The Pill That Fixed Fate

Shen Sui was kneeling over a cracked pill jar when she saw her own name in a book with no title. She had spent years studying failed pills, bad fires, and strange results that other alchemists threw away. That habit made her good at finding the truth in messes, and it also made her the kind of woman a cruel plan could use and discard. Sui refuses that role. She keeps a pressed flower in her pocket, a hairpin wrapped in cloth in her travel bag, and a scholar's seal that someone keeps trying to buy. When a quiet mountain life meets a book that says her days are already written, she starts changing the lines herself. The person she trusts most is tied to the name she once tried to erase.