15 February 2051

Front Gate, Herike Village

Argon City, Sandanis Province

Theodore Morgan

I took a deep breath. 

Fear crept in. This was probably the last clean air I’d fill my lungs with. The fire ahead roared like a living thing, and I knew I might burn to ash halfway there. I might get trapped. I might fail. I might never find her.

It was useless. No one understood that better than me.

I was the kind of person who thought logically. Who hated lying to himself. Who knew hope didn’t change probabilities.

But there was one thing I hated even more.

Standing still. Waiting. Doing nothing.

It was a bad example. I hoped Lizzy would never grow up like this. If I were trapped in a burning building and she was safe outside, I’d scream at her to stay back. Let the firemen work. Live. 

But if I had to be the one making the mistake, I didn’t care how angry she’d be later. I’d take her anger. I’d take her shouts. I’d take anything as long as I could see her again.

So I took a rapid step forward.

My clothes were still damp, the cold biting into my skin as I jumped down the rocky slope toward the village outskirts. I slid, scraped, reached out blindly, and my fingers closed around a pebble.

“Please don’t fail me, <Spring Point>.”

Seven-colored ribbons spilled from my arm, dancing through the air and coiling around my hand. 

For one of those rare moments, I felt grateful this ability was etched into my soul.

When my feet hit flat ground, I hurled the pebble, and it struck the rubble blocking the road and rebounded. Once, twice, again and again, snapping from point to point like a manic thought. Each impact found a weakness; cracks, gaps, fault lines. Debris shattered, slabs sprang aside. Stones exploded outward. Then, the pebble hit a thick wall at the far end and detonated its momentum all at once. The wall collapsed inward, and the pebble disintegrated with it.

The path is finally opened.

“Great.”

I smirked and sprinted straight into the opened path, into the fire.

I didn’t like this ability. I never had. But I couldn’t deny it had saved me more than once. <Spring Point> let me manipulate the bouncing attribute of object, forcing them to ricochet far beyond what physics allowed. Like that pebble. I didn’t make it stronger. I made it refuse to stop.

For the first time, I was glad to be an arcane.

The road narrowed as I ran. Just wide enough for two small cars. Of course it was. The northern side of the village was sparsely populated, barely maintained. One wrong step here and I’d be roasted alive.

“LIZZYY! RINAA!”

Flames surrounded me like wolves, growling, circling. My skin dried painfully. My eyes burned. Still I ran, screaming their names into the inferno, answered only by the roar of fire.

“LIZZYY!”

My vision blurred. My throat scraped raw. Stung behind my nose, smoke clawing its way into my lungs. I knew I was minutes away from collapsing.

But my legs didn’t care.

“RINAA!!”

Across the block, I noticed a boutique store. A two-story building, already hollowed out by fire. I'm late to notice, my feet can't stop now. As I passed beneath it, the windows exploded outward. Burning mannequins, molten glass, and flaming clothes rained down toward me.

“Tch!”

I snatched another pebble. The ribbons surged again as I threw it upward. Glass shrieked as it shattered, a sharp, violent scream slicing through the roar of flames. One by one, glass chimes as the pebble hits and rebounce, throwing the big shards away from me, or destroy some so it became harmless. 

The pebble worked, but not perfectly. As I ran, something sliced past my temple. Pain flared hot and sharp. Blood ran, instantly sticky against the heat. It hurt. Worse than it should have. The fire made everything crueler.

But I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t.

My legs rushed forward, straight into the scorching flame.

Heat punched me. I jumped, rolled, slammed onto the paving blocks—and the ground burned. Not warm. Burned. Through my clothes, through my skin.

“Cough—cough—!”

My chest locked. The air scraped my throat raw. Breathing here felt wrong, like I was inhaling fire itself.

It’s hot. It’s hard to breathe. It feels like hell. Still, I forced my head up.

The fountain.

The plaza opened before me, warped by heat and smoke. I made it. I really made it. My legs shook as I stood, and for a moment I thought they might give up on me. Flames hadn’t fully swallowed this place yet, but they were close—too close—ringing the plaza like they were waiting their turn.

My skin screamed.

“Shit—!”

Pain crawled everywhere at once, sharp and deep, like my nerves were being peeled open. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t. The moment my eyes caught the fountain pond, I ran and threw myself in.

Cold crushed me.

It slammed into my face, my chest, my fingers. So cold it hurt worse than the fire for a split second. My head rang. My lungs spasmed.

And silence followed.

Under the water, everything went quiet. No flames. No screams. No cracking wood. Just my heartbeat, loud and stupid inside my skull.

So peaceful. 

And so full of lies. 

I shot back up, gasping, dragging air into my lungs like I’d been drowning. Mud and algae smeared across my clothes, clung to my skin, but I didn’t care. Filth meant nothing. Cold meant life.

I wiped my eyes and looked up.

Fire everywhere.

Water jets arced through the sky, fighting back, hissing as they struck heat, but it wasn’t enough. The fire care nothing for a drip of water. Buildings still burned. Walls cracked. Roofs screamed as they collapsed.

This won’t end soon.

Sound crashed back into me all at once. The shrieks of flame, the screams of people somewhere far off, the snapping and groaning of buildings dying. My ears rang from it.

I listened.

Nothing.

Not Lizzy’s voice, not Rina’s.

“Damn it...”

I grabbed the edge of the pond and pulled myself out. The heat hit instantly, steam rising from my soaked clothes. My breath shortened. Smoke stabbed behind my nose, sharp and bitter, making my eyes sting.

Time’s running out.

I stumbled onto the main street, shoes heavy with water, legs sluggish. And I continued to run.

“LIZZYYY!!!”

“RINAA!!!”

My throat burned as I shouted. Again. Louder. My voice cracked, but I didn’t stop. No answer came back.

Most people must’ve evacuated, I hope so. That should’ve made me feel better. It should’ve meant they were safe. I could only hope Lizzy and Rina were among these people.

So why won’t this feeling leave my chest?

What if Lizzy didn’t make it out?

What if she stayed?

What if she’s waiting for me?

“LIZZYYY!!!”

My skin felt tight, stretched thin by heat. My eyes burned, vision blurring as tears dried before they could fall. Every breath stung the back of my nose.

Two blocks.

A building collapsed nearby. The heat slammed into my face, violent enough to make me stagger. I barely caught myself.

Burned houses everywhere.

“LIZZYYYY!!!!”

My legs dragged. Fear pressed heavier with every step. Every street I cleared without seeing her made it worse.

This deep into the fire, with the outer ring already gone.

How long could anyone survive?

I slapped my own head.

No.

No stopping.

I ran.

Even if it kills me, I have to know.

“LIZZY!!! RINA!!!”

Close.

My house was close.

My feet kept moving even as my lungs screamed. I coughed, again and again, my chest burning like I was inhaling fire instead of air. Smoke filled my mouth, my nose, my throat. Every breath scraped raw, but I forced it in anyway. I needed air. Any air.

A half-burned sign hung crooked above the street.

My block.

Finally.

That realization lit something feral in my chest. The heat stopped mattering. The sting stopped registering. The chaos blurred into noise. Houses around me were still standing—some scorched, some already burning—but this part of the village wasn’t gone yet.

Two houses were on fire.

Where the hell were the firefighters? Why hadn’t they reached this far in?

No. No, forget that.

I had one focus.

I ran.

I ran. I ran. I ran.

Just a little more. Just a few more steps.

But then, the house beside me erupted.

Flame burst from the ground floor. Windows exploded outward. Shattered glass screamed through the air and I threw my arms up on instinct. The blast hit a heartbeat later. A concussive blow that slammed into me like a car going full speed.

I flew, and my body crashed onto the crossing road hard enough to knock the air out of me.

“—Shit—gas!”

Of course. Gas line.

Couldn’t the city shut it off earlier? Couldn’t they do anything faster?

I tried to get up. Pain stabbed into my upper abdomen, sharp and deep, and I froze for half a second, terrified it was more than a bruise. Ribs. Organs. Something worse.

My vision swam. I shook my head hard, forcing the world to stop tilting.

Red smeared across my hand.

Burns. Of course. I was standing inside a furnace.

I had to move. I had to find Lizzy. I had to find Rina—now—before the burns turned black, before my body gave out.

I forced myself up.

That explosion had come from the next house over.

My neighbor’s house.

I looked.

And my blood went cold.

“No way…”

My heart slammed so hard it hurt. My teeth rattled against each other.

That was Rina’s house.

“RINAA!!”

I took a step forward, but flames burst from the front door, rolling outward like a living thing. The structure caved in on itself, collapsing into a roaring ruin of fire and debris.

Gone.

There was nothing to run into. Nothing left to save.

My mind rejected it outright.

No.

No no no—

I couldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t. Denial clung to me like a reflex. Rina couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t.

My feet moved backward without my permission, retreating from the truth.

Then I stepped on something.

Something soft.

Something that stung my calf.

“Ouch—!”

I startled, and I turned my head behind. And as if bringing me faster to what I try to ignore, my nose catch the pungent smell of cooked flesh, very contrast with the burnt wood and plastic that filled my nose already. My eyes catch the charred black.

When I was a kid, I imagined that a victim of extreme burns will look like a burnt marshmallow. The skin will look like a cracking magma, and the body will look like a burnt log. It was normal to imagine. After all, books usually oversimplify what happened to a body that burnt obscenely. And I was still a kid when reading it, and it was enough to give me nightmare.

But nothing could prepare me to see the real one. 

Behind me, a visible fog blows up from the burnt body. Not smoke, but a humid, cloying steam rising from the moisture cooked out of the muscle. I can't even see if the person is fat or skinny; the fire has stripped away the context of a life. Flesh and skin had melted, hanging from the skeleton in blackened, tattered ribbons. The hands were clenched into tight, carbonized stones, and the limbs were pulled inward in that frantic, pugilistic crouch, as if they were still trying to duck away from a blow that had already landed.

No, don’t look.

Turn away!

My breath hitched. My ears rang. My chest thudded like it was trying to escape my ribs.

I couldn’t look away.

Where the skin hadn’t turned to charcoal, it had hardened into obsidian-dark leather, split open in jagged fissures. Beneath it, fat and muscle had boiled, releasing a stench so thick it coated my throat, greasy and sour and impossible to forget.

Then I saw the wristwatch.

Right hand.

From Rina’s house.

He was left-handed.

The realization struck me.

It was her father.

My knees gave out.

I collapsed onto the road, acid surging up my throat. Heat bloomed behind my cheeks and I barely managed to turn my head before everything came up.

“Bleeergh—! Cough—kh!”

The man who took Lizzy and me in after our mother died.

The man who always smiled when I showed up at his door.

The man who treated us like family when we had none.

Charred into something unrecognizable.

Right in front of me.

The memories slammed into my skull all at once. My vision spun. My stomach heaved again and I retched until there was nothing left but pain and bile.

And the fire kept roaring.