Elira woke to the sound of wind.
Not outside.
Inside the house.
It howled low and long, weaving through the halls like something lost. Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up in bed, every part of her sore.
Ashkar was gone.
The blanket she'd laid over him the night before was still folded near the broken hallway mirror. His claw marks scorched the wood floor in a wide arc—but no trace of his body remained.
Only a faint trail of black dust led toward her bedroom window… and stopped.
---
> He’s gone again.
The words barely formed in her head before they were smothered by another.
> You left the window open…
She hadn’t.
Elira stood, wrapped herself in a sweater, and carefully checked the mirror again—taped, covered, silent. But she didn’t trust silence anymore.
She had an early lecture today. Philosophy.
Nothing felt less relevant.
Still, something inside her said: go.
So she did.
---
✎ 1st Period – Introduction to Ethics
Dr. Ryel stood at the board with his usual creased suit and shadowed eyes, scribbling the words:
“The Self is Fragile.”
> “What makes you ‘you’?” he asked the class.
Nobody answered.
The fluorescent lights buzzed. One flickered near the back.
Elira sat at the far right, as always. Close to the window, away from the mirrors.
She hadn’t spoken a word to anyone yet. Not today. Not really all week.
Across the room, a girl with platinum hair sat with her head tilted at an odd angle.
She hadn't blinked once since class began.
Elira stared.
The girl stared back.
Their eyes locked.
The girl smiled.
> Too wide.
---
> “Miss Vane?”
Elira flinched. The professor had called her name.
> “Would you say you’re the same person you were a year ago?”
She swallowed hard.
Her classmates turned.
> “No,” she said.
A pause.
> “I don't think I've ever really known who I was to begin with.”
Dr. Ryel gave a small nod, as though her answer pleased him.
> “Good,” he said. “That’s where the real trouble begins.”
The whiteboard squeaked as he underlined the next phrase.
“When mirrors lie.”
---
After class, Elira tried to leave fast.
But someone was waiting by the hallway lockers.
> “You’re Elira, right?”
The voice was soft. Polite. Measured.
The platinum-haired girl.
Up close, she looked flawless. No blemishes. No tiredness. No texture. Like someone had drawn her on top of the world instead of born her into it.
> “I’m Sera. I just transferred.”
> “Okay.”
Elira stepped aside.
> “You have really… clear eyes,” Sera added.
> “That’s not a compliment.”
> “It’s not a lie either.”
And then Sera was gone.
Just like that.
Elira stood for a moment, chest tight.
She hadn't told anyone her full name.
Not since the Echo had escaped.
---
The rest of the day passed like a half-formed memory. Teachers spoke. Bells rang. People moved around her, laughing, whispering, chewing gum, scrolling their lives away.
But it all felt like glass.
Fragile.
Fake.
And something inside her warned:
> Someone in this school isn’t human.
---
That night, Elira passed a mirror she’d long since covered.
But now the paper was peeled back halfway.
And in the dark surface, she didn’t see herself.
She saw Sera.
Smiling.
Then Sera raised a hand—
and tapped the glass.
The next morning, the school was in a quiet kind of chaos.
No one said it outright, but everyone knew: a student had gone missing.
It wasn’t just rumor this time. Teachers avoided eye contact. The front office sent a notice to every homeroom. Whispers buzzed louder than the school bell.
> “Trina Owusu,” Elira heard someone say. “She never made it home yesterday.”
> “They say it happened in the third-floor girls' bathroom.”
That caught Elira's attention.
The third floor had always felt… wrong. Cold, even on warm days. Mirrors there always fogged, even if no one had used the sinks.
Now, that floor was off-limits. Yellow tape blocked the hallway. A janitor stood guard near the stairwell, looking far more serious than anyone had ever seen him.
Elira’s stomach turned as she stared up the staircase.
She didn’t know Trina well. Just a quiet girl who sometimes helped stack books in the library and always carried two pens — one for herself, one for whoever forgot theirs.
And now, Trina was gone.
No phone. No bag. No sounds.
Just... gone.
---
Elira passed the third-floor staircase after second period.
The janitor was still there, but distracted by a group of teachers arguing near the art room. The tape fluttered in the hallway breeze.
Something pulled at Elira’s chest.
Not curiosity. Not fear.
Something heavier.
She took one step closer.
Just one.
And stopped.
> "It’s not safe up there."
The voice came from behind her.
She turned.
Two girls stood by the lockers, side by side like they’d always belonged there — but Elira had never seen them before.
The first wore a dark gray hoodie and a small silver crucifix around her neck. She looked tired, but her eyes were kind.
The second had pale skin and silver-streaked braids. Her gaze flickered constantly, scanning the ceiling, the floors, the walls — like she could feel something crawling behind them.
> “I’m Mira,” said the girl with the cross. “And this is Soraya.”
> “We transferred yesterday,” Soraya added without looking at Elira. “But we’ve been watching this place for a while.”
Elira narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
> “Because something dark is spreading here,” Mira answered simply. “And people are going to start vanishing faster.”
> “One already has,” Elira muttered.
Soraya tilted her head, like she’d heard something behind Elira.
> “She’s not the first,” she said softly. “She’s just the first they’ll admit to.”
---
They walked with Elira to her third period, even though it wasn’t on their schedule.
Soraya stayed close to the wall, eyes flicking toward every poster, trophy case, and vent grate.
Mira spoke quietly as they walked.
> “I prayed before coming here. I felt a pull. This school is hurting.”
> “Hurting?” Elira asked.
> “Like a wound that’s being picked at.”
> “You believe in all of this?” Elira asked Mira directly. “The mirror stuff. The demons. The disappearances?”
Mira nodded.
> “I don’t just believe. I came here to help stop it.”
> “So did I,” Soraya muttered, still watching the ceiling. “But I don’t pray. I smell the rot before it shows itself. That’s how I know which cracks to avoid.”
> “Cracks?” Elira asked.
> “In the walls,” Soraya said. “In time. In people.”
---
By lunchtime, the news about Trina spread like fire.
Most students didn’t talk loud, but the tension was obvious. Teachers were short-tempered. The lights flickered more often than usual.
And every mirror Elira passed seemed to hum softly — like it was watching.
She sat at her usual table in the corner.
Mira and Soraya found her again.
> “You shouldn’t be alone,” Mira said. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The girl in the mirror who isn’t you?”
Elira looked down at her tray. She hadn’t touched her food.
> “She’s not just in my mirror,” Elira muttered.
> “She’s not just yours anymore,” Soraya corrected.
There was a long silence.
Then Mira leaned in, her voice a whisper.
> “She’s feeding on fear. That’s how she grows.”
Elira looked up slowly. “You sound like him.”
> “Who?” Mira asked.
Elira didn’t answer.
---
That night, Elira checked every mirror before bed.
All of them covered. All still.
But she knew better now.
The mirror didn’t need to move.
It just needed her to see.
And as she walked past the bathroom door, she froze.
Because the mirror she had covered earlier was now… uncovered.
The paper and tape lay neatly folded on the counter.
She hadn’t touched them.
And in the reflection, just behind her shoulder—
Trina.
Her skin was pale. Her lips were blue. Her eyes were wide open.
And her mouth—
It moved.
“Help me.”
Then the lights flickered.
And when they steadied, Trina was gone.
But the mirror had cracks spidering through the center — and from behind the cracks, something inside the glass grinned.
Perfect! Here's the rewritten Part 3 of Chapter Five of Mirrorbound, updated to match your new direction:
Elira does not tell Mira or Soraya anything about Ashkar.
She keeps her knowledge and fear to herself, pretending not to see what she actually sees.
The scene remains creepy and tense, with deeper school-based horror and suspense.
---
The day began too normal.
Students shuffled through their usual routines: jokes in the halls, earbuds in ears, teachers repeating Monday lectures like nothing had changed.
But Elira felt it.
The quiet shift in the air.
The kind of pressure you couldn’t name — only sense in your chest, like standing on cracked ice.
And then, during second period, it happened.
The power went out.
No warning. No flicker.
Just total blackout.
The projector shut off mid-slide. The fluorescent lights snapped off with a pop. Gasps filled the room.
And then—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound came from the front of the room — sharp and deliberate — echoing in the darkness like someone tapping on glass.
Elira didn’t move.
She stared at the whiteboard, now just a dark reflection of the class bathed in faint red glow from emergency lights.
For a second, just one, she saw him.
Ashkar.
His reflection, dim and half-formed, eyes glowing like embers, watching her through the board.
Then it vanished.
Gone.
Like he’d never been there.
---
After the incident, the school herded students into the auditorium while maintenance investigated. Teachers huddled near the doors, whispering. Some students joked nervously. Others scrolled through dead phones, confused by the sudden lack of signal in the building.
Elira sat near the back, shoulders tense, head down.
She hadn’t imagined it.
She knew what she saw.
But she said nothing.
Mira and Soraya found her anyway.
They didn’t ask if she was okay — they just sat on either side of her like they’d known her forever.
> “This building isn’t clean,” Soraya muttered, mostly to herself.
> “Someone’s opened something,” Mira added softly. “Something that wants to stay open.”
Elira didn’t look at them.
She wrapped her arms around herself and kept her voice quiet.
> “I didn’t see anything.”
Mira paused. “You didn’t see... the reflection? On the board?”
> “No,” Elira lied.
Soraya tilted her head. “Strange. I could’ve sworn... never mind.”
> “Just the lights going out,” Elira said, sharper than intended. “That’s all.”
Mira and Soraya exchanged a glance but didn’t press.
Still, Elira felt the weight of their silence like a hand on her shoulder.
---
Later, as students filtered back into their classrooms, Elira drifted to the back of the library instead.
Somewhere quiet. Somewhere empty.
But as she turned the final aisle near the broken-reference section, something caught her eye.
A loose paper sticking out from the back of the bookshelf.
Curious, she pulled it free.
It was yellowed and fragile — torn from a very old book.
Faint handwriting, barely legible, filled the page. In the center, a small sigil was drawn in red ink.
Her heart jumped.
The same sigil she’d seen burned onto her bedroom wall after Ashkar’s first appearance.
She slipped the paper into her notebook and left the library before anyone could see her.
---
The rest of the school day passed in a blur. Teachers talked. Students whispered about Trina. The bathroom where she vanished was still blocked off.
But Elira moved through it all like a ghost.
Distant.
Watching.
Not speaking.
She passed a hallway mirror and glanced sideways.
For just a second, her reflection smiled at her.
But she didn’t smile back.
---
That night, she sat in her room with the journal page open on her desk.
The words danced beneath the flickering light.
> “Mirrors hold more than reflections… They hold echoes.”
“Some grow hungry enough to leave.”
“Never speak its name when you’re alone…”
Elira traced the sigil with her finger.
She could feel him — Ashkar — somewhere far, or maybe close. Fading. Fading like breath on cold glass.
And still, she said nothing.
To anyone.
Even to herself.
---
Elira hadn’t meant to get detention.
It happened during fourth period — not because she said anything wrong, but because she didn’t say anything at all.
Her teacher had asked her to read aloud.
She hadn’t noticed.
Her eyes had been fixed on the mirror across the room — a square pane tucked between two faded posters. No one else seemed to be looking at it. No one else seemed to hear the soft, steady tapping from behind the glass.
But she had.
And when she didn’t answer, the teacher snapped.
Now she sat alone at the front of the detention room, scratching out lines in her notebook.
> "I will not disrespect class time."
Over and over.
But halfway down the page, she paused.
Because her hand kept moving.
Even after she stopped writing.
She lifted her pen.
And her reflection — a few feet away in the glossy door pane — kept going.
Scribbling.
Smiling.
Her heart froze.
She slowly reached up and brushed a strand of hair from her face.
In the reflection — her other self brushed the wrong side.
> It’s reversed, she told herself. It’s just reversed—
But then her reflection blinked twice.
And she hadn’t blinked at all.
---
The detention monitor, Coach Malley, sat near the back with headphones in, pretending to be grading. The only other students were two boys asleep at their desks and Mira — seated three rows behind Elira, flipping through a tiny leather-bound book.
Soraya had tried to sneak in earlier, but had been kicked out for not being on the list.
Elira was glad.
Even Mira hadn’t said anything yet — just occasionally glanced at her with something between concern and certainty.
Elira didn’t return the look.
She didn’t trust herself to.
---
At exactly 4:07 p.m., the lights above Elira flickered once.
Then twice.
Then blew out entirely.
The entire room dipped into semi-darkness, lit only by the dying orange sun bleeding through the windows.
Coach Malley groaned and pulled his headphones down.
> “For crying out loud…”
The other students stirred.
And then—
One of them began muttering.
Low.
Fast.
In a language that didn’t belong to his mouth.
Elira slowly turned.
The boy nearest to the broken wall clock — Theo — sat bolt upright, eyes rolled back, lips moving too fast for his own tongue.
His voice sounded doubled — like someone else spoke through him in a lower, grinding echo.
> “Can you hear it now?”
“Glass and dust and hunger. Glass and dust and hunger.”
Coach Malley sprang up. “Hey—hey, Theo, you okay?”
Theo didn’t stop.
Mira was already moving toward him, her cross clutched in her palm.
> “Don’t touch him,” she warned Coach.
He didn’t listen.
The moment his hand touched Theo’s shoulder, Theo screamed.
It wasn’t human.
It wasn’t even animal.
It was mirror-sharp and wet with blood.
Elira covered her ears.
But in the corner of the room, the mirror-door cracked.
Just once.
A single black line down the glass like a wound.
---
Theo slumped forward, unconscious.
Coach Malley called the nurse. Said he probably had a seizure. Mira said nothing.
Elira sat frozen at her desk long after the others left.
When Mira passed by her, she said only this:
> “The mirror didn’t crack because of him.”
---
The next day brought a strange stillness to the school halls.
Everyone was quieter than usual.
Maybe it was the way the fluorescent lights buzzed slightly off-beat, like a dying heartbeat. Or how the windows in the science wing were suddenly fogged from the inside — even though the heat hadn’t been turned on all week.
Something was wrong.
But no one knew how to say it.
---
Third-period literature had a substitute teacher — a pale, hollow-eyed woman with a voice like paper tearing. She never gave her name. Just wrote “Ms. T.” on the board and began reading from The Metamorphosis in a slow, droning rhythm that made every vowel sound stretched and swollen.
Elira sat near the back, pretending to take notes.
Her eyes, however, kept drifting to the front of the room.
To the wall of square mirrors behind the teacher’s desk.
At first, they reflected the classroom normally.
Then one mirror blinked.
And she realized — it had no reflection of Ms. T at all.
---
Mira didn’t notice it. She was too focused on writing scripture phrases in the margins of her textbook.
But Soraya did.
Her eyes flicked from the teacher to the glass, back to the teacher again.
Elira saw her pause.
And then glance sideways — at her.
Not long.
Just a glance.
But it stayed with Elira like a thorn.
During the break between classes, they walked together toward the lockers.
Mira went ahead to return a library book, leaving Elira and Soraya alone.
Soraya didn’t speak at first.
Then, in a low voice, she said:
> “You feel... different lately.”
Elira kept her face neutral. “What do you mean?”
> “I used to feel something dark around you — like a shadow following you. But now...”
Soraya’s eyes narrowed.
> “Now it’s not following. It’s sitting inside.”
Elira forced a shrug. “Maybe you’re just imagining it.”
> “I don’t imagine things,” Soraya replied sharply. “I don’t want to believe what I’m feeling. But it’s like... the closer I stand to you, the colder I get. And not in a normal way.”
Elira turned toward her. “Then stop standing close.”
Soraya didn’t flinch.
> “Are you hiding something?”
> “Everyone’s hiding something.”
That answer made Soraya pause.
But before she could respond, Mira reappeared and clapped a hand on Elira’s shoulder.
> “Come on, fourth period’s about to start. Ms. Godwin gets weird if we’re late.”
Elira moved quickly, grateful for the interruption.
But as they turned the corner, she felt Soraya’s eyes still watching her — not with anger…
But fear.
---
In fourth period, Elira sat down at her desk and froze.
it's here again she murmured
---
That night, Elira couldn’t sleep.
She lay curled under the blankets, eyes fixed on the mirror across the room — now half-covered in a towel, the edges frayed like old wounds.
The rest of the house was still. No wind. No creaks. Even the hum of the fridge downstairs seemed distant.
But inside the silence… something shifted.
The mirror twitched.
She didn’t move.
At first, she thought she imagined it — just a trick of the shadows.
Then—
A breath.
Not hers.
From the mirror.
Slow. Shallow. Cold.
And then…
He stepped through.
---
Ashkar’s form flickered like smoke caught in moonlight.
He was thinner than before, paler. His eyes still burned — but dimmer, like dying coals instead of a roaring flame.
He looked at her like he hadn’t seen her in weeks — like he'd been torn through something awful to get back here.
> “You shouldn’t be awake,” he said softly.
Elira sat up, her voice catching. “I knew you’d come.”
Ashkar stepped closer.
The air around him chilled, and the lights dimmed slightly, even though they were already off.
> “I had to. Something’s changed.”
> “What?” she whispered.
> “The gate,” he said. “It’s broken.”
Her stomach dropped.
> “What gate?”
> “The one that kept everything in,” Ashkar replied. “It wasn’t supposed to open yet. Not for years. But someone shattered it from the other side.”
He ran a hand through his hair — a gesture that would’ve seemed human, if not for the way his fingers left a flicker of shadow behind.
> “Something’s leaking out.”
> “Demons?”
> “Not just demons,” he said. “Memories. Pieces. Echoes. All the reflections they buried.”
> “Like the girl I saw?”
Ashkar didn’t answer that.
Instead, he took a step closer, kneeling in front of her. His presence dimmed the world around her, like standing inside a heavy dream.
> “They’ll come for you now,” he said.
> “Why me?”
> “Because you saw them. Because you didn’t run. Because you’re still watching.”
His fingers brushed her wrist — and Elira flinched. Not from pain. From the feeling that he wasn't just touching her skin, but something beneath it.
> “There’s a mark on your soul now,” he whispered. “They smell it. They’re hungry for it.”
---
She stared at him, barely breathing.
> “Then what do I do?”
Ashkar’s eyes softened — but only for a moment.
> “Stay quiet. Stay small. Pretend you’re still blind.”
> “And if they come?”
His smile was sharp and bitter.
> “Then you scream. But not too loud. Or they’ll find the rest of you too.”
---
Before he left, Ashkar paused by the mirror, hand against the glass.
> “They’ve seen your future,” he murmured.
> “What does that mean?”
He looked at her — not cruelly. Not kindly. Just honestly.
> “It means they know what you’ll become. Even if you don’t yet.”
> “And what’s that?”
A beat of silence.
Then, quietly:
> “Something that bleeds others just by existing.”
---
The moment he vanished, the mirror shattered inward.
But not loudly.
Not with sound.
The glass simply turned to ash — curling away at the edges like burning paper.
And behind it, in the mirror's hollow frame, a phrase appeared.
Written in what looked like reversed handwriting:
> "WE SEE YOU, ECHO."
---
Elira didn’t sleep.
Not for the rest of the night.
Not even when the sun came up.
Because deep in her chest, something had started to hum.
Not fear.
Not dread.
Something deeper.
Something… waking.
End of chapter 5 😇
---
***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***
Updated 9 Episodes
Download
Like this story? Download the app to keep your reading history.
Comments