# Chapter One:
The scent of rain and dust filled the air in the back alleys of Celestia, where ancient buildings intertwined like giant trees in a forgotten forest. Here, in this underworld rarely touched by sunlight, Kai Lin felt at home. He was a young man in his early twenties, slender, with sharp eyes that held a gaze beyond the ordinary. He wore an old coat and carried a worn leather bag, containing his small treasures: antique trinkets, forgotten artifacts, and seemingly worthless items to others, but which held stories that whispered to him in silence.
Kai Lin suffered from a strange condition, for which he found no name in the medical books he had read. He called it "Fragmented Perception Disorder." For him, reality was not constant. Walls sometimes breathed, shadows danced in the corners of his eyes, and whispers crept into his ears from nowhere. These were not hallucinations in the traditional sense, but an additional layer of reality, a layer no one else saw. Over time, he learned to ignore them, to consider them part of the city's noise, but they had grown stronger recently.
Kai Lin walked through the winding alleys, avoiding the puddles left by the morning rain. His destination was a small antique shop, owned by a mysterious old man named "Mr. Wu." Mr. Wu was one of the few who did not look at Kai Lin strangely. He seemed to understand the nature of the hidden world Kai Lin saw, or at least, he wasn't afraid of it.
When he arrived at the shop, he found Mr. Wu sitting on an old wooden chair, smoking a long pipe, the sweet scent of tobacco filling the air. The shop was crammed with antiques, from small statues to faded paintings, each piece seeming to hold a special secret.
"Welcome, Kai Lin," Mr. Wu said in a calm voice, without lifting his eyes from the pipe. "Did you bring me anything interesting today?"
Kai Lin pulled a small bronze statue from his bag, depicting a strange creature with bat wings and hollow eyes. "I found it in the ruins of an ancient temple outside the city. It seems to be from the pre-Empire era."
Mr. Wu examined the statue with his expert eyes, then smiled a mysterious smile. "Yes, this is indeed interesting. But I have something even more exciting for you today."
Mr. Wu pointed to a dark corner of the shop, where a small wooden box, adorned with strange carvings, sat. "This box just arrived. They say it came from a forgotten tomb in the Eastern Desert. I haven't dared to open it yet."
Kai Lin felt a chill run down his spine. The whispers in his head grew stronger, as if warning him of the box. But his curiosity was stronger than his fear. He approached the box, feeling a strange energy emanating from it, a cold and ancient energy.
"Do you want to open it?" Mr. Wu asked, his eyes gleaming with a strange sparkle. "They say such things choose their owners. Perhaps it will choose you."
Kai Lin hesitated for a moment, then reached out and opened the box. Inside, there was another small statue, but completely different from anything he had ever seen. It was a statue of a shiny black stone, representing a human eye, but it was a third eye, an eye that saw what ordinary eyes could not.
The moment Kai Lin touched the statue, the whispers in his head exploded, turning into screams. He saw successive images, images of ancient civilizations, forgotten wars, and mysterious entities struggling in the dark. He felt as if his mind was tearing apart, as if reality was fragmenting around him. He fell to his knees, clutching his head, while Mr. Wu watched him with a mysterious smile, as if he had expected all of this.