Markques looked toward Agastya, his tired eyes widening slightly behind his spectacles. "Oh! A new Awakener. It feels like ages since the last one came through those doors."
"Well, it has been three years," Dictor replied mildly from the threshold.
"And you’ve arrived at a perfect time, boy," Markques said, his focus already drifting back to the cluttered desk. "I’ve just finished the paste from that red-petal herb. I only need two more stabilised ingredients, and the potion will be ready."
He pointed a stained, weary finger toward a sturdy chair near the centre of the room.
Dictor stepped back toward the heavy wooden door. "I’ll be waiting outside. Don't let him talk your ear off about botany." With that, the marksman slipped out.
Left alone with the eccentric alchemist, Agastya cautiously walked deeper into the aether-lit hall. He sat down slowly, resting his arms on the handrests while keeping a wary, predatory eye on the shifting shadows.
On the wooden desk before him sat a rack holding three glass test tubes. Each was a quarter full of a transparent liquid that looked exactly like water, though it shimmered with a faint, unnatural clarity.
Markques picked up the heavy marble bowl containing the dark-green pulp of the herb he had just crushed. He scraped the thick paste into one of the tubes. The moment the mass hit the liquid, it dissolved with a violent hiss, the water shifting instantly to a deep, swirling indigo.
Next, Markques walked over to a large earthen jar on a side table. He pulled off the heavy lid, and Agastya caught a whiff of something ozone-sharp and ancient. Markques reached inside and pulled out three small, spherical objects.
They were jagged and pitch black, each about a centimetre in radius. A strange, faint blue light seeped from the hairline cracks on their surfaces.
As Markques pulled them out, a thick, translucent resin—incredibly sticky and viscous—clung to them. The gooey substance formed long, shimmering threads, connecting the dark spheres in his hand to the sludge remaining in the jar.
Markques pulled his hand further away until the threads stretched thin and snapped with a wet, heavy sound.
Agastya watched the display with clinical detachment. "What is that?"
"Splear Cores," Markques answered, moving toward the stone basin. "Extracted from the sediment of the Other World."
He dropped the spheres into the sink and turned the brass tap. The rushing water rinsed away the stubborn resin, leaving the cracked, glowing surfaces clean. Markques returned to the desk, placing two of the cores on a white cloth and holding the third over a clean glass bowl.
With a practiced motion, he dug his thumb into the crack of the sphere and tore it apart. A thick, glowing blue resin spilt out, falling into the bowl with a heavy thud. He tossed the empty shell into a bin and repeated the process with the others.
"This is the stabilising agent," Markques explained, his voice low as he worked. "It’s the primary ingredient in the potion you're about to drink. Without it, your internal aether would tear your nervous system apart within a week."
Agastya didn’t flinch or show the disgust Markques likely expected. In his previous life, Agastya had consumed things far worse—clotted blood for iron, bitter roots for clarity, and toxins to build immunity. But he found himself wondering, almost idly, about the taste.
As an assassin, flavour was a luxury he had been forced to discard. But now, sitting in this strange laboratory, a foreign thought took root. He had been given a second chance. He was no longer just a weapon owned by a "Master" who had discarded him like a broken blade. “How would it taste like?”
He wanted to live. Not just survive, but live . He wanted to know what it felt like to laugh without a hidden agenda, to sleep without a knife in his hand, and perhaps, to actually enjoy the taste of something.
He knew that joining this mysterious organisation meant his life would never be truly "easy," but it was a path he chose for himself.
He watched the indigo liquid in the test tube begin to glow as Markques added the Splear resin until it filled. This was the first step into a world of bad things, but for the first time, Agastya felt like he was the one holding the lead.
Markques set two delicate, long-stemmed wine glasses onto the cluttered mahogany desk, their crystal surfaces catching the cold blue hum of the Aether-tubes.
"Do you like wine, baker?" he asked, his voice casual, though his eyes remained fixed on the swirling indigo contents of the test tube.
Agastya looked at the glass, then back at the eccentric man. "I don’t particularly enjoy it," he replied, his voice flat. "But I can drink it if the situation requires."
"Good," Markques murmured. He reached for a dusty, unlabeled bottle, its cork popping with a soft, celebratory sound. He poured a deep, blood-red liquid into both glasses, the aroma of fermented berries and old earth filling the sterile air of the lab. "It’s been several months since I’ve had a proper vintage. This place doesn't leave much room for celebration."
He handed one glass to Agastya. The assassin took it, his fingers brushing the cool glass, his mind already analysing the liquid for sediment or scent. "Is there an occasion today?"
Markques smiled, but it was a thin, brittle expression that didn't reach his tired eyes. "Looks like you haven’t been told. The potion you’re about to consume... It’s a temperamental thing. A little risky, you could say."
Agastya’s gaze sharpened. He didn't move.
"If your biology rejects the Aetheric resonance," Markques continued, swivelling his glass slowly, "if you are unable to stabilise the flow as it hits your marrow... you will die instantly. Your nervous system will simply surrender."
He took a sip, leaning back. "The only mercy is that since we’ve stabilised the cores, a portal won’t open over your corpse. No Kynolds. Just a clean, quiet end."
He lifted his glass in a mock salute. "But, if you succeed? If you survive the next ten minutes? Then you truly become one of us. You’ll be able to wield the power you’ve only just started to feel."
Agastya’s eyes widened slightly, the realisation hitting him with the force of a physical blow. ‘So, you’re offering me a final drink just in case this is my last moment on this side of the veil.’
He looked at the crimson wine, then at the pulsating blue potion waiting on the rack. A dark, cynical thought crossed his mind: ‘I don’t have anything left to lose. I died once already; why should the second time be any different?’
He gripped the stem of the glass, the fine crystal feeling fragile in his hand. He met the alchemist’s gaze, the killer and the scientist acknowledging the grim reality between them. He raised his glass, the light reflecting off the wine like a dying star.
Markques tilted his head. "To the life."
Agastya’s voice was a low, steady rasp. "To the life."
They clinked glasses, the sharp, clear ring of the crystal echoing through the hall of living herbs, a fragile sound in a room full of monsters and magic. Agastya drained the glass, the heat of the wine spreading through his chest, a fleeting warmth before the cold, blue lightning of the potion was to take its place.
After the wine had been drained, both men set their glasses upon the scarred mahogany table with a synchronised, hollow chime. The momentary civility vanished.
Markques moved with a sudden, manic energy, seizing his own glass and the pulsating test tube. He poured the indigo sludge into the remaining dregs of the wine.
Next, he took a small, silver-foil packet from the depths of his stained robe. He tore it open with his teeth, and a single, heavy drop of pearlescent liquid fell into the mixture.
The transformation was instantaneous and violent.
The blue potion didn't just change colour; it curdled and swirled into a shimmering, oily mess of black-rainbow. It was a light that didn't belong in the spectrum of the living—a kaleidoscopic void that seemed to suck the ambient light out of the room.
"Drink it," Markques commanded, his voice tight with urgency. "Consume it before the structure collapses, and it turns back to simple blue. If that happens, the ritual will fail before it even reaches your blood."
Agastya didn't hesitate, though every survival instinct screamed in protest. He seized the glass and tilted it back, draining the foul concoction in one massive, desperate gulp.
The taste was an abomination. It was more than just bitterness; it was the flavour of iron-rich rot, dust, and a cold, electrical sting that felt like swallowing a handful of needles.
It was, without question, the most repulsive thing he had ever consumed in either of his lives. His stomach revolted instantly. A violent surge of bile rose in his throat, and he fought the urge to vomit with a ferocity that made his jaw ache.
To lose the potion now was to invite the very death Markques had promised. He slammed the glass back onto the table with a heavy, resonating thud .
For a heartbeat, there was only silence. Then, the reaction began.
Agastya’s vision fractured. The cold blue Aether-tubes on the walls began to spin, their light stretching into long, jagged threads of silk.
A deep, rhythmic thrumming—like the grinding of celestial gears—vibrated through the floorboards and up into his marrow. His skin began to smoke with a faint, iridescent vapour.
He looked at Markques, intending to ask if this was normal, but the words died in his throat.
The alchemist wasn't watching the transformation with the pride of a successful scientist. Instead, Markques had gone deathly pale.
‘Oh,’ Markques thought, his breath hitching in his chest. ‘I made a mistake. The dosage... is wrong.’