Chapter 8: The Whispers in the Dorm

It began with the mirrors.

Again.

The bathroom mirror in Dorm Hall B fogged over during a warm afternoon—not from heat, but from breath. No one was inside. Yet when a girl named Mariel entered, she saw her reflection blinking… a second too slow.

That night, Mariel didn't return to her room.

By morning, her bed was cold and empty, and her roommate found a message scrawled into the mirror in deep crimson:

SHE'S NEXT.

—

Amara sat in class the next day, her thoughts a thousand miles from equations and ink. Her fingers kept brushing against the mirror shard tucked inside her boot. She'd tried to leave it behind—but it always found its way back. Just like the child.

She could feel its presence now. Like someone breathing softly behind her.

Watching.

Micah hadn't spoken to her much since that night in the tunnel. He sat two seats away, staring blankly at the chalkboard while sketching strange symbols in his notebook.

Symbols she recognized from her grandmother's books.

"Micah," she whispered during lunch break, cornering him under the old stairwell. "Why are you drawing those glyphs?"

He hesitated. "Because I think… I'm changing."

Amara's chest tightened. "What do you mean?"

He looked up at her, eyes dull like bruises. "I've been hearing the baby cry. In my dreams. It says things to me. About my past. About you. I don't think it left us in that tunnel."

Amara shivered. "It didn't."

"It's inside the mirrors now. It's watching everyone."

—

That evening, the school held a mandatory dorm meeting.

"Due to recent disappearances," the dean announced, "we're enforcing a strict curfew. No student is allowed outside their room after 9 p.m."

Amara sat among the students, listening to the nervous whispers.

"Is it ghosts?"

"Witches?"

"Maybe it's that weird teacher who left…"

They didn't know the half of it.

Later that night, Amara sat on her bed, staring at the tiny mirror on her desk. Her roommate, Lottie, had fallen asleep with her earphones in.

The mirror shimmered.

And her reflection smiled.

Only she wasn't smiling.

"Hello, Amara," it whispered, lips moving out of sync. "You look fertile tonight."

Amara flinched. "You're not real."

"Oh, I am," it purred. "I'm a reflection of all the things you try to bury. Secrets. Shame. Desire. You wanted to taste the darkness. And now it wants to taste you."

She picked up the mirror shard and slammed it against the desk mirror.

A web of cracks danced across the glass—and the reflection screamed.

Lottie sat bolt upright, confused. "What the hell?"

"Just a nightmare," Amara muttered.

But it wasn't a dream.

It was the child, creeping closer.

—

At exactly 3:03 a.m., she woke to the sound of crying.

Not Lottie.

Not a baby.

Hundreds of babies.

Their cries echoed through the walls like wind through the bones of a graveyard. Amara clutched the shard, heart pounding.

She knew where the sound came from.

The mirror room—the forbidden room in the old east wing, once used by drama students before it was sealed after a fire.

No one went there now.

Except them.

—

She didn't wait for morning.

She slipped out, barefoot and silent, down the icy hallway. Past the paintings that seemed to breathe, past the lockers that creaked on their own. The old east wing was dark, vines creeping in through shattered windows, the scent of mold and secrets thick in the air.

She opened the mirror room door.

Inside were mirrors from floor to ceiling—tall, thin, shattered, warped. All of them pulsed faintly, like breathing skin. And in the center stood a cradle.

A real cradle.

And inside, wrapped in black silk, was a mirror shaped like a womb.

The shard in Amara's boot grew warm.

She stepped closer.

Reflections watched her from every angle—her dead grandmother, Elara's twisted face, even Micah with glowing eyes.

She reached into the cradle—and the mirror-womb glowed bright gold.

"Don't," came a voice behind her.

She turned.

Micah stood in the doorway, shirt stained with sweat, fingers twitching.

"I followed you," he said. "I had to know. It's been calling me too."

Amara held the womb-mirror. "This is it. This is where the child lives now."

Micah stepped forward, eyes vacant. "Then let it be born."

He reached out—but the moment his skin touched the mirror, a pulse of magic exploded through the room.

The mirrors screamed.

Amara fell backward, clutching her ears, as the walls rippled. For a moment—just a moment—she saw a version of herself holding a child made of smoke and glass.

And then…

Darkness.

—

When she woke, she was in her room.

The shard was gone.

The mirror was gone.

And so was Micah.