The sky above the Axiom Empire was always cloudy. No, it would be more accurate to say it “appeared" cloudy.

The weather was supposed to be completely controlled by artificial satellites, so there was no reason for clouds to form. Yet to Juliana, it always seemed as though a gray sky stretched endlessly above.

One day, while flipping through a children’s picture book in the library, she found herself uttering those words aloud. On the page before her was a flower field blooming beneath a blue sky. The blue that leaped into her vision was so vivid, so utterly removed from the colors of reality, that it startled her.

Her friend Noah laughed. “It’s propaganda. Picture books aren’t managed yet, so they haven’t been touched."

At that moment, a “disturbance" ran through her vision. The blue on the page seemed to ripple and wave, giving her the illusion that it was switching places with the scenery outside.

---

That night, Juliana stood before the mirror in her room, staring into her own eyes.

Her irises were a pale gold—an identification color given through artificial adjustment. But deep within them, something was swaying. What she was seeing felt somehow not “real"—as if it were a processed view through a membrane, like footage with a video filter applied.

—Filter.

In Axiom, all citizens’ vision was managed by the government’s central system called “Legion."

Images deemed disturbing—violence, blood, corpses, irregular citizens—were automatically “deleted."

In other words, it wasn’t that these things couldn’t be seen. They were “not being shown."

From that night onward, abnormalities began occurring in her eyes.

A white dog sat beside her bed.

With somewhat melancholic eyes, it gazed quietly at her. There was no sound of breathing—a completely silent existence.

When she woke the next morning, the dog was gone—or should have been. But in front of the entrance, there were clearly “someone’s" footprints left behind.

---

The next day, Juliana chose a different path when she went out into the city.

Leaving the central corridor, she headed toward the old industrial district where access was restricted. This was an area where visual control was ambiguous—what was called a “vision bug zone."

There, it was.

Countless graffiti written on the walls.

“Everyone just can’t see" “Question Legion" “Are your eyes real?"

Her chest felt unsettled. She didn’t know who had written them. But she felt as if the fear inside her had manifested as text.

That’s when it happened.

Juliana’s vision warped grotesquely.

As if she had sunk underwater, colors and shapes undulated, and the cityscape before her began to crumble.

From behind the familiar streets, charred buildings emerged.

Rolling corpses. Crying children. Blood-stained uniforms.

It was the “past." The dark memories of the Axiom Empire, hidden behind filters.

Juliana was experiencing a moment when visual control was completely released.

Her eye-consciousness was different from other citizens. Something was “broken." No, perhaps it was the reverse. It was everyone else’s eyes that were broken.

---

That night, the white dog appeared in her room again.

Slowly, it approached with a thin cord held in its mouth.

At the end was an old interface chip. Probably an illegal memory expansion device.

Juliana took it and inserted it into her temple.

For an instant, sharp pain pierced through her brain—and then, something opened.

Deep within her eye-consciousness, in the depths of vision, lay dormant “the power to see through reality."

She was no longer seeing what she “wanted to see," but what she “hadn’t wanted to see."

The world was made of different colors. Blue skies, burnt wastelands, death, life—everything.

She whispered.

In that moment, something quietly awakened inside Juliana.

(Chapter 1 – End)

※ Next Chapter: “Ear-Consciousness – The Voice of Silence"

Juliana’s City of Nine Consciousnesses is a groundbreaking philosophical cyberpunk novel that explores the intersection of Buddhist consciousness theory and futuristic dystopia. The story follows a young woman living in a society where perception itself is controlled and manipulated by authoritarian systems.

Drawing from the Buddhist concept of nine consciousnesses (九識), each chapter delves into different aspects of human perception and awareness—from basic sensory consciousness to the deepest levels of universal consciousness. Through the protagonist’s journey of awakening, the novel examines themes of reality, illusion, control, and liberation in an age of technological omnipresence.

This work represents a unique fusion of Eastern philosophical traditions with Western cyberpunk aesthetics, creating a narrative that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant. It challenges readers to question the nature of their own perception and the reality they believe they inhabit.