Tianmu: Eyes of Illusion

Theme: Taoist Dream Ritual • Memory as a Price • The Cost of Control

Lucas hadn't slept in three days.

Not in any real sense.

He dozed. He twitched. But each time his eyes closed, someone else blinked them open. In a room that wasn't his. In a world where doors opened inward and never closed.

He needed help.

And all he had… was his grandfather's journals.

The box of scrolls had sat untouched for years.

Lucas had once thought of them as folklore, rambling stories about immortals and mountain rituals. Now they were the only map he had.

Most were written in Classical Chinese, but one—bound in cracked leather—had a different title, in ink still fresh:

"明梦祭法"

The Ritual of Clarity

The subtitle was even stranger:

"For those who see too much, and forget too little."

The ritual instructions were vague.

Half instructions, half poetry.

But he pieced it together:

Prepare a circle with eight directions, traced in salt and ash.Center it with a mirror and a sleeping talisman ("静息符").Light a candle at the "eye gate" (his grandfather's term for northeast).And most importantly: offer memory to silence the noise.

Lucas wasn't sure what that last part meant.

But by nightfall, his room had become a ritual site. He blacked out the windows. Drew the trigram lines by hand. Burned incense over old copper coins.

The candle flickered.

The talisman pulsed.

And Lucas knelt before the mirror and whispered:

"I offer memory."

"I offer what I cannot afford to lose."

He saw his mother's face—laughing in the kitchen, flour on her cheek.

Gone.

He saw a playground—his first time climbing alone.

Gone.

He saw Nora. Her sketchbook. Her favorite tea.

Not gone.

Refused.

The ritual wouldn't take her. Not yet.

Instead, it took something smaller.

A password.

A song.

The taste of watermelon in summer.

And then he fell.

Back into the dreamworld—but different.

This time, he stood outside the courtyard.

Before him were eight doors, each marked by a Ba Gua trigram: ☰ ☱ ☲ ☳ ☴ ☵ ☶ ☷

A voice echoed—not Tian Jian's, not his own:

"Choose the gate you fear most."

He stepped toward ☵ — the water gate.

It opened.

And poured darkness into him.

When he awoke, it was morning.

The candle had melted into glass.

The talisman was ash.

And the mirror…

No longer cracked.

It pulsed softly, like a sleeping eye.

And Lucas felt… clarity.

Not peace.

But purpose.

He could now separate the visions—his illusions from the world's echoes. The ritual had anchored his perception.

He could think again.

And that's when he noticed the mark on his forearm.

Faint. Gold. Just below the skin.

A new symbol:

A circle within a triangle, surrounded by wave lines.

The second seal of the Tianmu.

He picked up the mirror.

No more shadows looked back.

Only Lucas.

And behind his own eyes… a stillness that hadn't been there before.

But he knew one thing for certain:

This calm was not a gift.

It was a trade.

Somewhere in the vault of his mind, a door had closed—and behind it, someone was knocking to be let back in.

📖 Next Chapter: Eyes of the Unknown

A storm brews in Haleford. Lucas encounters someone else who can see through illusion—and realizes they're not an ally. The true enemy finally steps out of the shadows, and it doesn't wear a face. It borrows them.