The water was not water.
Rina soon realized that, it was pure condensed mana, she knew from her studies that an average person could only produce one gram of pure condensed mana.
She did the math without thinking. The numbers were too large to feel, they existed in a realm beyond emotion, beyond grief, beyond the kind of sorrow that made you cry. This was the sorrow that left you hollow, the sorrow that scooped you out and left nothing behind but a shell that kept breathing because it had not been given permission to stop.
"Pure condensed mana," Rina said, her voice was flat. "Made from people. The cult has been making it for centuries, this is how they store it."
Markus's face went white. His eyes were fixed on the floating spheres, on the droplets that caught the light and threw it back in colors that should have been beautiful but were now obscene.
