Tianmu: Eyes of Illusion

Theme: The Predator • Illusion Reversal • The True Enemy Revealed

The world had changed.

Lucas could still walk through Haleford, buy groceries, nod at familiar faces.

But ever since the ritual, nothing looked the same.

The mirror's gift—or curse—had peeled away a layer of reality. Now he saw things behind things.

A woman in the subway with no shadow.

A child drawing circles on the floor—circles that pulsed with red light.

A homeless man muttering phrases from the I Ching—then turning and winking with mirrored eyes.

They weren't just illusions anymore.

They were intrusions.

That night, Lucas took the mirror with him.

Not to use—but to test.

He stood in an old industrial yard on the edge of the city. Rusted fences. Broken cranes. No one around.

The mirror stayed quiet.

But his skin did not.

A pressure crept over his neck like breath that wasn't his own.

He turned.

Nothing.

Then the light shifted—not flickered. Shifted.

As if a sun moved behind clouds that weren't there.

And a man stood where no one had stood before.

He was tall. Black coat. Wide brim hat. But no face.

Not blank—not there. A void. Like a smear of erased charcoal.

And from that faceless space, a whisper emerged.

"You see well, child of the Eye."

Lucas stepped back.

"Who are you?"

"The one behind the mirrors. The one whose name you forgot in the ritual."

"I didn't forget—"

"You offered me."

The world buckled.

He was no longer in the yard.

He stood in a subway car—but wrong. Windows showed static. Passengers were frozen. The faceless man stood at the far end, hands clasped.

"You believe the Eye grants power."

"It grants attention."

"You looked too deep. Now it looks back."

Lucas clenched his fists. Centered his breath.

He forced an illusion into the space: a wall of fire between them.

But the man walked through it.

Not burned. Not touched.

He didn't ignore the illusion—he rewrote it.

Lucas's fire curled into origami cranes and flew away.

The man tilted his nonexistent head.

"Clever."

"But still dreaming."

The man raised a hand.

Lucas's body convulsed—like a thousand mirrors inside him shattered at once.

"You're not ready."

"But your gate is open."

"Others will come through."

The subway blurred.

Became the dream courtyard.

Then became Haleford again.

Lucas collapsed, gasping, in the middle of the street.

People stared.

But none of them saw what he saw—

The faceless man standing on every reflective surface at once: windows, car mirrors, puddles.

Watching.

And then… vanishing.

That night, Lucas wrote one sentence in his journal:

"The Eye does not reveal the truth."

"It reveals the observer."

And under it, he sketched the symbol that had appeared in his last vision—

An eye, split in two, each half staring at the other.

End of Volume One: Tianmu: Awakening of the Eye

Lucas has stepped fully into the dream war. His illusions are no longer tricks—they are keys. But each key unlocks both ways. And someone—or something—has already stepped through.