“I saw,” he said, not turning around. “The coating dissolves too fast in the stomach. The API gets destroyed before it reaches the intestine.”

“Two percent,” he said quietly. “That’s not a failure margin. That’s where the old wisdom lives.”

But the story doesn’t end with the science.

Batch #V-422: Bioavailability at 78%. Target threshold: 80%.

A gasp went through the room. Meera grabbed his arm. They had done it. Not by throwing money at high-tech solutions, but by looking backward—into the forgotten science of a village compounder.