E
Elias Thorne had gold. He had shelves of it, stacked in ingots that gleamed dully in the candlelight. He had cups of it, plates of it, and even a birdcage made of spun gold wire. But Elias Thorne did not have time, and he did not have Sarah.
He sat in his high tower, the city of Altair sprawling below him like a map of glittering stars. On the table before him lay the Magnum Opus—the Great Work. It wasn’t a stone, as the legends said. It was a liquid, shimmering with an iridescence that hurt the eyes. The Elixir of Life.
“It’s finished,” he croaked. His voice was a dry rattle. He was old now. His hands were spotted like liverwort, his back bent under the weight of eighty years of obsession.
He looked at the portrait on the wall. Sarah, frozen in oil paints at twenty-five. She had blue eyes that seemed to laugh at him, and she wore a simple silver locket he had given her when they were both poor. She had died of a fever fifty years ago. A common fever. Something a few copper coins could have cured if they had them. But they didn’t.
So Elias had vowed to conquer death. He had turned his grief into fuel, burning through decades, ignoring the seasons, the wars, the rise and fall of kings. He had mastered the transmutation of matter. He had turned lead to gold to fund his research, becoming the wealthiest recluse in history. And now, he had mastered the transmutation of the soul.
He uncorked the vial. The scent was overpowering—like ozone and wildflowers.
“One drop,” he whispered. “One drop to heal the body. Two drops to reverse age. Three drops… to call back the departed.”
That was the forbidden text. The margin note written in blood by an alchemist who had gone mad. Elias didn’t care about madness. He cared about Sarah.
He didn’t drink it himself. He didn’t want to be young alone. He took the vial and walked to the corner of the room where a dusty urn sat on a pedestal. Sarah’s ashes.
With a trembling hand, he poured the entire contents of the vial into the urn.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the ash began to swirl. It glowed with a white heat, spinning faster and faster, rising into a column of light. Elias shielded his eyes. The air pressure in the room dropped, his ears popping. The light solidified, weaving muscle and bone, skin and hair out of nothingness.
When the light faded, she was there.
Sarah stood in the center of the room, wearing the same simple dress she had been buried in. She looked around, confused, until her eyes landed on him.
“Elias?” she asked. Her voice was as sweet and clear as he remembered. “You look… so old. What happened? Where are we?”
Elias fell to his knees, weeping. “I did it, Sarah. I brought you back. We have forever now. I have gold, I have the castle… I fixed everything.”
Sarah stepped forward, but she didn’t touch him. She looked at the gold ingots on the shelves. She looked at the cold stone walls. She looked at the view of the city, so different from the village she knew.
“How long has it been?” she asked softly.
“Fifty years,” Elias sobbed. “Fifty years of labor. But it was worth it.”
Sarah looked at him with a sadness that broke his heart all over again. “Fifty years? Elias… I was at peace. I was waiting for you. It was warm there, and there was no pain. I saw our parents. I saw the child we lost.”
Elias froze. “But… we are together now.”
“Are we?” Sarah reached out and touched his face. Her hand was warm, but his skin felt like parchment under her fingers. “You spent your life chasing a ghost, Elias. You missed the sun. You missed the rain. You traded your life for my death.”
“I can make more Elixir!” Elias cried, scrambling up. “I can make myself young! We can start over!”
Sarah shook her head. She walked to the window and looked out at the moon. “You cannot buy time, my love. You can only spend it. And you have spent yours all on me.”
She turned back to him, and her form began to flicker like a candle in the wind. The magic was unstable. The law of equivalent exchange demanded a price he hadn’t paid yet.
“No!” Elias reached for her. His hands passed through her arm like smoke.
“Let me go, Elias,” she whispered. “Live the time you have left. Don’t spend it in this tower. Go down to the city. Buy a loaf of bread. Feed the birds. Live.”
“I can’t live without you!”
“You have been living without me for fifty years,” she said gently. “You just forgot to be alive.”
With a final, sad smile, she dissolved. The light faded. The urn on the pedestal was empty. The vial on the table was dry.
Elias Thorne stood alone in the silence of his gold-filled room. He looked at his reflection in a polished silver plate. An old man. A stranger.
He picked up a heavy gold ingot. It felt cold and dead in his hand. He walked to the window and threw it. It plummeted down, down, down into the dark waters of the moat. He threw another. And another.
When the sun rose, the tower was empty of gold. The door, locked for half a century, stood open. And an old man was walking slowly down the road toward the city, stopping to watch a bird sing on a fence post, listening as if it were the most important thing in the world.