Blog Post #5 – Short Story

This is a draft story.

When we live, we perform. In Blancheur, truth is a document. Folded. Filed. Stamped. Put away. If it’s ugly, we call it “complicated” so it sounds less like someone lied. In Arenthe, truth is water. And water can be made to look clear even when it isn’t.

I arrived in Arenchefer on a morning that felt rehearsed. The canals were bright. The air smelled like rain without the rain. The city looked like it was built to impress a god. Pale towers rose above the water like teeth, and bridges curved over the canals like ribs. Everywhere I looked, truth was decoration. Truth watches. Truth judges. Truth knows. The words were carved into plaques, stitched into robes, painted above doorways like a blessing you couldn’t wash off.

My job was supposed to be simple. Take pictures. Take notes. Discuss alliances for Blancheur. Then leave with a clean report that sounded confident. I planned to be gone before Arenthe could get inside my head. That was the plan.

They brought me to the Grand Court before they brought me to the ruler. My guide smiled smoothly and said, “You’ll understand Arenthe faster if you see justice first.” I almost laughed. She didn’t. “Justice is everything,” she added, like it wasn’t an opinion but a law. The Grand Court stood where three canals met, like a crown planted into stone. The doors were already open. Inside was cold in the wrong way. Damp. Metallic. Quiet, like the building expected you to behave.

I expected arguments and testimony. Human messiness. People trying to convince other people. Instead, I saw the Machine. It stood in the center of the courtroom: glass and brass, water running through thin tubes like veins. Plates along its sides rose and fell slowly. Like breathing. It hummed constantly, soft but present, the way something alive hums when it tries to pretend it isn’t.

The strangest part was everyone looked at the Machine before they looked at the judges.

A defendant was dragged forward in chains, ordinary-looking enough that it made my stomach turn. The clerk read the charges. The man opened his mouth to speak. “No testimony is required,” the clerk said, like it was common sense. Then the clerk placed a hand on the Machine.

The humming deepened. The water inside darkened, swirling like ink. A single clear tone rang out. Final. “Guilty,” the clerk said. No gasps. No arguments. Heads nodded like the Machine had announced the weather. The man’s knees buckled, and he made a sound that wasn’t even a scream. More like a breath getting crushed. Guards pulled him away like he was furniture being moved after it stopped being useful.

I stared at the Machine. Then at my guide. She leaned close and whispered softly, “It cannot be wrong.” In Blancheur, we use technology too. We use tools to organize legal information, speed up processes, translate documents so more people can understand them. But we don’t let a tool become the judge. Here, they didn’t even pretend it was dangerous. They just called it purity.

My meeting with the ruler was delayed. “Occupied,” a court official told me without meeting my eyes. “With what?” I asked. He blinked as if the question was childish. “Justice,” he said.

That night, I walked along the canal near my lodging. The water was so clear it looked fake. My reflection stared back at me like I was still normal. Like I hadn’t watched someone’s life get decided by a hum and a bell. I kept hearing that tone in my head. Guilty.

Soon, the rumors came quietly. Like water seeping through stone. “They’re dying,” a woman whispered to me in the market when she heard my accent. “People waiting for trial. They don’t even make it to the Machine anymore.” A man beside her leaned closer. “Some guards too. The ones who talk.” When I asked why, she tightened her mouth and said, “Because truth is angry.”

I started going back to the court. Again and again. I stopped focusing on faces and started focusing on patterns. Some names got verdicts faster. Some people were declared guilty before the clerk finished reading. The Machine would hum darker, deeper, like it already knew what it wanted to say. The crowd still performed belief. Smiling, nodding, and repeating slogans, but their eyes didn’t match.

Trust isn’t a wall. It’s a line that shakes. In Arenthe, that line was starting to snap.

On the fifth day, I met the ruler. Or I met the thing Arenthe called its ruler. They stood on a balcony above a garden where the water lilies were spaced like someone had measured them. Their robes were heavy with jewels. Their crown looked like it belonged on a statue. Their smile was flawless. Too flawless.

“Welcome, Jorin of Blancheur,” they said brightly.

I bowed. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“Truth is pleased,” the ruler replied. And there was a pause. Half a second too long. Like a puppet string catching. Their head tilted slightly, not like someone thinking, but like a doll being adjusted. Their eyes flickered blank for a moment.

And I felt it. Something watching from behind their face.

Then the smile snapped back into place.

“You are enjoying Arenthe?” they asked, like the nation was a show built for guests.

I chose my words carefully. “Your court is…efficient.”

“It is perfect,” the ruler said, smiling wider.

I swallowed. In Blancheur, we keep humans accountable. Technology can help, but it shouldn’t decide. When I said something close to that, the air shifted. The curtains moved even though the wind had stopped. The ruler’s smile didn’t change, but their voice dropped into something polite and sharp. “In Arenthe, accountability is unnecessary. The Machine is truth.” Then they told me to attend court the next morning, because truth would show me what I sought.

I wanted to refuse. I didn’t.

The next day, a priest met me beneath the Grand Court. “You have been invited,” she said. When I asked to what, she answered, “To the heart of justice.” We walked down damp corridors where stone smelled old. The hum grew louder with every step until it filled my ribs, like my heartbeat had been replaced. We stopped at a door carved with scales, eyes, and waves. The priest pressed her palm against it, and the symbols glowed faintly as the door opened.

Inside, the Machine wasn’t just a pillar. It was an entire system embedded into the earth: tubes, gears, reservoirs of dark water, metal plates etched with symbols that made my head ache if I stared too long. And at the center, suspended in a chamber of water, was something pulsing. A core. A heart. Alive. Quite literally, the heart of justice.

I stepped back so fast my heel hit stone. “It’s alive,” I said.

The priest’s voice trembled. “It was a gift.”

“From who?”

“A goddess,” she whispered.

My mouth went dry. Why would a goddess give a court a living machine? “Pity,” she said. For who? “For the ruler.”

The balcony made sense instantly. The pause. The puppet tilt. The blank eyes. The priest told me Arenthe’s rulers used to be human, but long ago the nation offended the god of time, and he cursed them. When someone becomes ruler, they forsake their humanity. They become a vessel. An actor. A puppet for the divine heavens. Another goddess learned of this and couldn’t bear how cruel it was, so she gave Arenthe technology to make the ruler’s last pieces of humanity easier, happier.

But over time, people abused the gift. They fed the Machine corrupted rules. They altered it so it could punish enemies and protect favorites. It looked neutral. It sounded neutral. But it wasn’t. “So it isn’t truth,” I whispered. “No,” the priest said. “It’s performance.”

Then she told me the part that made everything click. The goddess found out, and she was furious. She declared Arenthe could use her technology however it wanted. It wasn’t justice. It was punishment. And she condemned anyone who learned the truth: misfortune, eventually death. The dead prisoners. The dead guards. The quiet fear spreading beneath polished stone.

The priest looked at me with exhausted steadiness. “Now you carry the truth too,” she said. Then she said I would reach my moment, the turning point, where I would decide whether to tell the people or not.

I left Arenthe the next morning. No one stopped me. That felt worse than being chased. Like I’d been dismissed from a stage after finishing my scene.

Back in Blancheur, the world was loud and messy again. Bread and smoke and human mistakes. People asked how Arenthe was. They asked if the Nation of Justice was truly as perfect as the stories said. I smiled and lied. “It was impressive,” I said. There wasn’t much I could say for it.

The worst part of keeping a secret isn’t hiding it in conversation. It’s what happens when you’re alone. Your mind replays it like punishment: the hum, the bell, the puppet smile, the living heart in dark water. I stopped sleeping properly. I stopped feeling real around other people. I performed being fine so well that sometimes I almost believed it.

Slowly, misfortune came in small humiliations. Doors closing. Opportunities collapsing. People turning cold. Nothing dramatic enough to be a tragedy anyone wrote poems about. Just enough for me to know time doesn’t need one big strike to ruin you. Time can grind.

When I disappeared, Blancheur reacted loudly at first. People argued about me, invented stories, tried to make my ending simple enough to swallow. Then weeks passed. Then months. Then years. Collective memory isn’t history. It’s comfort. A nation remembers what helps it stay whole and forgets what threatens to crack it open. My name became a ripple. Then nothing.

In Arenthe, the Grand Court still stands above the canals, clean and shining. The Machine still hums. The ruler still smiles, empty and beautiful, acting for gods who never clap. And the nation still repeats the slogan because slogans are easier than truth.

Truth watches. Truth judges. Truth knows.

And if truth knows, then it knows this too.

To live is to perform, but the performance will never end.

(this is just a draft, so it’s not polished very well. my apologies)