instructions, and Kaine and Stroud decide that she should have daily exercise outdoors to try to mitigate the seizures and fevers after transference practice. Thereafter, Kaine lets Helena take daily walks in the courtyard; he sits nearby and reads the paper while she does so. She tries concocting an escape plan but wonders if it would be better to die by suicide. She doesn’t believe the soul and body should be separated—which is what Kaine might do to her; she resolves to do anything to keep him from this goal.

Helena gains access to a newspaper and is shocked to discover that the year is 1788. Her last memory is from 1786, meaning that her memories of both the 14 months in stasis and the 19 months of war before that have been erased. She reads an article about herself, in which the Undying claim that she was the last fugitive member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and has now been captured. It also says that she is being held at the Ferron estate. She realizes that they are trying to use her as bait to catch any remaining Resistance. She reads about a new program run by Dr. Stroud, and she realizes that it is a breeding program, promising economic rewards to struggling alchemists to steal and channel their powers.

One day she stays in the courtyard too late and has a panic attack when attempting to get back through the dark hallways to her room. Kaine is shocked to learn that she is afraid of the dark, and he comments that he was “looking forward to breaking” her (102), but she’s already done it to herself.

After this incident, Kaine escorts her to and from the courtyard, but he mocks her fear of the dark. When she is alone, she explores the estate, determined to find something to help her die by suicide. Wherever she goes, however, necrothralls follow her at Kaine’s behest, stopping her from hurting herself. One day, she finds a Ferron family portrait of Kaine, his father Atreus, and Kaine’s mother. The painting looks unfinished, and she hides it away again. 

Dr. Stroud continues to check and examine her to make sure she is healthy enough to withstand the transference training. She jokes about using Helena in her breeding program, and Helena tells her that the Order of the Eternal Flame sterilized her; although they used her vivimancy in a healing capacity, they didn’t want her to be able to pass what they saw as an aberration to a child. Stroud tells her that the Eternal Flame had identified vivimancers like Mandle at birth, causing them to be abandoned by their parents. They lived in an orphanage and were used as forced labor. She draws a parallel to the way the Eternal Flame used Helena, but Helena protests. She tells herself that Luc didn’t know about the children because his job as Principate was so complicated. tend to her, desperate to keep her alive and well for Morrough. 

Later, Kaine comes to her room, and she believes he is going to sexually assault her. However, he just probes her mind, sifting through her thoughts. He tries to convince her that she is mistaken about who the Holdfasts really were, insisting that they used her and treated her more like a pet than a person. Helena refuses to listen, insisting that Luc and his aunt, Ilva Holdfast, were her friends. When she asks, he admits that he killed Principate Apollo. He taunts her for saving Resistance fighters only for them to be tortured and killed later.

Helena is overcome by a memory of Luc in which she pushes back against his belief that they have to stay true to the Faith, the worship of Sol, and they will win. She knows that Kaine sees the memory, but she doubts it’s useful to him. She still can’t make sense of what he wants. She reflects on her relationship with Luc. He and his family all had pyromancy powers as well as the power to turn lead into gold, a gift given to them by the god Sol. Orion Holdfast, Luc’s ancestor, founded the Institute so they could teach their alchemical skills to others. Orion disagreed with the teachings of the mythological Cetus—the alleged first alchemist in the North. Over time, they realized that the writings of Cetus were actually done by many different alchemists who published under the same pseudonym for fear of persecution. Orion’s view of teaching alchemy eventually won out. 

Over the following days, Helena continues creeping around Spirefell in search of answers. One day she overhears Kaine talking to the Undying in Jan Crowther’s body and realizes that it is Kaine’s father. Kaine reminds Atreus that he isn’t officially in charge of the family anymore and has no power. He uses his iron alchemy to twist iron from the building around his father and drag him out of the room.

She tries accessing more of her buried memories to understand her circumstances, as well as trying to find a weakness in Ferron that she can exploit. One day, he gives her a white pill, and though she is reluctant, she takes it. Her parents both practices medicine, and she understands how powerful it can be. After she takes the pill, he uses his resonance to calm her, and she finds that the pill extends this feeling. Her emotions are practically nonexistent. He claims this is so that he doesn’t have to deal with her fear of the dark—she doesn’t feel the terror anymore. She notices he is “less mean,” and he sends her outside. Instead, she decides to explore the house while she isn’t afraid. She realizes that he must be always watching her, through the necrothralls or other means, and finds an eye in the corner of her room that he uses to surveil her. s is particularly hard when she is doing sessions with Kaine. She is unsure what sort of magic he has and asks him if he is a homunculus, a human grown from sperm outside the womb, but he laughs and says no. She tries to guess but can’t divine what’s different about him. His silver hair, slight build, and cold demeanor mystify her, and she notices he wears no jewelry but a tarnished silver ring. 

The day after Ferron gives Helena the pill, she experiences excruciating withdrawal from it.

Helena has a seizure during another transference session with Kaine, although he is more careful this time. When she wakes up, a man is holding her, and his face is briefly “emotive” before turning distant. He tells her that she had been screaming, and she looks for comfort from him, asking him who he is. He says he is caring for her, and she will remember when she wakes. 

When she wakes up, Helena realizes that the man was Kaine, and she hadn’t recognized him. She has a terrible fever and walks out into the rainy courtyard for relief. Ferron brings her inside, soaking and cold, and they tie her to the bed until the fevers subside. She has terrible nightmares, and even after she recovers, she keeps recovering memories of Luc through her dreams. She remembers how he would coax her away from her studies and take her into Paladia to explore. 

The next time Helena leaves her room, the house is disorienting, and things seem out of place. Stroud visits and approves continuing the monthly transference sessions. Ferron tells her that the solstice is near, and she will stay at Spirefell for the rest of the winter. He gives her a sturdy pair of boots and leather gauntlets to stop her manacles from getting cold and freezing her skin. He tells her not to mistake it for kindness.