**Chapter Twelve:
When the Mirrors Awaken**
Noor felt an inexplicable weight in her chest.
There was no air here, yet her lungs rose and fell as if she were breathing something unseen.
The sky above was no longer gray — it flickered between black and white, like an old screen losing signal.
The ground reflected her face from every angle, mirrors stretching endlessly.
Each reflection showed a different Noor:
one crying, one laughing, one screaming, one without eyes.
But only one of them moved in sync with her.
"You…"
Noor whispered, afraid.
The reflection lifted its head slowly, a smile tearing across its face like a reopened wound.
"At last… we meet."
Its voice echoed directly inside her head.
"Who are you?!"
"I am what you've been hiding from yourself… ever since the first time you cried before a mirror."
Everything around her began to crack.
Mirrors shattered one after another, shadows spilling thick black smoke.
She heard distant voices — human voices — as if someone was calling her name.
Suddenly, she saw Niyar just a few steps away, surrounded by a faint gray light.
His face was exhausted, his eyes drowning in sorrow.
"Niyar!"
She rushed toward him, but he didn't move.
His voice came from somewhere deeper — deeper than this world:
"Listen carefully, Noor… what you see isn't a place.
It's you.
All of this is inside you."
"Me?!"
"Yes.
These mirrors aren't a prison — they are your memory."
Scenes began shifting around her:
her childhood, her father, her old room — then the night of the accident…
She watched herself run toward the mirror, crying as she whispered:
"I wish I would disappear."
And then she understood.
The mirror hadn't swallowed her.
She had invited it — because she wanted to vanish.
Her tears fell, but she noticed the reflection smiled wider every time she cried.
Each tear strengthened it.
She suddenly realized the reflection fed on her weakness.
She raised her head, staring at it firmly.
"I won't be your prey anymore."
But the reflection laughed — a sharp sound shattering the silence.
"You are not stronger than me, Noor…
Because I am you."
Meanwhile, in the same apartment, the other Noor sat before the large bedroom mirror.
Her mother had called her several times, but she did not hear.
She stared into her reflection, slowly smiling — an inhuman smile.
Since her return, everyone noticed something strange:
her lingering gaze, slow speech, unsettling silence.
Even her eyes — same color, but colder.
In the morning, her mother entered the room cautiously.
"Noor… sweetheart, are you okay?
You haven't eaten anything since yesterday."
"Noor" turned her head slowly — her eyes vacant.
"I feel… like I'm finally where I belong, Mom."
Her voice was chilling enough to make the mother shiver.
Noor looked back at the mirror and whispered something her mother couldn't understand —
but what terrified her was that Noor's reflection didn't move at the same moment.
It lagged — just a fraction of a second.
The mother stepped back, heart pounding,
as Noor continued smiling and murmuring to someone unseen:
"Just wait… the barrier won't hold for long."
That night, as the mother slept on the couch, she awakened slowly to faint sounds coming from the room — soft laughter and strange light glowing beneath the door.
She approached, pressing her ear to the wood.
Inside, there were two voices… both belonging to Noor.
One voice soft, weak, terrified.
The other calm, cold, confident.
"Go back to where you belong… you don't fit in the real world."
"No — it's you who doesn't belong.
The real world needs someone unafraid to face herself."
Then silence.
Seconds later, something shattered inside.
The mother burst into the room —
but found only the mirror.
Breathing.
Its surface rippled slowly, as if the glass had turned to living skin.
Inside it, the faint silhouette of a little girl was screaming without sound.
At that same moment, in the mirror world, Noor charged at her reflection:
"You will not take my life!"
The ground fractured, reflections melting like mercury.
In the real world, the mother watched the mirror erupt with blinding white light.
A hand burst through the glass — Noor's real hand — trembling, smeared with blood.
But another hand seized it from inside, trying to drag her back.
Two Noors —
each fighting to cross the boundary.
The glass cracked, filling the room with blinding light.
Then everything went silent.
Only a faint scent of burning lingered in the air.
When the mother finally opened her eyes…
a single girl stood before the mirror.
Silent.
But she didn't know —
was it her daughter…
or the reflection that had won?