Tianmu: Eyes of Illusion

Lucas sat cross-legged on the floor, lights off, mirror covered, phone dismantled.

Only the incense smoke drifted lazily upward, forming spirals in the dark.

He no longer trusted sight. Nor memory.

So he turned inward.

If they can see my thoughts… then I must hide them where even I can't find them.

That was the concept of Thought Folding—a forbidden illusion method described in his grandfather's translated scrolls.

Not a trick. Not mental discipline.

A structural refactoring of consciousness.

Building extra dimensions within the mind.

The text had called it:

折思四层,破镜不窥.思归一目,天道不闻.

"Fold the mind into four. The mirror shall not reflect. The Eye shall not hear."

It sounded poetic. Elegant.

In truth, it was terrifying.

Lucas had practiced the basic form for two nights. Each time he folded a memory—tucked it into a nested mental loop—it got harder to recall it again.

But it worked.

When he performed the fold, the mirror stopped reacting.

When he reversed it, his own thoughts came rushing back—like opening a pressure lock.

He wasn't invisible, but unreadable.

Now he would go deeper.

Four folds. Create the tesseract.

He visualized it.

First, a cube. His waking mind.

Then, folded along a second axis—his memory threads restructured into a vertical plane.

Third fold—emotion, turned inside-out, perception detached from feeling.

And finally, the fourth fold:

His sense of self fractured, but nested.

He imagined himself as a mirrored loop, an observer outside of Lucas watching Lucas dreaming Lucas.

And suddenly—

The room cracked.

Not physically. Not audibly.

But spatially.

He opened his eyes.

And saw three versions of himself in the room.

Each sitting in different postures. Breathing at different rates.

None of them turned to look.

Because he was all of them.

And none of them were the core.

Who is the true observer?

One version—his "logic self"—spoke:

"This is unsustainable. Fragmentation leads to madness."

Another—his "intuitive self"—whispered:

"But the Eye cannot devour what it cannot parse."

The third one—cold, silent, smiling—just stared at the mirror.

And the mirror stared back.

Then the voice came.

Not from the room.

Not from his mind.

But from between folds.

"Interesting."

Lucas froze. So did all versions.

"You built a cage… inside your skull. Clever."

The space around him shivered.

And a presence entered the fold.

Not human. Not Watcher. Something else.

Something native to the broken laws he was tampering with.

"You believe this makes you safe?" it asked. "Your thoughts are beautiful. So many angles."

"You would make a fine Architect."

Lucas gritted his teeth.

"Get out."

"Too late," it replied.

The versions of himself began twitching.

Mimicking each other.

Then merging.

The mirror on the table pulsed violently.

He grabbed it—only to find it had turned to obsidian.

His reflections inside the glass?

Screaming.

Lucas took one desperate breath and snapped the fold.

Collapsed all layers.

Slammed his mind back into singularity.

He awoke an hour later on the floor.

Nose bleeding. Fingers numb.

But the room was still.

The incense long burned out.

And his mirror was cold—and blank.

He stood shakily.

Wrote a single word in his notebook:

"They know."

And underneath it:

"But now, I know how to hide."

He didn't sleep that night.

Instead, he drew a new symbol on his wall. One he saw in the fold. A glyph shaped like an infinite loop curled into a spiral.

His dream-self had called it:

"The False Reflection."

Somewhere in the city, a man with mismatched eyes looked up from a rooftop.

"He's begun folding," Eli whispered.

A woman beside him, face hidden by a veil of floating runes, nodded.

"Then we must move. Before the next Gate opens."

"Before the Architect notices."

🔍 下一章预告（Chapter 14 – The Architect's Hand）:

Lucas's folded mind begins to bleed into reality. People around him forget who they are. Signs change language. Time slips. And a new player enters the game—someone who speaks in reflections and calls himself The Architect of Unmaking.