Free Web Novel"Pavela?"
Margaret's voice pulled her back to reality.
Pavela blinked.
"It's nothing."
She said, "Just thinking about some things."
Margaret didn't press further.
She just looked at Pavela quietly for a few seconds.
Those dark green eyes slowly swept across Pavela's face in the dim light of the hospital room, like a miner's lamp sliding slowly along the rock wall of a tunnel, not missing a single crack.
"You're thinking about 'The Magician', aren't you?"
It was a statement.
Pavela's gaze shifted back from the rabbit missing its left ear on the ceiling and fell upon Margaret's face.
"How did you know?"
"Because the way you were looking at your left hand just now wasn't quite right."
Margaret said, "You weren't looking at your hand; you were looking at the gripping angle between your fingers and the fork."
Pavela lowered her head.
Her left hand was still resting on the edge of the cardboard box, thumb and index finger pinching the handle of the small fork.
The tilt of the fork was fourteen degrees.
If it deviated by just one more degree—
She abruptly let go.
The fork dropped into the box, making a faint metallic clink.
Margaret made no comment on this reaction.
She simply uncrossed her legs, leaned forward slightly, and rested her interlaced fingers on her knees.
"Then I'll just ask directly."
"Mhm."
"The Path of the Magician—is it still with you?"
Pavela didn't answer directly.
She raised her left hand, palm upward.
Above her palm, an extremely thin, almost transparent golden film of light silently emerged, like a piece of gold leaf blown by the wind, trembling gently in the air for two seconds before dissipating.
Margaret watched where the film of light had vanished, her expression unchanged.
"It seems it's still there, then," she said.
"Yes," Pavela said, "it's been here the whole time."
She could feel it from the very first moment she woke up.
Two frequencies were vibrating simultaneously deep within her consciousness.
One was familiar to her—
Path of the Tower.
The eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth.
Like a black tower that was forever collapsing and forever being rebuilt. freēwebnovel.com
Heavy, violent, carrying the scent of ash and lightning.
The other was new.
The Path of the Magician.
Its frequency was completely different.
No roaring, no collapsing.
Instead, it was an extremely precise humming.
Like an instrument calibrated to the extreme in operation.
Like countless gears meshing together, with every tooth spacing calculated down to the micron level.
It wasn't violent.
It was calm.
It was quiet.
It turned steadily in a corner of her consciousness, emitting a steady, emotionless hum.
And what unsettled Pavela the most was—
She could step into it at any time.
She had tried.
Just last night, when she woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the ceiling.
She had simply shifted her attention toward that frequency, like turning a radio dial.
The roar of Path of the Tower gradually receded.
The hum of the Path of the Magician became clear.
Then the world changed.
The three cracks on the ceiling were no longer just cracks.
They became a visualized map of the internal stress distribution within the concrete material.
She could see how the direction of each crack's extension was determined by the microstructure inside the concrete.
She could see where the stress concentration points at the tips of the cracks were.
She could see how much force applied at what position would allow the cracks to continue spreading in the direction she desired.
The rabbit-shaped oxidation spot missing its left ear was no longer a random pattern.
She could see how the oxidation process on the brass surface unfolded at the microscopic level, which areas had slight deviations in alloy proportions causing faster oxidation rates, and if she wanted the entire copper surface of the lamp base to present a uniform green oxidation layer, she only needed to—
She immediately switched back.
The whole process took less than three seconds.
But in those three seconds, her heart rate accelerated by at least forty percent.
That feeling was too comfortable.
That feeling of "everything being under control."
That feeling that "all the imperfections in the world can be corrected."
But to Pavela, it was even more dangerous than the destructive impulses of Path of the Tower.
Because destructive impulses are at least hot, violent, and obvious.
You know it's coming, you know what it wants, and you can use your willpower to fight it.
But the erosion of the Path of the Magician is different.
It is cold.
Rational.
Logically self-consistent.
It doesn't tell you to "destroy everything."
It tells you, "This isn't perfect enough; let me help you correct it."
It makes you feel that everything you do is reasonable, necessary, and correct.
Until you look back and realize you've treated a living person's cervical spine as a piece of handicraft that needs its "angle adjusted."
"How many frequencies can you feel now?"
"Two."
Pavela said, "Path of the Tower and the Path of the Magician. They exist simultaneously, and I can switch at any time."
This time, Margaret's eyebrows twitched.
It was a very small movement.
But Pavela saw it.
"At any time?"
"At any time," Pavela confirmed. "Like... turning a radio dial. Whichever frequency you tune to is the one you hear."
Margaret didn't respond immediately.
She leaned back in her chair and tapped the armrest lightly with her fingertips.
One, two, three times.
The rhythm was very slow.
As if she were weighing something.
Then she stopped tapping, her tone half a degree deeper than before when she spoke.
"Regarding the voice of the Path of the Magician, how are you handling it?"
Pavela glanced at her.
There was something very subtle in Margaret's dark green eyes.
It wasn't the curiosity of a scholar studying a specimen.
Nor was it the scrutiny of a mentor testing a student.
It was more like...
Someone who had walked the same path.
Asking a newcomer about the road conditions.
Pavela suddenly understood.
"You have it too?" she said.
Margaret didn't deny it.
She just gave a faint smile.
The smile was so slight it was almost imperceptible.
But in that moment, Pavela finally caught a detail—
Margaret's right index and middle fingers were pressed together on her knee.
Her fingertips weren't moving.
But the skin under her nails was pulled very tight.
As if she were forcefully and deliberately pressing her fingers into a fixed position.
To keep them from touching anything.
To keep them from "adjusting" anything.
"The erosion of the Path of the Magician isn't the strongest," Margaret said, "but it is the hardest to detect."
Her tone was casual.
So casual it was as if she were discussing a case that had nothing to do with her.
But Pavela knew better.
"The erosion of Path of the Tower is like fire; you can feel it burning, you can see the flames, you can smell the smoke, so you know where to throw water."
"But the erosion of the Path of the Magician is like water; it seeps through the cracks in your thoughts and fills every gap. By the time you notice, it has already merged with ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) your thinking, and you can't distinguish which thoughts are yours and which are its."
Pavela listened quietly.
"You think you're making a rational judgment, you think you're just pursuing a better outcome, you think you're 'optimizing,' but the word 'optimize' itself is a trap."
"It implies a premise: that an 'optimal solution' exists in the world, and that you are qualified to define it."
Margaret paused.
"Control—that is the core of the Path of the Magician's erosion. A desire for control over the'state of all things.' You'll begin to feel that anything not meeting your standards needs to be 'corrected.' A chair not placed straight, a sentence with poor grammar, an uncoordinated twitch of a muscle on someone's face—they will all make you uncomfortable."
"And then?" Pavela asked.
"And then you'll start correcting. Small things at first—straightening a chair, fixing grammar, making uncoordinated things coordinated. These are all harmless enough; they might even make you feel like the world is becoming a better place."
"But the line will shift back, bit by bit."
"Today it's the angle of a chair; tomorrow it's the layout of a room not being rational enough; the day after, it's a flaw in the structure of an entire building."
"And then."
"You'll start to feel that people need to be corrected as well."
