Chapter Three: The Mirror That Doesn't Reflect
I didn't sleep that night.
Maybe I hadn't slept in days. Or weeks. Or since that first sentence:
Don't write me. I will write you.
I don't know anymore…
Everything spins in my head like an old recorder stuck in a loop, its tape distorted, its eyes watching me from within the dark.
A quiet voice… Not mine. Not Rayan's. But it knows us.
It whispers:
> "You will never see yourself again."
Strangely, I wasn't afraid.
It felt more like a confession that had no place to be spoken.
The next morning, I found the mirror... covered.
I didn't do it. I swear I didn't.
But there it was—an old gray cloth, laid over it gently, almost lovingly.
As if someone didn't want me to look.
I pulled the cloth back—slowly, like opening my own grave.
But… I didn't see my reflection.
I didn't see anything.
The mirror was clean.
No dust. No cracks.
But no image.
As if it had stopped believing I existed.
I didn't move.
It felt like I was standing at the gate of something unknown.
A mirror that no longer reflects—
Then what does it show?
I closed my eyes. Opened them.
With a trembling finger, I wrote on the glass:
"Who am I?"
And for a moment, a sentence appeared—
From behind the glass, from the other side:
> "You're the one who wrote the ending and forgot to die."
I froze.
Took a step back. Forgot how to breathe.
The mirror had become a screen—
Projecting a life I had no memory of living.
Blurry scenes...
I'm a child, writing a strange name in my school notebook.
A teenager, burning a page Rayan had written, saying:
What you wrote is dangerous. Burn it.
Rayan laughs.
>"The dangerous doesn't get burned. It burns inside us.
Then… an image I don't recognize.
I'm holding something. Small. A wooden box.
I open it.
A note inside, with one line:
"This is not your story.
I placed my hand on the mirror.
Cold.
But it pulsed
Like something alive.
Then I heard a sound—from behind me.
I turned.
No one.
But the door… was open.
And the room beyond—
It wasn't mine.
It was a replica. But wrong.
As if someone had read its description and redrawn it from memory—
Forgetting the tiny details.
The clock was there, but it pointed to 3:13 again.
The painting on the wall—hung upside down.
I stepped into the room, feeling my legs weren't mine anymore.
There, on the table—I found it.
One paper. Folded. Just like the one from Chapter One.
But this one had only one sentence:
> "Your mirror stopped reflecting you… because it stopped believing you."
And the words echoed again in my head like a hammer:
> "You're the one who wrote the ending and forgot to die."
Does that mean... I'm already dead?
Or has the novel begun writing its final chapter—
Without me?
I turned the paper over.
Nothing on the back.
But I knew the next sentence would appear…
When its time came.
And for the first time,
I wished I wouldn't read the next page.
But this story no longer waits for my permission.