The Puppet's Banquet

“When the gods fell silent, the echoes began to sing.” Chen Yuze should have died. Instead, he awoke beneath gaslight and rain in a world stitched together from faith and madness—along with a new name: Lucien Hallow. Once an ordinary student from the modern age, Lucien now walks a city where reason bends beneath candle flames, roses bloom from shattered mirrors, and whispers follow him through the fog. Scholars call it enlightenment. Priests call it heresy. Lucien calls it a nightmare he refuses to wake from. As he searches for a way home, he becomes entangled in the myths surrounding an ancient ritual known only as The Banquet—a feast once held by gods who devoured stories instead of flesh. But the past does not stay buried, and the echoes of his old self linger, calling him by a name this world should never know. Every secret he uncovers brings him closer to a truth older than the heavens…and further from the humanity he struggles to retain. When knowledge demands blood and faith demands silence, Lucien must decide whether he will remain a puppet or become the heretic who dares to cut his own strings. In a city of mirrors, every reflection remembers. Some names, however, were never meant to be spoken twice.