Kaelen nudged the wooden bowl of warm barley tea into Linnea’s trembling hands.
The young alchemist took three shuddering sips, the black veins beneath her lower eyelids dimming as the warmth settled her fluttering pulse. She did not explain the dark marks, and Kaelen did not ask. Asking questions only invited long, exhausting conversations about life choices.
Twenty-six hours later, on the afternoon before tomorrow’s Herb-Compatibility Trial, the massive bronze doors of the Nine-Cauldron Scripture Pavilion swung inward with a cavernous groan.
A heavy wave of aged paper, cinnabar ink, and dried beast hide rolled out into the sunlit courtyard.
“Enter, candidates,” an elder’s dry voice echoed from the shadowed foyer. “The preparation stage of Round 2 requires six mandatory hours inside the Scripture Pavilion before tomorrow’s Herb-Compatibility Trial. Any candidate who leaves before the sixth gong forfeits their qualification.”
Kaelen shuffled across the polished flagstones with forty other prospective alchemists, dragging his feet like a condemned prisoner marching toward the gallows.
Around him, candidates clutched blank jade tablets and rabbit-hair brushes with fanatical fervor. They pushed and shoved through the aisles, racing toward the high shelves to hoard the rarest Tier 2 flame-refining scrolls.
For normal cultivators, six hours in the central archive was a celestial blessing.
