Helysium

i'm Helysium — digital artist & writer working in soft dark fantasy and ocean mythology.

here's what you'll find here:

🎨 art — fully rendered illustrations featuring my original characters. ocean spirits, exiled royalty, creatures between worlds 📖 Bitter Waters — my original dark fantasy story, updating weekly and free to read on Ko-fi. currently on chapter 3 🌊 Ocean Spirit commissions — I reimagine your OC as a creature of the sea. 60€, one slot at a time 🎨 commissions — character art from 15€, writing from 2€ ✨ freebies — happening regularly, keep your eyes open!

a few things about me: — chronic lurker trying to show up more — i've been drawing the same two characters for years and i'm not sorry — my story was supposed to be 50 chapters. it's now 150+. the story won. — team tragedy ⚔️🖤 (it suits my lore, i swear)

🔗 links: ☕ Ko-fi and commissions.gg (commissions + story) 📖 Characters & lore 🌿 Bluesky ⚔️ Artfight

🌙 a lot of things happening today, let me catch you up.

first — liria & samudra, chapter 1 illustration. 🌸

liria holding her son on the night of his birth. she's looking somewhere else. she already knows something. samudra is already watching, with those violet eyes that came from her and no one else — the one thing she gave him that no one could take back.

i wanted this to feel like a locket. something private and a little heartbreaking.

second — bangboo-fication is now open! 🤖 your OC reimagined as a bangboo from zenless zone zero. $25, fully rendered. and through my partnership with wooacry/acggoods, you can even turn your bangboo into actual merch — keychain, sticker, print — for a small conversion fee! (production costs at your charge)

third — commissions are open! visual from $15 · writing from $2 · ocean spirit from $60 · bangboo from $25. currently 50% off visual commissions on commissions.gg — link in bio!

fourth — moonbeam supporter membership is open on ko-fi for €1/month. early access to bitter waters, exclusive wips, unpublished art, monthly shoutout & most active member shoutout on tiktok. 🌟

🌙 celeste — moonlit

she's been waiting patiently for this post for about four weeks now. celeste, if you're reading this — i'm sorry. you deserved better. 🙏

celeste is one of my main original characters from the last song of the sea — a harpy who knows what it costs to lose the sky, and chose to reclaim it anyway. there's something about her under moonlight and wisteria that feels exactly right. quiet, powerful, and completely herself. 🌸

also — i'm now open on commissions.gg! visual commissions from $15, writing from $2, ocean spirit from $60. 🌊

🎉 big news — i just got accepted on commissions.gg!

to celebrate, i'm offering 50% off all visual commissions for the next two weeks. 🌊

🌸 chibi — $17 $8 🌊 bust / portrait — $38 $19 ✨ half-body — $55 $27 💫 full body — $82 $41 💞 duo / couple — $120 $60

writing commissions & ocean spirit not included.

this one belongs to toru.

he's existed until now through samudra's eyes — the crown prince who chose to notice, the voice in the alcove, the one person in the palace who gave him honest attention. but samudra's version of toru is incomplete. he sees the care. he doesn't see what it costs.

what i wanted to write — and what i hope came through — is that toru's relationship with samudra is the only thing in his life that is entirely his own. chosen outside the architecture of court and succession. the only place where he is simply toru.

he doesn't tell samudra any of this. of course he doesn't. he tells him instead to be better than them.

in their particular vocabulary, that's the most loving thing he knows how to say. 🌙

free to read on ko-fi. chapters 1–3 also available.

🌊 Aqua & Liria — before everything.

if you've been reading bitter waters, you know aqua through samudra's eyes. distant. unknowable. a gaze that finds his tenth son across a crowded court and reveals nothing. a god on a throne of black coral who has never once reached across the distance his own nature created.

but this is what samudra will never see.

the tenderness that existed before everything calcified into duty and empire and the particular silence of a man who loves the way gods love — intensely, intermittently, and never quite enough. liria, who knew him before she understood the cost of knowing him. aqua, who in this one moment is not an emperor.

there's a small detail hidden in this piece that means something to me. in chapter 2, samudra finds a hidden alcove behind black sea-fern where he goes when the palace becomes too much. he doesn't know it, but the shape of that hiding place came from somewhere.

this scene will never appear in bitter waters. samudra will never know it happened. but i needed to paint it anyway — because these two deserved at least one moment that belonged entirely to them, before the story took everything else.

liria. always liria. 🌙

📖 bitter waters is free to read on ko-fi, chapter 3 just dropped!

this chapter belongs to liria.

not to the court, not to the politics of the empire, not even entirely to samudra — though he is there, watching and being watched, gathering himself toward something neither of them can yet name. this chapter is the quiet before. the last evening of something.

it is also, i think, the truest thing i've written so far.

free to read on ko-fi . and if you missed chapters 1 & 2, those are there too. 🌙

I don’t actually! I wasn’t sure going on other socials were a good idea. I’m a little scared lol! Should I create one?

🌊 ocean spirit freebie #2 — Iris

Iris is a young alchemist in training who loves plants, animals and discovery. when I read about her, a sea nymph felt like the most natural interpretation — not a creature of the dark deep, but something gentler and more alive. someone who brought her garden with her when the ocean called. 🌿

here's what inspired my choices:

🌸 the flowers — she studies plants, so I let them follow her underwater. her tail and body are wrapped in purple blooms, as if the sea adopted her garden.

🌿 the vines — a nod to her alchemist nature, twining around her like living ingredients she hasn't quite finished studying.

💜 the color palette — lavender purple, white and green, exactly as she is. the ocean floor scattered with pink flowers because she brings life wherever she goes.

🔮 the gem — a small touch of alchemic magic in her hair, like a precious ingredient she always carries.

🐰 the sea bunnies — because an alchemist who loves animals could never be without company. one held gently by the scruff, two watching with curiosity, one quietly grazing. they found her naturally. animals always do.

🌊 the setting — deep underwater, light filtering from above. a world to explore, full of things to discover.

"go wild" — challenge accepted. 🌿🌊

🌊 Ocean Spirit freebie #1 — Farasha

Farasha is a wood elf pirate captain with the power to transform butterflies into weapons. this is her ocean spirit interpretation — a version of her that belongs to the sea as much as the sky.

things I kept: her butterfly corset (too iconic to touch), her floral crown (with a golden butterfly added), her warm color palette.

things I reimagined: a tail whose shape echoes butterfly wings, butterflies drifting between sea and air, and a sunken ship hidden in the background — because a pirate captain always leaves a trace. 🚢

7 hours. absolutely worth it. 🦋

this one is quieter than the first. no single dramatic moment, no clear wound to point to. just the slow, patient work of a world deciding what someone is worth — and a boy learning what it means to be seen.

also liria tells a story about a river and a stone and i haven't recovered from writing it.

free to read on ko-fi — https://ko-fi.com/post/Bitter-Waters-Chapter-2-The-Tenth-Son-E4N422WZT1 . and if you missed chapter 1, that's there too. 🌙

honestly? this week has been a lot. in the good way, mostly, but also in the "why is everything happening at once" way.

artfight started and i'm genuinely excited but also terrified — i'm a chronic lurker at heart. like, my natural state is to observe, reblog, appreciate from afar, and never actually interact. so actively participating in something where the whole point is to engage with other people's work is... a stretch for me. a good stretch, but a stretch.

i posted the first chapter of bitter waters this week too. that one sat with me for a while before i hit publish. it's vulnerable in a way i didn't expect — putting writing out there feels different from posting art somehow. more exposed. anyway. it's out there now. and chapter 2 is almost done. 🌙

commissions are open and i'm not going to pretend that part isn't hard. i also joined a new platform this week to try and reach more people — because that's the thing nobody tells you about independent art: it's not just about being good. it's about being visible. and visibility, when you don't have connections or an existing audience, is really, really hard to build from scratch. you can have the work, the prices, everything in order — and still just... wait.

the views are quiet. the clients aren't rushing in. and somehow i'm okay with that — not because it doesn't sting a little, but because i'm not doing this to go viral. i'm doing this because these characters and this story deserve to exist. so i'm not giving up. 🌊

but i'm here. posting. which for a lurker is basically an olympic sport.

the first chapter of Bitter Waters is live on Ko-fi. 🌊

Bitter Waters is the first volume of The Last Song of the Sea — my original fantasy story rebuilt from the ground up. It begins where all stories like this one begin: not with war, not with betrayal, but with a corridor. A child. A father who looks away.

this chapter has been sitting with me for a long time. i hope it finds the readers it's meant for. 🌙

5 hours of painting Samudra compressed into 30 seconds — painted in Procreate with Bo Chen's brushes (genuinely some of the best brushes i've ever used, highly recommend checking them out on ArtStation). used MagicPoser for the torso reference because anatomy is humbling.

the hair and scales were the hardest parts. small repetitive details are my nemesis and always will be.

full post with more details + the video is on my Ko-fi — link in bio! and if there's interest i might post the full 4-minute version too 👀

hi. i'm back. sort of.

honestly i wasn't sure i was going to come back at all for a while there.

depression is a weird thing. it doesn't announce itself — it just slowly makes everything you love feel like it's behind glass. i'd open my sketchbook and close it again. i'd stare at a blank document and just... not. the art stopped. the writing stopped. the weekly posts stopped. and then weeks became months and i didn't really know how to come back without it feeling like a big deal.

so i'm just going to say it plainly : i struggled. a lot. both with my art and my writing, which are kind of the two things i've built my whole creative identity around. losing access to both of them at the same time was really hard.

but i'm here. i'm drawing again. i'm rewriting The Last Song of the Sea from scratch — and honestly the story is so much bigger and truer than it was before, which makes me excited in a way i haven't felt in a while.

things i'm looking forward to : — new illustrations and character art — speedpaints and process stuff — artfight ⚔️ (yes i'm participating, more on that soon) — commissions eventually reopening, when i'm ready

if you're new here — welcome, i'm glad you found this little corner. if you've been here a while and you stayed — thank you. genuinely.

take care of yourselves out there. 🌊

🌊✨ WIP Update — Samudra & Celeste ✨🌊

Slowly sharing a new step of this illustration. Samudra and Celeste are finally side by side, and I’ve started working on the colors — figuring out the mood, the balance between them, and the atmosphere I want to convey.

This piece is still very much a work in progress, but I’m enjoying taking my time with it, letting it grow naturally instead of rushing toward a finish. Exploring color always feels a bit chaotic, but it’s also where the illustration really starts to breathe 🎨