Chapter Seventeen: The Broken World
Three days had passed since the explosion.
The apartment still carried the scent of burnt glass,
and the light in its corners was dim, as if daylight refused to enter.
Nour sat by the window, staring at her hand, which sometimes became half-transparent.
When she touched the light, part of her faded for a moment… then returned.
She felt that something inside her did not belong to her.
Outside, strange voices could be heard.
People in the street were talking about something unbelievable:
> "My reflection in the mirror… moved before I did."
"The mirror split our house in two!"
"My children see faces that look like us in the glass!"
The news spread quickly—
an entire city was beginning to shatter under the Curse of Reflection.
Mirrors no longer merely reflected… they watched.
---
At night, Nour sat in her room, the shattered mirror before her.
She tried to ignore it, but she heard a faint voice coming from the cracks:
> "Didn't you miss me?"
She froze in place.
The voice was her own—but deeper, calmer, and more honest.
> "You thought you got rid of me…
but the world can no longer bear the existence of only one face."
Nour stepped closer to the mirror and looked inside,
and she saw herself—no, her reflection—standing in a dark world,
surrounded by other mirrors that moved like watching eyes.
> "Everyone who looks into a mirror now… awakens one of us,"
the reflection said with a serene smile.
"You opened the door, Nour.
The mirror is breathing again."
---
Elsewhere, far from all light,
Niyar walked through the void—
the sound of his footsteps echoing as if he were walking inside the heart of a dead mirror.
Since the explosion, his being had split in two.
One part of him was bound to Nour in the real world,
and the other was trapped in the void, struggling to return.
> "The mirror has shattered… but it did not die,"
a voice said from the darkness.
It belonged to a faceless girl, made entirely of faint white light.
"The ancient entity is awakening,
and the reflections are beginning to feed on those who stare too long."
Niyar lifted his head, his black hair covering half his face.
"Is there a way to stop it?"
> "Yes. Only one."
She paused, then whispered,
"You must return the mirror to its origin,
and you must choose who will remain inside it forever."
---
In the city, things spiraled out of control.
People began covering mirrors and curtains,
and shops closed their glass fronts out of fear of "delayed reflections."
Even cameras and water surfaces began to show strange movements.
Everywhere there was a reflection… another life was moving.
In Nour's house, her mother tried to hold onto her sanity,
but she began to notice that "Nour" slept with one eye open,
and sometimes spoke in two overlapping voices.
And on that very night,
the mother entered the room to wake her,
and saw something that froze the blood in her veins—
Nour was asleep on the bed,
but in the mirror opposite… she was sitting and staring at her with a smile.
---
The next day, Nour received a strange email.
The subject line read: "From Niyar."
But the sender had no known address.
> "The mirror is no longer a door… it has become a world.
Every reflection is alive now, searching for a face to inhabit.
If we don't close the circle, light will die in both worlds.
Search for the original mirror—the one where everything began.
You'll find it in the place where you saw yourself for the first time."
Nour read the message, her heart pounding violently.
She remembered the old room at the end of the hallway…
and the mirror covered with gray cloth.
She stood up, her breath unsteady.
> "So the end… is in the beginning."
Outside, the night was devouring the city.
Streetlights flickered unnaturally,
and all car windows and shop fronts reflected faces that did not match their owners.
People began disappearing one by one,
leaving behind only traces on the glass—
as if the mirror had quietly consumed them.
And in Nour's house,
the old mirror waited patiently in dark silence,
while deep within it,
her other reflection whispered with a cold smile:
> "See you soon… me."