Chapter 5: The Man Who Saw the Eye

No one dared speak his name now—not out loud.
Chen Songnian had become a living omen, a ghost wrapped in human skin.

People whispered:

“The compass shattered in his hands…”
“He saw something in the coffin…”
“He’s marked now. Touched by the other side.”

Each day, he wandered further from the city’s light.
He no longer recognized the roads, nor the people.
Only the voice in his head remained constant.

“Blessed ground for the blessed… cursed ground for the damned…”

Wrapped in rags, barefoot, his skin blistered from cold, he gripped his tattered linen bundle like a dying mother clutches her child. Inside: the remnants of the jade compass—sharp, green, whispering. Some shards pulsed faintly at night, like embers that refused to die.

When he slept, it was never deep.

Always… it came back.

The scratching.
The suffocating silence.
And the eye.

That eye.

Cold. Inhuman. Vertical.

Every time he closed his eyes, he was back at the grave—staring into the slit of darkness beneath the coffin lid, watching as the pupil swelled, filled his vision, devoured him.

He would wake gasping, clutching his chest, feeling phantom coils around his throat.

The townspeople had long stopped trying to help.

Some left food at the edge of the alley, but never approached.
Others painted talismans on their doors, muttered prayers, and threw salt in his shadow’s path.

But none of it mattered.

The curse had already taken root.

He was no longer just a man.

He was a vessel.

A bridge between realms.
A warning etched in flesh.

One rainy evening, an old beggar approached him, unafraid. A woman—blind in both eyes. She reached out and touched his hand.

Her milky eyes rolled back as she whispered:

“You saw it… didn’t you?”

“The watcher beneath the coffin.”

Chen’s lips trembled. He wanted to scream. To run. But all he could manage was a whisper:

“It… looked at me.”

The woman nodded slowly.

“And now it sees through you.”

That night, Chen did not sleep.

He sat curled under a broken shrine, soaked by rain, clutching his compass fragments, eyes wide.

Above him, thunder cracked.
And in the black glass puddle before him…

The eye blinked.

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To be continued in Chapter 6: Echoes Beneath the Soil