Chapter Twenty-Nine: Between Shadow and Light
The room was white… too white.
The light was bright, yet it gave no warmth.
Silent walls, a metal bed, and the sharp smell of disinfectant choking the air.
Noor sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the small mirror in the corner of the room—
the mirror the doctor had tried to hide from her days ago, yet it was still there,
reflecting her pale face and her hollow eyes.
She whispered to herself,
"They said I'm imagining things… they said Niyar doesn't exist…
but if he were just an illusion, why did he leave me the message?"
She reached toward the drawer and pulled out a small, carefully folded piece of paper.
The paper she had found on the last night, beneath her pillow, written in handwriting she could never forget:
"When the reflection disappears, the original will become clear."
Few words—yet enough to bring back every sound, every image,
every night in which she saw herself killed again and again inside the mirror.
She closed her eyes, and memories flooded in like a torrent:
her screams, blood on the wall, the face of her "double" smiling maliciously,
Niyar's voice saying:
"You were never yourself… you were only a shadow of something else."
She screamed, clutching her head with both hands:
"Shut up! You're the one who made me doubt myself! This is your fault!"
But no voice answered her.
The room was still, time frozen,
and everything around her slowly melted… as if the world itself were fading away.
Then she heard a knock on the door.
The doctor's voice:
"Noor? It's time for your medication."
But when she opened the door, the doctor wasn't there.
It was her.
The same face. The same hair. The same eyes.
But that smile—the one she knew so well—had returned.
The double said:
"Did you really think you got rid of me, Noor? I am you… and you are me."
Noor trembled, stepping back:
"No, you're not me… I'm the real one! I'm the original!"
The double laughed and stepped closer until Noor could feel her breath on her face:
"If you were the original… why am I the one who sees you behind the glass?"
Noor froze.
She looked around.
She was standing in front of the large mirror now—not the door.
And her reflection wasn't moving with her.
It was only smiling… then slowly raised its hand and placed it against the glass from the inside.
Driven by instinctive fear, Noor raised her own hand and touched the cold surface.
But the fingers on the other side… touched her back.
She screamed and collapsed to the floor.
The lights began flashing violently.
Footsteps, voices of nurses, distant screams…
then darkness.
…
Hours—or days—later, she opened her eyes.
She was lying on the same bed.
Sunlight streamed through the window, the city glittering in the distance.
Everything looked normal.
But one thing made her breath stop:
On the outer glass of the window…
there were handprints.
Her hand?
Or her reflection's?
She smiled slowly, her eyes filled with mystery.
"Maybe I wasn't imagining things after all…"