Decision
Consequence blocks above your spoiler level stay veiled. You are currently reading at minimal.
The decision
How do you prepare the water, and how many spoonfuls of herbs do you add?
Option
What Anca actually asked for. Both halves have to be right.
Immediately
Completes the medicine as instructed.
Later
Esme survives the Blood Mass.
Option
The wrong temperature. The quest continues as if nothing happened.
Immediately
The quest advances and gives no sign that the medicine is wrong.
Later
Esme dies later in the story.
Option
The wrong dose, with the right water. Same outcome.
Immediately
The quest advances and gives no sign that the medicine is wrong.
Later
Esme dies later in the story.
Option
Get sidetracked by the prologue's side quests and never finish the medicine.
Immediately
Withering Away stays open while you do other things, and nothing warns you that it is running out.
Later
Esme dies later in the story. This is the way most players are reported to lose her — not by choosing wrongly, but by spending the prologue elsewhere.
Consequences carry a severity — informational, changes dialogue, locks content, character death, ending impact — and a timing. Anything that locks content or kills somebody is stated in plain language rather than hidden behind an icon, because a consequence you cannot read is not a warning.
Delayed consequences sit behind a spoiler veil at level 2. Raise your spoiler setting to read them by default.
Two independent retail sources give hot water and three spoonfuls. A third tabulates the same options but lists its outcomes out of order, which makes it read as marking two spoonfuls correct; that reading is inconsistent within its own table and is not followed here.