Emery forced his attention back to the work in front of him.
While the apothecary circle gathered within the Cosmic Palace, refining sequence and testing recipes in distant safety, Emery handled the part no one else could. Assisted by his light avatar, he ran each refined formula against living subjects — the dozen purple rune parasites the team had captured on-site, now sealed and writhing inside layered containment arrays at the corner of the chamber. The avatar fed in each new sedative; Emery watched the results unfold through his divine sense, reading the parasites' resistance, their decay, the precise moment their corrupted vitality faltered or held.
Two hours passed.
