Because silk, she finally understood, is not weakened by being shared.
Kael looked up from his microscope. “If your grandmother finds out, she’ll have you weaving burial shrouds.” silk unblocked
“It’s not a blight,” he said quietly. “It’s a genetic bottleneck. Your silkworms have been brother-to-sister for too many generations. They have no resistance. You could have the perfect mulberry leaves and the cleanest sheds, and they’d still die. The only cure is crossbreeding with wild silk strains from the eastern valleys.” Because silk, she finally understood, is not weakened
Lina felt the floor tilt. “But the Guild laws forbid importing foreign silkworms.” “It’s a genetic bottleneck
Her breaking point came on a humid July night. She was in the reeling shed, unwinding a single filament from a dying cocoon, when the thread snapped. In the old days, a snapped thread was a bad omen. Tonight, it felt like a verdict.