Shen Yue’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth clicked like breaking flint.
Back in the coal cellar, laid out across a rough plank cot, her body was thrashing in violent, arrhythmic tremors. Her left hand twitched in sharp, counter-clockwise circles. He clawed at the straw mattress, while her right arm spasmed in clockwise jerks toward the ceiling.
Her pupils were entirely disconnected.
The left eye looked upward and outward, dilated black with spatial math. The right eye flickered downward, locked in an unceasing, heartbeat scan of heat vectors.
“Soul Divergence Syndrome,” Apothecary He said, his voice grim as he pinned her thrashing right shoulder to the wood. “I’ve seen it twice before in ancient scribes who tried to read twin star-maps. The sea of mind has split into two sovereign currents. If they don’t reconcile within sixty minutes, her soul will tear down the center line like rotten silk. She will be an idiot by nightfall.”
The apothecary reached into his medical box. He pulled out a sealed clay phial filled with thick, black sludge.
“Nine-Leaf Mandrake Sedative,” He said, biting the wax stopper free. “It will put her Divine Sea into comatose frozen stillness for three lunar cycles. It might save her life.”
