Tianmu: Eyes of Illusion

"Some memories are not yours—but they are waiting for you to return."

— Inscription beneath Haleford's Old Town Bridge

Lucas had seen strange things.

But nothing prepared him for the Cathedral Below.

They entered through an abandoned rail tunnel near Old Town—where the map in Lucas's dream had burned itself into his vision like afterlight. It wasn't a map of streets. It was a map of mirrored pressure points—places where memory distorted reality.

"What even is this place?" Nora whispered, flashlight beam trembling across broken stone and sagging steel.

"It used to be part of Haleford's original foundation," Lucas said, consulting the Seer Glyph etched into his palm. "But something built on top of it… layered over it."

"A buried structure," she said. "Or a buried… truth."

They reached the chamber.

It wasn't built—it was grown.

Curved stone pillars reached up like bone or coral.

Symbols flickered across the walls—not written but breathed into the surface.

In the center stood a mirror.

Cracked.

Bleeding light.

And around it, a spiral of petrified bodies—seated like monks, arms extended toward the glass, faces twisted in silent awe.

Lucas stepped closer.

One of the figures wore something familiar.

A jacket. Black. Modern.

His voice caught.

"That's—impossible."

Nora touched the edge of the mirror and gasped.

Her eyes went blank.

[Vision Triggered]

— Nora Sun – Dream Fragment Accessed —

She was falling.

But not down—back.

Through centuries, through minds, through a chain of dreamers connected by one symbol: the 天目, the Eye of Truth.

She saw:

A woman with golden irises being burned at a stake, whispering words no one dared write.A boy in Qing robes sketching an impossible architecture beneath his family's altar.A war-torn bunker with a mirror hidden beneath its floor, guarded by men with blacked-out eyes.A young man. Lucas. Or someone like him. Wearing a black jacket, bleeding from the eyes, screaming as he touched the Architect's Gate—and broke it.

Then silence.

Then Nora's own reflection.

But it was smiling back.

She stumbled, breath ragged.

Lucas caught her. "Nora—"

"It's not your first time," she whispered. "Or maybe it is. But someone like you… tried before."

"And failed."

"You shattered the Gate."

Lucas went cold.

The cracked mirror behind them hummed—resonating with something inside his bones.

"That's why the Architect is watching," he muttered.

"Because she's seen me break everything once."

He approached the center mirror.

In its shattered surface, reflections shimmered—realities that could've been.

He reached forward—

—and the glyph on his palm flared, casting the chamber in golden light.

The petrified figures trembled.

One opened its mouth.

And spoke.

"The Seer Map is not a chart."

"It is a warning."

The light snapped off.

The chamber darkened.

And footsteps echoed from the tunnel behind.

Fast.

Heavy.

Multiple.

"Hunters?" Nora asked, raising her knife.

"Worse," Lucas said.

"The ones that remember me."

🔍 下一章预告（Chapter 21 – Echoes of the First Breaker）:

Cornered in the Cathedral Below, Lucas must confront an enemy that claims to be a version of himself—before the Gate was ever sealed. But if he listens, will he forget who he is?