Chapter Fourteen: A Shadow in the Light
The clock struck three in the morning.
Rain was falling softly, the sound of droplets tapping against the window filling the room.
On the floor, the shattered mirror pieces glimmered like faint, broken stars.
In the middle of the room, Nour sat on her bed, staring at her hand.
She examined it quietly, then smiled lightly, as if discovering something new within herself.
Whenever she moved her fingers, she heard a faint echo—
as though the sound came from a place very far away…
from inside the glass.
Her mother entered quietly, her face pale, her eyes full of worry.
"Nour… how are you feeling?"
The girl slowly lifted her gaze and answered in a soft yet strange voice:
"Light… like something inside me finally broke."
Her mother smiled, but the smile didn't last.
Because she noticed something terrifying—
Nour's shadow on the wall did not move when she stood up.
---
A week passed.
Life seemed to return to normal on the surface:
Nour left her room, helped her mother prepare meals, and even laughed sometimes.
But something had changed.
She spent long hours staring into reflective surfaces—
not mirrors only, but anything that could hold a reflection:
the TV screen, the kitchen window, even the water in a pot.
She looked into them as if waiting for someone to return.
One night, her mother entered the room and found her staring into a black, turned-off screen, her eyes empty.
"Nour?"
After a long silence, she replied:
"Did you know, Mama… that sometimes light hides more than it reveals?"
"What do you mean?"
"Everything looks pure in the light… but only the shadows know the truth."
Then she slowly turned off the screen and left the room.
In that moment, her mother kept looking at the blank screen—
and saw two reflections of Nour within it:
one smiling… and the other staring coldly.
The next night, Nour woke up to a familiar whisper.
A quiet voice coming from under the bed.
A whisper saying:
"You still haven't chosen… have you?"
She gasped and looked around.
Everything was dark, except for a faint spot of light reflecting off the scattered glass pieces.
She crawled toward them, touched them gently, and heard the voice again.
Neyar.
His voice was distorted, but alive.
"The mirror isn't dead… it's only sleeping inside you."
She screamed:
"Where are you?!"
"Inside you."
The glass trembled slightly, and her reflection appeared—
but it wasn't her.
A calmer version of her, with fully gray eyes, stared back steadily.
"Nour, you are now a bridge between two worlds.
Remember… only one can survive."
She collapsed, crying, holding her head.
"I don't want any world… I just want to be myself."
But her voice came out doubled—
two voices speaking at the same time.
In the morning, her mother tried to speak with her.
"Nour, I'm scared for you. You don't talk, you barely eat, you hardly sleep… what's happening?"
The girl looked at her calmly and said:
"Do you really think I'm your daughter?"
Her mother froze, eyes filling with tears.
"You're… Nour. My only daughter."
The girl gave a sad smile.
"Then why is it… that sometimes, when I call you… you don't look at me?"
Her mother stepped back, terrified.
When she closed the door behind her, Nour looked at the small broken mirror beside the bed.
Inside it, her reflection smiled confidently and whispered:
"The time for hesitation is over… now begins the choice."
That night, her mother had a strange dream:
She walked through a long corridor lined with mirrors.
In each one, she saw her daughter with a different face—
happy, sad, dead, smiling, asleep, screaming.
But at the very end of the hallway, she saw the real Nour inside the glass, pounding the surface and screaming:
"Mama! That's not me!"
She awoke screaming her daughter's name and ran to her room.
But the room was empty.
On the opposite wall hung a new mirror—
one that had never been there before.
And inside it…
Nour's face stared back at her from the other side.