Tianmu: Eyes of Illusion

Theme: Reality bleeding • Illusion toll • First collateral victim

There were cracks in the world.

Lucas could feel them.

In reflections. In corners. In silence that lingered too long.

He hadn't slept since the dream.

Not really.

Because when he closed his eyes, he didn't just dream—he continued. The courtyard, the diagrams, Tian Jian's silver eyes—they returned night after night.

But now, something else returned with them.

A presence.

Watching him from outside the dream. Pacing. Waiting.

And each time he woke, it was harder to tell what was real.

Day 3 after the dream training.

He used the Tianmu technique on a mugger in a dark alley—just a flash illusion. A swarm of wasps pouring out of the man's mouth. It worked. The guy screamed and dropped the knife.

But Lucas kept seeing the swarm after the fight ended.

It followed him all the way home.

Day 5.

His neighbor, Nora—a freelance artist who sometimes fed the alley cats—knocked on his door, eyes wide.

"Lucas… did something happen to me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I think I saw… something in the mirror last night. A face. Yours. But wrong."

Her hands were trembling.

"And I dreamed in Mandarin. I don't speak Mandarin."

Lucas's blood ran cold.

That night, he didn't use the mirror.

He locked it in the kitchen drawer, wrapped in three layers of cloth, surrounded by a salt ring.

But it didn't help.

He woke up choking—hands clutching his own throat. And when he stumbled into the bathroom, the mirror on the cabinet showed two Lucases: one blinking, one smiling with black eyes.

Only one vanished when he looked away.

Later, in the park, he tried to meditate. To center himself. He repeated the stabilizing mantra Tian Jian had whispered:

"以心止镜,以镜止幻."

Still the mirror through the mind. Still the illusion through the mirror.

But it didn't still.

Nothing stilled.

That evening, Nora went missing.

She never came back from walking her dog.

Police said maybe she just left. No signs of a break-in. No noise. No struggle.

But Lucas found a symbol carved onto her doorframe.

The same spiral from his first dream.

Only now, it bled.

Lucas sat on the floor of his apartment, eyes red from exhaustion, the bronze mirror unwrapped before him.

"Stop," he whispered.

"I didn't want this."

The mirror didn't answer.

But the wall beside him shifted.

Not moved—shifted, like a curtain being pulled away from the world.

And something stood behind it.

A tall figure. No face. Only folds of shadow, like its body was made of night smoke. Its hands ended in long fingers… or feathers. Its presence pressed against Lucas's mind like cold glass.

Then it spoke.

"You opened the Eye."

"Now the Eye opens you."

Lucas screamed.

But no sound came.

The world buckled.

Colors inverted.

His apartment became the courtyard.

Then the subway.

Then the dream again—but broken.

Symbols flashing too fast to read. A spiral within a spiral. Nora's voice echoing backward.

And the presence laughed.

No sound. Just laughter in shape.

Lucas awoke on the floor.

Blood trickled from his nose.

He looked around.

Still his apartment. Still night.

The mirror sat beside him—cracked.

And on its surface was her name, etched in golden Mandarin:

"诺拉."

📖 Next Chapter: Ritual of Clarity

Lucas seeks out ancient Taoist dream rites from his grandfather's journals in hopes of stabilizing his crumbling mind. But the ritual requires sacrifice—not just memory or emotion, but clarity. What must he forget to remain sane?