Xu'er lifted it out with the care of someone handling an unpredictable, priceless artifact.
It wasn't a solid object, but a small, disc-shaped device that seemed to hold a swirling, semi-liquid mass of pure darkness.
Within the darkness, faint, silvery filaments sparked and shifted, like neurons firing in a living brain.
It seemed to breathe and had a texture.
As Su Mu watched, a tendril of the substance detached from the main mass, pressing against the inside of the containment unit, seeming to reach towards Xu'er before melting back into itself.
It moved like something sentient, a captive symbiote.
It was hypnotic and vaguely unsettling, yet incredibly fascinating.
"What… is that?" Su Mu whispered, her voice husky.
Her bluish-silver tail, which had been resting peacefully, gave an involuntary, inquisitive twitch against the sheets.
Her ears, pointed and alert, were angled directly at the strange object in Xu'er's hands.
