He spent the whole night in silence, a shadow among the glittering guests. When he finally returned home and peeled the lenses away, his own eyes looked pale, startled, and strangely vulnerable. He realized then that the lenses hadn't hidden him—they’d finally allowed him to see.
The clerk, a woman with silver hair and a knowing smirk, nodded. "Total eclipse. No iris, no pupil. Just the void."
He reached the gala, the site of his "protest." But as he stood in the foyer, watching the elite sip champagne, he realized he didn't want to make a scene anymore. He just wanted to watch. Behind the black lenses, he felt like a ghost haunting the living. He saw the fake smiles and the weary eyes of the waiters with a clarity he’d never possessed before.
As he walked, people didn't just look; they recoiled. A group of teenagers stopped laughing. A businessman stepped off the sidewalk to give him a wide berth. For the first time in his life, Elias felt invisible and impossible at the same time.
The effect was instantaneous and jarring. His right eye was gone, replaced by a bottomless pit. He looked like a tear in the fabric of reality. Pop. The second lens slid home.
