Chapter 4: Distillation
The laboratory smels of salt and something faintly metallic—like the air after a storm, when the world feels charged and alive. Mizuki adjusts the brass goggles perched on her nose, her fingers deftly turning the dials on the alchemical apparatus before her. The glass vials shimmer under the dim glow of the enchanted lanterns, their contents swirling in slow, hypnotic spirals.
Mizuki exhales sharply, her breath fogging the glass of the nearest vial.
When Mizuki examines the saltwater with alchemy, she discovers it is not true seawater but abyssal fluid imprinted with impossible deep-sea pressure, forcibly displaced into the library. It resists boiling, fractures glass without force, and contains salinity ratios matching void-corrupted Mhachi sites. Fire aether is smothered, water aether amplified, and void catalysts cause it to thicken and pulse. Distillation yields a blackened abyssal brine that induces visions of crushing depth and migrates toward living aether and specific forbidden tomes. The conclusion is chilling: this is not a leak nor contamination, but contact—the first sign that something vast and aware is pressing against the library’s wards.