Chapter Nineteen: Echo of the Shadow
Three days had passed since that night.
Three days of suffocating silence, broken only by her strained breaths at every dawn.
The mirror that had been the cause of everything was gone—
all that remained was gray dust covering the floor like ash after an old fire.
Nour sat on the floor in the same room.
The space felt wider, yet colder.
She brushed the wall with her fingertips and whispered:
"He disappeared… but he didn't leave."
She didn't know whether she meant Niyar or her other reflection.
Every time she closed her eyes, flashes of his face appeared,
as if his voice were still lodged deep within her, between one heartbeat and the next.
---
In the days that followed, she noticed something strange about herself.
She began to feel what she shouldn't:
hearing words before they were spoken,
seeing people's features in mirrors before they entered the room.
One night, when she looked into the small mirror beside her bed,
she saw her face clearly…
but behind her, a faint shadow moved—one that did not resemble her.
She raised her hand cautiously, and the reflection raised its hand as well…
but the shadow did not move.
It stood still, watching.
"Who are you?" she whispered in fear.
But the answer came in a familiar voice,
a voice like a whisper between dream and memory:
"Didn't you say you didn't want to lose me?"
She froze.
That voice…
It was Niyar.
---
The air in the room grew heavier.
The light from the lamp began to dim, as if the shadows were slowly devouring it.
Nour placed her hand over her chest—she felt a strange rhythm, unlike a normal heartbeat.
Niyar's voice rose from deep within her, as though whispering through her veins:
"I didn't disappear, Nour.
You chose to unite us… so I became a part of you."
She cried out in a trembling voice:
"But I didn't mean this! I wanted to save you!"
A soft laugh echoed from the surrounding mirrors,
a laugh like wind passing through an empty tunnel.
"You did save me… from annihilation.
But you didn't save yourself."
---
The light went out completely.
And in the darkness, two gray eyes gleamed in the void.
---
The next day, Nour sat before the bathroom mirror.
Her face was pale, but there was something new in her eyes—
a faint gray glimmer.
She no longer knew whether she was still herself,
or if Niyar sometimes looked out through her.
When her mother called her from afar,
she heard two voices answer at the same time—
her own, and another with the same tone… but calmer.
She trembled and whispered:
"Are you… inside me?"
And the answer came from within her, with painful calm:
"Where else would I go?
You are the final door… and I am your shadow,
one that will never leave you now."
---
That night, Nour sat before the open window.
The sky drizzled softly, thunder flickering in the distance.
She closed her eyes and felt cold breaths brush against her neck.
"Sometimes…"
the voice inside her said,
"salvation is heavier than the curse."
She opened her eyes slowly.
In the window's glass, her face reflected once more.
But this time, she was not alone in the reflection—
behind her stood Niyar, faintly smiling,
his gray eyes glowing in the darkness.
Nour did not step back.
She did not scream.
She simply smiled slowly and whispered:
"Maybe… it no longer matters which of us is the original.
As long as we live… together."