Location:Obsidian Academy — Workshops / Pavilion / Formation Lab
Date/Time:Mid Ashbloom, 9941 AZI
Realm:Lower Realm — Doha
The grain smelled wrong.
Jayde held the handful up to the lamp, turning the kernels between her fingertips. Dry enough. No visible mold. The husk was intact, the germ pale and firm when she split one with her thumbnail. But the smell — flat, stale, carrying the faint sweetness of early decay — told her what the visual check didn't.
Moisture content above twelve percent. Fungal colonization has begun in the endosperm. Shelf life: three weeks, maybe four. After that, toxin levels exceed safe consumption thresholds.
She let the grain fall back into the sample bag and wiped her hands on her trousers. Around her, the Pavilion workshop hummed with the quiet energy of projects in various stages of completion. Formation arrays pinned to the walls, prototype housings cooling on racks, Eden's medical supply crates stacked in the corner, waiting for the next shipment.
