Chapter 12: A Sound That Wasn’t There
Norah didn’t go home after school that day. She just kept walking past her usual turn, past the grocery shop with the sad vegetables, past the guy who sold pirated books and fake sunglasses, and past the bus stop where people waited like statues.
She couldn’t go back after what she saw and heard, because that projector had played something louder than sound, something that kept echoing in her bones.
She ended up on the rooftop of an unfinished building. It was one of those forgotten construction projects where the cement was crumbling before it had even dried properly. She sat there, legs dangling dangerously over the edge, thinking about everything and nothing.
She wondered whether her future self was real, or a glitch, or a test, and most importantly, what she had meant when she mouthed, “Don’t trust him.”
Her phone buzzed again, but this time it was not a message. It was a voice note, and that was new. That was terrifying. She did not recognize the number. When she pressed play, all she heard was static at first.
Then it morphed into a low, distorted version of her own voice, saying, “He is not who he says he is.” Then there was nothing, just breathing and silence, and the city below sounding too far away to be real.
Norah sat there clutching her phone like it might bite her. For the first time in weeks, she wanted to cry. Not because she was scared, but because everything was happening so fast, and she did not even have time to be a normal teenage girl.
She could not worry about exams, pimples, or whether someone liked her back. Her reality was a tornado now, and she was just trying not to fly off the map.
She did not meet Daniel the next day. She skipped school and stayed in bed, pretending her blanket could protect her from things like time travel, haunted classrooms, and maybe betrayal. But the messages did not stop. One came that evening with a photo attached.
The photo showed Daniel standing in front of a wall full of symbols, the same ones from the classroom. Except this photo was dated two years ago, and the school they were standing in had not even existed back then.
She stared at that photo until her eyes hurt. Then she threw the phone under her pillow and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come. Now her brain was asking the wrong questions: Who found her in the first place? How did Daniel always know where to go? Why did he never seem surprised by anything?
That night she had a new dream. This one was not about doors, symbols, or futures. It was about herself, standing in a long corridor full of mirrors. Every mirror reflected a different version of her -one scared, one angry, one laughing, one floating, and one wearing Daniel’s face. She woke up gasping, like she had swallowed someone else’s scream.
In that moment, she knew she had to find out the truth. Not just about the world, or the door, or the strange whispers in the static, but about Daniel himself. The scariest thing was that maybe the person guiding her through it was the one holding the hammer.
And maybe she was next.
priyakistoriyan 
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