《The Arcanum Algorithm》

Chapter 5 The Veil of Perception

The Lord’s manor made the Viscount’s estate look like a peasant’s hovel. Grimm gaped at the vaulted ceilings, the polished stone floors, and the intricate tapestries depicting hunting scenes and forgotten battles. The air itself felt different—thick, heavy, and charged with a strange energy that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

The great hall was crowded, but Grimm’s eyes were drawn to the dais at the far end. There, seated on a simple chair that nonetheless seemed a throne, was the Sorcerer.

Just as Mary had described, he was shrouded in robes of a grey so deep they seemed to absorb the light. A tall hat cast his face into shadow, but beneath it, Grimm saw not mist, but a subtle, shimmering distortion in the air, a visual static that made his eyes water and refused to resolve into a clear image. It was deeply unnerving.

On the table before the Sorcerer sat a crystal sphere, pulsing with a soft, internal luminescence. Beside it, perfectly still and utterly silent, sat the frog with its unsettling, ruby-red eyes. The entire scene was draped in an aura of profound and alien mystery.

This was a Sorcerer. Not a story, not a rumor. A being of actual power.

Grimm’s heart hammered against his ribs. Before the crystal, a plump, brown-haired girl with her eyes screwed shut in concentration had her hands pressed against the sphere’s smooth surface. The hall was silent, every person holding their breath.

His gaze drifted to the figures standing behind the Sorcerer. There were three of them, all around his age.

The first was a girl, her lips set in a pronounced, defiant pout. Grimm’s breath hitched. He recognized her. She was the noblewoman who had thrown away the Manual half a year ago in a fit of rage. The Lord’s daughter. Of course.

The other two, a boy and a girl, were clearly siblings, their features too similar to suggest otherwise. The boy stood with his chin held high, a look of pure, unadulterated contempt on his face as he surveyed the line of hopefuls. He radiated an arrogance that mirrored the boy who had taken Grimm’s coin at the door. The sister, by contrast, seemed shy and uncomfortable, her eyes downcast, unused to being the center of attention.

These, then, were the chosen. The ones with the ‘aptitude’.

“Mental resonance of six. Insufficient. Next,” the Sorcerer’s voice cut through the silence. It was flat, devoid of any emotion, yet it carried to every corner of the hall.

The plump girl’s face crumpled. She stumbled away from the crystal as the next person in line eagerly took her place.

A collective sigh of disappointment rippled through the crowd. Grimm’s own hope, which had been a bright, burning thing, began to flicker. As he moved closer to the front of the line, he saw failure after failure. A merchant’s son, a blacksmith’s apprentice, a minor noble’s third son—all were met with the same dispassionate verdict. “Insufficient.”

The reality of his gamble settled over him like a lead weight. Becoming a Sorcerer wasn't just about desire; it was about a quality he might not possess. He was going to fail. He was going to lose everything.

Then he saw it.

A boy he recognized—Weid, the son of the owner of the Moonlake Tavern, the most expensive establishment in Bitherl—stepped up to the crystal. Grimm watched closely as Weid placed his hands on the sphere, his face a mask of nervous tension. The crystal glowed softly.

The Sorcerer began to speak. “Mental resonance of nine. Insuffi—”

Weid’s hand moved in a blur, subtly sliding a small, heavy leather pouch across the table. Grimm caught a glimpse of its contents—not coins, but what looked like smooth, iridescent pebbles. There were twenty or thirty of them.

The Sorcerer’s hand closed over the pouch with a speed that was almost imperceptible. He paused, then continued, his tone unchanged. “—acceptable. Stand behind me.”

Weid’s face split into a triumphant grin. “Thank you, Master!” He scurried to join the other chosen youths behind the dais.

A cold knot of despair tightened in Grimm’s stomach. Bribery. Of course. The world operated on the same rules, whether dealing with a steward or a Sorcerer. He had nothing of value to offer, nothing but his single remaining gold coin, which was surely worthless to a man like this. His fate was sealed.

His mind churning with bitter resignation, Grimm hardly registered moving forward. Suddenly, he was at the front of the line, standing before the crystal sphere and the unsettling, haze-shrouded figure of the Sorcerer.

“Place your hands on the sphere. Close your eyes.” The instruction was rote, devoid of interest.

Numbly, Grimm obeyed. His work-roughened palms settled on the cool, impossibly smooth surface of the crystal.

The moment his eyelids shut, the world vanished.

Not just the sight, but the sound. The murmured conversations, the rustle of clothing, the distant sounds of the city—everything was snuffed out. It was as if a vast, impenetrable bell jar had been dropped over him. A profound, absolute silence descended, so complete it felt like a physical pressure on his eardrums.

“What…?” he whispered, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice.

Driven by a spike of primal fear, his eyes snapped open.

The world was frozen.

The Lord’s daughter was mid-pout, a single, crystalline tear hanging motionless in the air just below her eye. The arrogant boy, Yoric, was locked in a smug smirk, his sharp canines exposed. At the entrance, the boy who had taken his coins was caught in the act of casually tossing a gold piece into the chest; the coin hung in mid-air, glinting silently.

Every person in the vast hall was a statue, trapped in a single, unmoving moment in time. The air was still. The dust motes hung motionless in the shafts of light from the high windows.

A cold dread, colder than any winter he had ever known, seeped into Grimm’s bones. This was not magic as he had imagined it. This was… violation.

His eyes, wide with terror, scanned the petrified scene. And that’s when he saw it.

On a lavishly set side table heaped with untouched fruit and pastries, two creatures were playing. They were unlike anything he had ever seen or dreamed of: gelatinous, pulsating masses of colourful, soft tissue covered in a shifting carpet of tiny, blinking eyes. They moved with silent grace, undulating like jellyfish in an invisible sea, completely unaware of his horrified stare.

This was a crack in the world. A glimpse behind the curtain of his reality, and it was filled with things that should not be.

Trembling uncontrollably, he took a hesitant step toward the table. The moment he moved, the two nightmarish creatures started, as if sensing his presence. They drifted away from the table, not through the air, but into the solid stone wall behind them. The surface of the wall rippled like water, accepting them, swallowing them whole without a trace.

Grimm stood paralyzed, his mind refusing to process what he had just witnessed. His gaze fell upon the table again, on a candelabra holding four burning tapers. And a fifth.

The fifth was not a candlestick. It was the roasted, glazed head of a pig, a single blackened candle jammed between its ears. The sight was so bizarre, so utterly wrong, that his mind tried to reject it. He realized with a fresh wave of nausea that he had seen it when he first entered the hall and his brain had simply registered it as ‘normal’. Only now, up close, did its true, horrific absurdity register.

Slowly, grotesquely, the pig’s head swiveled on its platter. Its glazed, dead eyes rotated in their sockets, fixing directly on him.

A silent scream built in Grimm’s throat. The frozen world was not just still. It was watching him.