[VISION: The First Kitchen]
Seven tools arranged on a stone workbench, each glowing with its own particular light. The Food Cart, the Copper Pot, the Generous Ladle, the Precision Blade, the Verdant Mortar—and two others Marron had never seen.
One was a beautiful ceramic vessel with a wide mouth and delicate patterns etched into its surface—a fermentation crock, she realized. For preserving, pickling, transforming raw ingredients into something that could last through winter. It glowed with a soft amber light, patient and slow.
The other...
The other made her chest tighten with instinctive fear.
It was a mandoline slicer. Not the simple, safe kind used in modern kitchens, but a massive thing of dark metal and wickedly sharp blades. Multiple blades, adjustable, capable of reducing anything placed on its surface to perfectly uniform slices in seconds.
It was beautiful. It was efficient. It was absolutely terrifying.
