Tianmu: Eyes of Illusion

It started again with blood on his hands.

Lucas stood in a street he didn't recognize, breath fogging in the chill night air. A body lay crumpled at his feet—young, male, his face half-shrouded in shadow.

The eyes were still open. Empty. Dead.

Lucas stepped back in horror, but something sticky clung to his fingers. Red. Still warm. His heart pounded so loud he could barely hear the sirens in the distance.

"This isn't real," he whispered. "It's not."

Then why couldn't he wake up?

When he finally did, he gasped like a man breaking the surface of dark water.

Lucas sat up, soaked in sweat. The room around him was familiar—his rented apartment in Haleford's east side. Dim, cold, utterly silent. But the taste of metal still lingered on his tongue.

He glanced at his hands.

Nothing. No blood.

But his fingernails ached like they'd been digging into something solid.

The dream had come three nights in a row now. Always the same boy. Always the same silent scream. Always the same whisper just before waking:

"This memory isn't yours… yet."

He avoided mirrors that morning. Even brushing his teeth, he kept his eyes down. He knew what he'd see—symbols flickering faintly across glass, half-formed illusions twitching in the corners of his vision.

He wasn't hallucinating.

He was seeing layers.

The world didn't just have light and shadow anymore. It had filters. Depths. Constructs built atop one another. And something inside him was learning how to read them—how to pull them apart.

It scared the hell out of him.

By noon, he found himself back at the old temple bookstore in Chinatown.

The place had no official name, no customers, and no digital footprint. Just incense, cracked wood, and scrolls that smelled like dried salt and thunder. It was also where he met Zhou, the only person in Haleford who didn't flinch when he talked about symbols moving in the dark.

"You're cracking open too fast," Zhou muttered, not looking up from the strips of cinnabar paper he was binding. "Did you draw the glyphs like I told you?"

Lucas nodded. "And burned them under the moon. It stopped the nightmares. For two days. Then they came back."

"Not nightmares," Zhou said. "Echoes. Residuals. Someone—or something—is bleeding their impressions into you."

Lucas frowned. "Like a psychic infection?"

"Like your mind is a mirror that hasn't been covered."

Zhou gestured toward the back room.

"You're going to need shielding. Not the paper stuff. Something deeper. There's a woman I know—used to be in the Ministry, back in the nineties. You want out of this spiral, you see her."

Lucas hesitated. "I don't want out."

Zhou paused. Looked at him for a long time.

"Then make peace with this," he said. "If you keep seeing shadows in your own soul, someday you'll stop recognizing which ones are yours."

Lucas left with the address. Midtown. Industrial side.

He barely noticed the man watching from across the street.

Clean coat. Black gloves. No aura.

Just two dark eyes following Lucas's every step—as if mapping him into some invisible ledger.

That night, Lucas tried something dangerous.

He sat in his warded circle. Candles arranged in a broken-hex formation. The bronze mirror in front of him, flat and dull.

He placed his hand on its surface.

"I want to see," he whispered. "But only what's mine."

The mirror rippled.

A dozen scenes flashed behind his eyes. His childhood. His mother's voice. His first stolen kiss. His grandfather's death.

And then—the boy.

Falling.

Bleeding.

Dying.

Lucas screamed and yanked his hand back. But something followed. A shimmer. A shadow.

It hovered for a heartbeat, then disappeared into the wall.

Someone else was dreaming through him.

He didn't sleep after that. Just sat staring at the mirror until dawn. Wondering if the next time he blinked, he'd wake up in someone else's nightmare.

Or if he'd already crossed that line… and never left.

🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 22: The Grey Border

Lucas tracks the lingering echo in his dreams and finds a map—written in ink only his third eye can read. It leads him to a place that shouldn't exist… a place between realities.