Darkness crept through the broken window as I entered the physician's clinic. The air was thick with the scent of dried herbs and blood. I couldn't tell whether night had truly fallen or if my bleeding eye had obscured my vision. All I knew was that something within the golden eye was bleeding.
Drip... drip... drip...
The sound of droplets hitting the wooden floor was the only noise in the room.
"Lord Felix!"
I lifted my head with difficulty. The physician stood before me, her eyes widening as she examined the wound. Her gaze didn't show fear—just a strange recognition, as if she had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
"Sit," she said in a calm yet commanding tone.
I slumped onto the worn-out chair, my hands trembling like a wounded bird. The physician hurried to the medicine cabinet, pulling out a clean bandage roll and a bottle of antiseptic.
"What have you done to yourself this time?" she asked, soaking a cloth in the solution.
"Nothing," I whispered hoarsely. "It's the eye... It burns from within."
The physician froze, then slowly turned her face toward me. There was no panic in her eyes—only realization.
"I warned you about overusing it," she said, pressing firmly on the wound. "The Golden Eye is not a gift. It's a curse."
A sharp pain shot through my skull, but I couldn't scream. All I could do was stare at the mirror on the wall, where my golden eye glowed like an ember in the dark.
But I never wrote anything like this in my novel!
The thought struck me suddenly. I was certain I had never created a "Golden Eye" in my story. So where had it come from? And why was it now a part of me?
The physician noticed my confusion but ignored my question at first. Then, after a long silence, she sighed and walked toward a small cabinet hidden behind the bookshelves. She pulled a tiny key from her pocket and slowly unlocked it.
Inside lay an ancient book, its cover coated in centuries of dust—made of what looked like human leather.
"This..." she said, wiping the dust from the cover, "is the Record of the Chosen."
She opened the book to a specific page, revealing an illustration of a golden eye that perfectly matched mine. Beneath it, an inscription in the old tongue read:
"A time will come when the weak shall fight the strong, conflicts will multiply, and monsters will emerge from the darkness. Then, the Chosen shall awaken the Golden Eye, which will reveal to them the secrets of time and space."
The physician fixed me with a piercing gaze. "You are not the first, Felix. There have been others like you."
"What happened to them?" I asked, my voice nearly breaking.
"Some became heroes," she said, flipping the page to reveal another illustration—a man with distorted features, his golden eye leaking black fluid. "And some... lost themselves to the darkness."
A crushing weight pressed against my chest. Everything felt wrong. I had written this world, yet I was now facing rules I had never established.
"Today..." I began telling her about the mad girl who had attacked me. "She spoke of a leader who would come. She said they needed me."
The physician's hand trembled violently, and the book fell to the floor. The pages flipped on their own, stopping at a horrifying illustration: a faceless man wielding a sword of pure darkness.
"No..." the physician whispered, stepping back. "It's too soon..."
"Who is he?" I shouted, but before she could answer, the sound of shattering glass came from downstairs.
Then—the screams.
Terrified cries echoed through the halls, followed by that strange sound—one I had never heard before, yet it felt eerily familiar, as if it were part of my very soul.
The physician gripped my arm tightly. "They're here." Her glass eyes reflected the flickering candlelight. "They've found you."
At that moment, the clinic door burst open—
Revealing a tall, faceless shadow in the doorway, its two crimson eyes burning like hellfire.