When the veil breaks, the world doesn't just reveal—it rewrites.
Chapter 1 – The Dream That Wasn't a Dream
It started with a dream. Always the same one.
A circular stone floor beneath his feet, etched with ancient lines and twisting shapes—some like calligraphy, some like cracks in reality. The air smelled faintly of incense and wet earth, and a voice murmured from nowhere and everywhere, in a language just beyond comprehension.
Lucas Zhang stood in the middle of that strange, impossible space. Again.
The lines beneath him glowed faintly, pulsing with slow breaths, like the heartbeat of something asleep—and dreaming. He looked down at the pattern: a massive octagonal design made of interlocking trigrams and swirling glyphs that seemed to shift if he stared too long.
He always woke up before the center opened.
Today, though, something was different.
He sat up in his cramped apartment bed, sweat clinging to his neck, heart racing like a trapped bird. The threadbare sheets twisted around his legs, and the faint hum of the city seeped through the cracked window—car horns, distant sirens, and the low drone of the night.
"Four nights now," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Why do I remember it so clearly? Like I was there, not just dreaming."
His small room smelled of old paper and instant noodles. Stacks of untranslated Taoist texts cluttered the desk. The bronze mirror his grandfather left untouched sat half-buried under a pile of junk mail.
Lucas swung his legs over the side of the bed, the cold floor biting at his bare feet. He shuffled toward the bathroom, flicked on the harsh fluorescent light, and stared into the mirror.
His reflection stared back—pale, tired, ordinary. Except for the symbols.
At first, they weren't there. But then, as his eyes locked with his own reflection, faint golden sigils shimmered on the glass behind him—two curved strokes forming a crescent, an eye inside a triangle, and a line spiraling outward like a vortex.
They vanished the moment he blinked.
"Okay," he said with a nervous laugh, trying to shake the chill creeping up his spine. "I'm either sleep-deprived or going insane."
Maybe both.
Lucas wasn't anyone special. Twenty-two, translator-for-hire, stuck in the gray city of Haleford—a place no one visited unless they had to. The streets were lined with crumbling brick buildings, neon signs flickering in the fog like restless spirits. Even the pigeons seemed depressed.
His parents lived miles away in San Diego, busy with their own lives. He mostly worked nights—subtitling indie films, translating game dialogue, and sometimes digging through the dusty Taoist scrolls his grandfather had sent from Taiwan. Most of the texts were illegible to him, full of cryptic characters and obscure rituals.
One box, however, remained unopened in the closet. It had sat there for months.
That night, sleep refused to come. The dream gnawed at him, insistent and alive.
With a trembling hand, Lucas pulled the box down and unlatched the rusty clasp. Inside lay an old bronze mirror—small enough to hold in one hand, its surface dulled by age but still heavy with presence. The back was etched with strange marks that felt familiar, like the patterns in his dream.
Beside it, a sealed envelope adorned with elegant calligraphy:
"张天目之后,吾愿他能见真象."
To the one who inherits the Eye of Truth.
He traced the characters with a shaky finger, heart pounding. What did it mean? Was it just an old family saying? Or something more?
He lifted the mirror, feeling a sudden chill crawl up his arm.
The surface rippled—not like water, but like silk pulled taut by invisible hands.
Suddenly, the lights flickered. A symbol burned into view on the glass—a glowing eye inside a triangle. It pulsed softly, hypnotic and alive.
Lucas gasped and dropped the mirror onto the bedspread. It landed with a dull thud but the symbol lingered in his mind's eye.
Something had changed.
The room felt thicker, charged. He looked around, seeing not just walls and furniture but patterns—glowing sigils hidden in corners, footsteps without feet crossing the floor, shadows twisting unnaturally.
And then, in the mirror's reflection, for just a split second, he saw another face—watching him from behind. Pale, unreadable, and impossibly close.
He whirled around.
Nothing but silence and the low whisper curling around his ears:
"You've opened the first gate."
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Chapter 2 – Symbols in the Shadows
Lucas begins to notice strange symbols etched in the city's hidden corners, and a shadowy figure seems to be following him. The mystery deepens, and the line between dream and reality blurs.
Chapter 2 – Symbols in the Shadows
It started on the subway.
Lucas was still shaken from the mirror incident the night before. He hadn't slept much—just dozed off in patches, always waking with the image of that glowing eye burned behind his lids. The whisper still echoed faintly in his skull: "You've opened the first gate."
Whatever that meant.
Now, he sat slumped in a scratched plastic seat, earbuds in but no music playing. Just pretending to be normal. The train rattled through Haleford's underground, a low growl of iron and time. His fingers tapped idly against his thigh as he watched the grime-slick tunnel walls flash by.
Then something caught his eye.
A faint glow—only for a second—painted on the black concrete outside.
A symbol.
He jerked upright and pressed his face to the window. It was gone. But in that brief instant, he'd seen it: three interlocked circles surrounding a vertical line, pulsing faintly with golden light. No graffiti. No paint. Something else. Something older.
The lights in the subway car flickered.
No one else reacted.
Lucas's heart thudded.
Later, walking through Haleford's rain-drenched streets, the feeling only grew stronger. The city seemed… layered now. A second version of it lurked beneath the surface—shadows that moved a beat too late, reflections in puddles that didn't match the real world.
And then there were the symbols.
He saw them carved into the mortar between bricks, faintly glowing under streetlamps. Drawn in chalk near storm drains. Painted behind rusted dumpsters where no one should have been able to reach.
They weren't random. They formed patterns, clusters. Like a language made of geometry.
And they were watching him.
At least, that's what it felt like.
Lucas turned a corner and froze.
Across the street, partially obscured by fog and neon haze, stood a figure in a long coat. Motionless. Head slightly tilted.
Watching.
Lucas blinked. A car passed. When it was gone, so was the figure.
Back at his apartment, he locked the door behind him, breathing hard. Rain pelted the window. His soaked jacket left a trail on the floor. He peeled it off and turned on every light.
Then he reached for the mirror.
Nothing.
No symbol. No ripple.
Just his pale, anxious reflection staring back.
He turned to the envelope that came with the mirror, now open on his desk. He read the calligraphy again, slower this time. The words stirred something in his memory, something from childhood stories his grandfather used to tell in hushed tones over cups of barley tea.
"The Eye of Truth sees not just the world, but the cracks between it."
He remembered another thing too—something his grandfather once said, laughing but serious underneath.
"Some truths are only visible when you stop trying to see them."
Lucas turned off the overhead light and let the apartment go dark.
Then he breathed in, slowly. Out.
Focused on the silence.
And the mirror changed.
Faintly, barely perceptible, the surface rippled again. Like fog lifting from a window.
A new symbol appeared—different from the others. This one resembled a labyrinth spiraling inward, pulsing softly.
Then he saw it. Reflected behind him.
A shape.
A person. No. A shadow shaped like a person. Standing still.
Lucas spun around—his chair toppled.
No one.
Just his empty living room.
Except now, one of the symbols from the subway—those interlocking rings—was burned faintly into the wall. As if left by heat, or thought, or memory.
He didn't leave the apartment the next day. He ordered food but never answered the door when the knock came. When he finally peeked through the peephole, no one was there. Just a folded piece of paper wedged into the frame.
No writing. Just a single drawn symbol:
An eye inside a triangle.
Not the same as the one from his dream.
This one was closed.
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Chapter 3 – The Artifact
Lucas opens the last box from his grandfather. Inside, a clue to his family's true legacy—and a mirror that doesn't just reflect, but remembers.
Chapter 3 – The Artifact
Lucas couldn't shake the feeling that he was being followed.
Not just the ordinary kind of paranoia, but something deeper—an instinct scratching at the base of his spine. He walked with his hood up, eyes darting to mirrored windows and passing shadows. But every time he turned around, the street was empty.
Something was watching him. He knew it.
When he returned to his apartment, the front door was still locked. Nothing inside seemed touched. Still, he double-checked the closets, the shower, even under the bed. Just to be sure.
He told himself he wasn't losing it. That this wasn't what his mother would call "one of those spells again."
He needed answers.
And there was still one thing he hadn't touched.
The last unopened box sat in the back of his bedroom closet, beneath old jackets and dusty shoeboxes. It was wrapped in twine, the corners softened by time. A single strip of red paper was glued to the lid—another symbol inked across it in careful brushstrokes: a square within a circle, crossed by a slanting line.
Lucas didn't know what it meant. But it felt… protective. Like a seal.
He hesitated only a moment before pulling the twine loose. The paper crumbled in his fingers.
Inside, carefully wrapped in cloth and dried lavender, lay another mirror. Larger than the first—maybe the size of a dinner plate—but thinner, impossibly light in his hands. The surface was obsidian-dark, with no reflection at all.
Etched into the back were familiar markings—trigrams from the I Ching, old Taoist celestial symbols, and at the center, a spiral labyrinth that echoed what he'd seen in his dream. His fingers brushed against the engraving, and a strange warmth spread into his palm.
Beneath the mirror was a faded envelope, heavier than paper should be. Inside was a letter, handwritten in Chinese, and a pressed object wrapped in silk.
The letter was brief:
"If you are reading this, then the Eye has opened to you.
You must learn quickly—before others sense it.
This mirror is not a tool. It is a gate.
Do not trust what you see.
Especially not your own reflection."
— Grandfather
Lucas slowly unwrapped the small silk bundle. Inside was a jade pendant—carved into the shape of an eye, its pupil a tiny spinning disc of metal. It felt heavier than it looked.
For a long moment, he just sat there, mirror in one hand, pendant in the other, the words not a tool... a gate turning over in his mind.
Then, for no reason he could explain, he hung the pendant around his neck.
And the lights dimmed.
The mirror's surface rippled—more violently than the last one. Not silk this time, but water crashing against itself. Images rose like steam.
He saw flashes.
A narrow alley lit by red lanterns.
A woman with her eyes sewn shut, whispering incantations into a bowl of blood.
An enormous black door covered in thousands of paper talismans.
A man standing in front of a wall of mirrors, all showing different versions of him—some older, some in robes, one bleeding from the eyes.
Then the images vanished.
Lucas dropped the mirror with a gasp. It didn't break—it landed like it was made of rubber instead of bronze.
He looked down at his hands. His fingertips shimmered faintly, like heatwaves in summer air.
Then he turned to the bedroom wall.
A symbol glowed there—drawn in golden light across the cracked plaster. Slowly rotating.
His breathing slowed.
This wasn't just hallucination anymore.
He was seeing through something. Through the surface of the world.
That night, Lucas stepped outside with the pendant hidden under his shirt. He walked slowly through the city, not trying to reach anywhere, just… observing.
Haleford had changed.
Or maybe it had always been like this, and now he finally saw it.
Symbols shimmered beneath neon signs, layered between cracks in the concrete. Dogs barked at nothing. People passed by, their shadows not matching their stride.
Then he saw something that stopped him cold.
A man was standing across the street, under a flickering sign for a pawn shop. Wearing a dark coat, face obscured by shadows. But Lucas knew—he was the one from before. The one watching.
The man raised a hand.
Not to wave. To beckon.
Lucas took a single step forward.
And the man vanished.
No smoke. No sound. Just gone.
But where he stood, etched faintly into the wet asphalt, was a symbol Lucas had come to dread:
An eye inside a triangle.
But this one was open.
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Chapter 4 – Sight Beyond Sight
Lucas discovers that he can manipulate what others perceive—but using the power draws attention. Dangerous attention. The first encounter with a demon-hunter ends in fire, confusion, and a psychic backlash he may not survive.