“You’re glowing through a blood-soaked wrap.”
“Fine has become flexible.”
“Sit or I’ll make you.”
I look at her and she looks back without flinching. She would.
I sit on the edge of the table because collapsing in front of Adran would be a gift, and I refuse to hand him one wrapped this nicely. Kavor shifts nearer. I don’t look at him. I can’t.
Rosalind unwraps the first bundle carefully. A healthy epis strand. Even diminished, even cut, it glows blue-purple against the mineral cloth, like a piece of impossible night.
Silence devours the chamber. Adran inhales. Virn’s pupils narrow. Syin appears in the doorway, pulled by rumor, instinct, or some City message chain I didn’t hear. His gold eyes lock on the strand, then on me, then on Kavor.
No one speaks.
For one breath, everyone is beautiful with hope. Then the wanting arrives.
“How much?” Adran asks.
Not what is it? Not is it safe? How much.
Rosalind’s fingers close around the edge of the cloth. “Not enough for distribution.”
“But there is more,” he says.
I close my eyes for half a second. Mistake.
The cavern comes back. Blue curtains. The draining pool. Kavor’s mouth. His hands opening. The old system watching us like an eye. Then I open my eyes.
“There’s a source,” I say.
The chamber changes again. Even Ila. Even Rosalind. No one is immune to enough.
“There’s also a machine eating it,” I continue, before they can make salvation out of it. “A network under the old sealed district. It’s using old channels, tied to the wrong rhythm and the zemljamovement. Parts of the epis are corrupted. The source is not safe to access.”
Adran looks at the glowing strand. “But it exists.”
“Yes.”
“That changes everything.”
“It might kill everything.”
His gaze lifts. “Fear is not strategy, Sera.”
“No. But neither is starvation with a flag.”
Ila makes a tiny sound that might be approval.
Adran ignores her. “If there is a viable source below us, the City cannot sit idle.”
“The City nearly dropped a storage chamber into a channel because the system twitched,” I say. “If we rush this, we don’t harvest epis. We crack ourselves open.”
Rosalind unwraps the blackened sample next. The room recoils. Good. Let them see the rot, too.
The piece is small and sealed inside layers, but even through the treated hide, it gives off a sick white-gray flicker. The healthy strand dims near it.
“That is not natural,” Syin says, snapping his wings tighter while Virn growls.
