The crack didn't hurt—not at first.
It was the sound that got to him.
A dry, splintering snap, like thin ice giving way underfoot.
Chen Ye didn't flinch. He'd heard it eight times before.
Blood welled along the fracture line, warm and thick, tracing a path down his cheekbone. He didn't wipe it away. Let it dry. Let it crust. Let it remind him: This is the price of seeing too much.
Across the alley, a stray cat froze mid-step. Its tail puffed. Ears flattened. Not fear of blood—no, street cats saw worse in dumpsters every night.
It was the light it recoiled from.
From his right eye.
Chen Ye tilted his head, just enough to catch the reflection in the rain-slicked shop window. His own face stared back—pale, exhausted, shadows like bruises under his eyes. And there, in the sclera of his right eye: the concentric cylinders, now glowing a faint, electric blue. Three rings. Rotating. Hungry.
The Eye Mutation.
Three years since the Silent Aurora. Three years since the world learned that seeing clearly came with a cost. One in a thousand paid it. Most went mad within months. Some burned out like overloaded circuits, brains frying in their skulls. A rare few… like him… learned to live with the fracture. To weaponize it.
He shifted his weight, the worn leather of his camera strap creaking against his shoulder. Inside the battered Nikon: thirty-six frames of truth. ETA transport routes. Guard rotations. License plates of black vans that never appeared on city logs.
Su Li's words echoed in his skull, sharp as shrapnel:
"This film could save a life, Chen Ye. Maybe even yours."
He'd laughed then, a dry, broken sound. "Why help a monster?"
She'd pushed her glasses up her nose, rainwater beading on the lenses, and looked at him—not at the blue light in his eye, but through it, into the man beneath.
"Because your eyes," she'd said, "are the only ones left that see people."
A low growl of engines cut through the drumming rain. Not combustion. Electric. Silent, save for the crunch of tires on wet gravel. Like bones breaking, he thought.
The spotlight hit him first—a searing white disc pinning him to the alley wall. Then the voice, amplified, cold as surgical steel:
"Subject 000. Drop the camera. Hands where we can see them."
ETA. Eyes Task Agency. Cleaners.
Chen Ye didn't move. His breath fogged in the cold air, steady. Calm. Inside, his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Left eye: the alley. Wet asphalt. A rusted fire escape. A flickering neon sign—Lucky Noodle.
Right eye: the fracture widened. The blue light intensified. And the world… split.
Three paths unfolded before him, superimposed over reality like translucent ghosts:
→ Path One: Run left. Sprint for the mouth of the alley. ETA sniper on the roof takes the shot. Center mass. You go down in the gutter. Camera crushed under a boot.
→ Path Two: Throw the camera right. It clatters against the dumpster. Three seconds of confusion. Enough to reach the AC unit on the wall. Climb. Disappear onto the rooftops.
→ Path Three: Do nothing. Wait. The lead agent steps forward to secure you. His boot heel grinds into a loose cobblestone. He stumbles. Half a second of imbalance. In that half-second…
Path Three flickered, brighter than the others. A dying star flaring one last time.
A grim smile touched Chen Ye's lips.
"Yeah," he murmured, blood cooling on his skin. "Let's try that."
He focused. Not on the agents. Not on the guns.
On the space between the lead agent's boot and the loose cobblestone.
On the tension in the man's thigh as he shifted his weight.
On the 0.3 seconds it would take for gravity to win.
His right eye blazed.
Not a blink. Not a flinch.
A tear—a vertical fissure splitting the blue light down the center, raw and jagged.
Pain—white-hot, nauseating—lanced through his skull. He tasted copper. Saw stars.
But the world twisted.
Reality folded like origami. The alley stretched, compressed, rewrote itself.
The lead agent's boot came down.
The cobblestone shifted.
He stumbled—just as the vision promised.
Chen Ye was already moving. Not running. Falling. A controlled collapse backward into the space behind the overflowing dumpster.
The first shot kicked sparks off the brickwork where his head had been.
Darkness swallowed him.
And the fractured eye wept blue light into the rain.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading Chapter 1. This is an original Chinese novel, carefully translated and refined for English readers—every sentence weighed for rhythm, every image honed for impact.
If a moment made your pulse skip—
If a line cut deeper than you expected—
Tell me in the comments.
Not because I need praise.
But because your voice shapes what comes next.
Chen Ye's journey is just beginning. And I want to walk it with you.
What would you do in his place?
Run? Fight?
Or trust the fracture?
------------KHChing