The air has grown stale with crushed leaves, heated tinctures, and the sharp tang of alcohol. Candle stubs sag into puddles of wax across every flat surface. Mortars crowd the worktable. Glass vials. Dried roots. Scraps of parchment scrawled with hurried observations. And at the center of it all, a shallow ceramic dish filled with onyx powdered threvenar.
Or what is supposed to be threvenar.
Rubi rolls her shoulders once, slowly, easing the ache from hours bent over the bench. Then she reaches for the mortar again.
Elandor had another batch of threvenar delivered to her from the Shades.
A fresh pinch of the powder goes in.
She grinds.
The stone pestle moves in steady circles—practiced, rhythmic, precise.
But the powder does not behave.
It should reduce cleanly. Break into finer and finer granules. That is the nature of properly dried threvenar—brittle, obedient, easily broken down.
Instead, the powder drags. Just slightly. Clings. Almost imperceptibly. Smears faintly against the bowl. So obscure it’s almost unnoticeable.
Rubi stills. She presses harder. Twists the pestle.
The substance gathers into soft clumps, flattening under pressure instead of fracturing. When she lifts the pestle, a thin sheen glistens along the stone that she hasn’t noticed before.
Slowly, she sets the pestle aside.
From her sleeve, she draws a narrow apothecary blade and scrapes the mortar’s surface. The residue stretches. Just slightly. A delicate filament—no thicker than spider silk—pulls free before snapping.
Her jaw tightens. It’s not fiber… certainly not an oil. It’s adhesive.
She scrapes again, gathering the smear onto the blade’s edge. Tilts it toward the candlelight. Gloss. Subtle. Almost invisible.But undoubtedly there.
This changes everything. If she can just figure out what it is, she’ll know exactly how to purge it from the system. Because if those Memory Orbs are shattered and the threvenar still lives inside the veins of the Dravari—it won’t matter. Freeing the memories is not enough.The people must remember, too.
Rubi moves fast.She’s close—she can feel it.
She prepares two bowls.
One filled with cold well water. The other warmed gently over flame until faint steam curls from its surface.
Equal measures of the powder fall into each.
She waits.
Pure threvenar disperses immediately. It blooms outward in dark clouds, dissolving into suspension with barely a stir. That’s why it’s so effective as a treatment—straight in water, consumed easily.
This does not dissolve evenly.
The powder darkens where it touches water. Some particles sink heavily. Others cling to the sides leaving a rust-colored residue. The rusty hue bleeds into the water, where thin, membranous threads stretch and fold back into themselves like they’re searching for something to latch onto. So thin, no one would notice if they weren’t looking for it. And in places like Virellin where water was gathered from a collective well, no one expected it to actually be clean.
Rubi stirs the cold bowl first.
The threads break apart.
Then reform.
She stirs the warm bowl.
The effect worsens. Filaments elongate, tangling around the stirring rod. When she lifts it, a strand follows—thin, glistening, elastic.
