## Gone, used up, emptied, valueless.

Within the game context, the only description of 'consumed' is that it means you need a new component for each casting, so that is unhelpful in determining what consumption means between the options you've provided. When the game does not describe the game-meaning of a word, we use the ordinary English meaning of it.

The ordinary meaning of 'consumed'([1][1],[2][2]) (when not talking about food) is 'completely destroyed' -- metaphorically "eaten" by the fire or whatever is doing the consuming.

There is nothing in the description of consuming a spell component that implies there's some part of it left over, or that it's only some immaterial "magical essence" being consumed. The object itself is "eaten" by the spell.

You couldn't 'consume' a gemstone and then, say, go sell it as jewelry. The whole point of costly consumed components is you have to pay every time you use it. If you could go sell off the consumed component to recoup some or all of the cost of the spell, you be bypassing the entire reason for the 'component is consumed' line.

You could certainly *describe* the consuming as something other than burning to nothingness or disintegrating into dust. The game encourages interesting descriptions. As "flavor text", you could talk about how an emerald consumed by a spell clouds over and slowly turns dull black or how you smash it with a hammer as a gift to the forge-gods. But it's still consumed: destroyed and useless for any further purpose.


  [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consume
  [2]: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/consume