Abalze
The blonde girl didn’t remember deciding to jump.
One moment, she was choking on smoke, pressed against the open window frame as heat scorched her skin, and the next, she was falling. The fire behind her roared like something alive, snapping and howling as it devoured the wooden beams of her family’s home. The air burned her lungs with every breath. The crackle of flames layered over screams — a sound she would never forget — ringing in her ears. Her family. Her neighbors. Voices twisting into something unrecognizable as the village died around her.
She hit the ground hard, knees and elbows slamming into packed dirt. Pain flared, distant and dull, barely registering through the panic that swallowed her whole. For a moment, she stayed there, trembling, face pressed to the earth as the heat rolled over her back in waves. Then instinct forced her up. She pushed herself to her feet, hands shaking as she brushed ash and dirt from her clothes, blinking through stinging tears. It was too bright for midnight — as if the sun had risen just to watch the village burn.
She whipped her head around, looking for a way to escape from the nightmare before her eyes. Her house wasn’t the only one burning.
Fire leapt from roof to roof, devouring wood and flesh without pause. Shadows moved through the smoke; wrong shapes, too fast, accompanied by high-pitched calls that scraped against her skull. Monsters. Their cries wove through the chaos, threading themselves between the screams of people being torn apart or swallowed by flame. The sound pressed in from every direction, leaving no room to think, no room to breathe.
She sucked in a desperate lungful of air and gagged. Smoke. Char. The sickening, unmistakable scent of burning flesh.
Her eyes darted wildly as panic threatened to freeze her in place. Then something deep and instinctual took hold. She turned and ran, weaving through burning buildings until she saw her oasis. The forest loomed just beyond the edge of the village, dark and silent in contrast to the inferno behind her. She stumbled through underbrush and fallen leaves, branches clawing at her skin as she fled blindly into the trees. When her legs finally gave out, she collapsed behind the trunk of a thick oak. Her small frame curling into a tight ball as she struggled to keep her sobs quiet.
She didn’t want to ever move from the safety of the concave trunk again.
Eventually, the screams faded. The monster calls fell silent. All that remained was the distant crackle of dying fires and the heavy, suffocating smell of smoke drifting through the woods.
The village never cried out again.
