"Haaah..."
_That took way too long. My head hurts!_
Before heading back home from school, Lore Lumian, a fifteen-year-old top student and local problem solver, helped
locate the lost phone of his anxious classmate.
He had checked every drawer and desk, searched the locker room, and traced the path the girl had taken before she had lost her phone. All that just for her to happily exclaim she had finally found it inside her lunchbox.
At 4 p.m., Lore, being exhausted, left the school gate. He felt warmth wash over his body as sunlight quickly embraced him. But he was still slightly annoyed about the location of the phone.
_Seriously, who puts their phone in their lunchbox and then forgets about it! But how could I deny her request when she was practically crying..._
_I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time again._
_I've also been quite impulsive these past few days. The abrupt pressure in my head is killing me._
_Did I get a headache? My head has been hurting much more recently._
_Well, I should at least rejoice in the fact that I am heading home. I'll just rest as soon as I arrive._
After walking for a while, Lore suddenly became a bit dizzy. It was as if a bubble had popped and he had been blinded. This blindness took not only his sight but also slowed his thoughts, leaving him in a daze.
Following the dizziness, a wave of extreme pain came forth, as if his head had been brutally stabbed by a knife.
Lore staggered and fell screaming. "Aaaaahhhh!"
Lore could only scream in pain as he lost awareness of his surroundings.
"Nnghh aaahh!"
The veil on his sight and mind was lifted after a couple of seconds, soothing the pain and waking Lore, making it possible for him to perceive his surroundings again.
The world around him had become a bit hazier; cars and street signs blurred, and the street colors had slightly mixed into a dark tone.
Lore exclaimed while heavily panting, "Wh... what the… hell? Why?... Why did it hurt so much?"
In the corner of Lore's right eye, he could see a smoky dark cloud forming, slowly reaching towards the sky.
Grunting, Lore weakly picked himself up and got on his knees.
Then he weakly rose from his knees and stared at the black, rising cloud forming behind rows of small and big houses.
_That's definitely a fire, and it's near my house. Mom... Dad... Nessa!_
Lore hesitated. He hasn't forgotten the pain from the dizziness even if it has suddenly disappeared.
He was still exhausted, but seeing the fire, he chose to run towards it. After all, who knows what's happened?
_staying longer because of the phone, then the dizziness and the fire at the same time...
Lore couldn't help but question the sequence of events; he has always been an unlucky person, somehow being dragged into weird and seemingly inevitable circumstances.
_The streets also became so blurry and dark. Is it because I'm sick?_
By now Lore could see the burning building right in front of him; people had already crowded in front of it.
It was a two-story home standing at about 10 meters tall. Small amounts of grayish-black smoke were exiting the house. The fire hadn't yet engulfed the building.
_At least it's not my house_, Lore guiltily thought. He tried to peer into the crowd to find his sister, Vera, or his parents, but Lore quickly gave up.
He did expect them to be part of the crowd, but Lore saw faces as a blur. He himself would have to be found in order to be reunited with his family.
He also saw the family who live in the burning building, or at least the parents. A creeping feeling climbed Lore's back as he saw their distraught faces.
At that moment a man in the crowd screamed, "The children are still inside! When are the firefighters coming?"
_Still inside? But how? It's broad daylight. They should've left the house as soon as the fire started._
Lore saw smoke leaving the burning building. _The door hasn't been touched by the fire yet._
_If someone were to go in, now wouldn't be a bad time..._
_No, I'm not a hero. Ollie and Marie are probably safe. They aren't dumb.
The parents of both families have been friends ever since they first met years ago. As Lore is older than the siblings by 4 entire years, he had to watch over Ollie and Marie, and as time went by, he grew to like the two siblings.
"Lore!" Someone in the crowd screamed.
Lore turned, and his eyes quickly met those of his older sister. "You!"
Vera grasped Lore's shoulders, having a face that obviously spelt out, "Where the hell have you been?" But instead her expression changed as she gave Lore a worried look and then said with a plain face, "Are you sick? You look like shit."
Lore hadn't expected a heartfelt moment with his sister, but he had hoped he wouldn't immediately be compared to shit when they met.
"Doesn't matter; Ollie and Marie are still inside!"
His sister answered, "I heard, but the fire department still hasn't come. What is taking so long?"
"Actually, they haven't even answered the phone." A man appearing from the small crowd chimed in.
Lore recognized the man as his neighbor, Hendrick. He's a responsible man, so he probably called the fire department as soon as he noticed the fire.
Vera immediately replied, "What? But the fire department should always be reachable. Have you tried messaging them?"
"Yes, I've already tried that. I've also tried the police and the ambulance, but they're the same. I think it might be a malfunction.
Vera was dumbstruck. "Then what about their parents?"
"They went out shopping earlier, but a few moments after they left, the fire started. I called for them to come back as soon as possible."
Hendrick added, "When I first saw it, the fire was spreading throughout the house within minutes, but now it's… slowed down a lot? It's really weird."
Meanwhile, Lore was listening to the conversation; his mind stirred. _Did the siblings accidentally start the fire themselves? Right as their parents left? The fire department isn't reachable?_
But most importantly. _The fire isn't that violent right now._
While it is normal for the fire to stop growing after it has burned everything up, it made little sense for it to be so calm and controlled after such a short time.
_It has been burning for about 5 minutes; it shouldn't have stopped growing already. No matter, it's a good thing it isn't normal. But this also means... it has to be now._
Lore quickly said, "If we wait for the firefighters, it would be trying to push our luck; the fire won't stay so small."
_I might be able to do it._
_If so._
_Then I will do it!_
Hendrickson and Vera both looked at Lore with a dreadful look. They knew he was about to do something stupid.
Lore pushed through the people in front and leapt to the burning building; Vera and Hendrickson panicked and screamed at Lore.
"Wait, Lore! Come back!"
But Lore had already decided to save the siblings.
Ignoring the crowd screaming behind him, he pushed through the weak door and entered the house.
The heat instantly assaulted him, but Lore ignored it. He was most wary of the smoke trying to enter his lungs, so he put his left hand in front of his mouth and nose. Then he made his way through the hallway.
The ground floor was burning slowly, so there was enough space to move through the hallway; at the end of it, he screamed for the siblings.
"Ollie!"
"Marie!"
"..."
There was no answer. _Maybe they're unconscious._
Lore opened the burning door to the living room. The heat was stronger here, but he could withstand it. Sweating, he quickly checked the living room and then the kitchen, but he knew there was a low chance they'd be there.
_The stairs it is, huh?_ Lore could feel the blazing heat from the stairs, but he was already prepared to go to the first floor.
Taking the stairs, his eyes were being blinded by the brightness of the flames. Making the burning parts difficult to avoid. Every step made his body protest going further. But still he took the next step.
Finally, after 12 steps, Lore was on the first floor. Through the lights he could see three openings. The leftmost, which is a storage room; the rightmost, which is the parents' room; and the middle opening, which is the siblings' room.
In the middle opening, the door was opened and burning. At the entrance a light-brown-haired boy was lying, unmoving and slightly burned by the fire.
"Ollie!"
Lore was surrounded by fire as well. The distance between him and Ollie was about the length of one meter, and a flame that reached Lore's stomach persisted in spreading in all directions between them.
Seeing Ollie, Lore rapidly sprinted and pushed himself off the ground, jumping over the fire and landing near the child.
The heat was building up, Lore struggled to see through the lights, and breathing became much more difficult.
He checked the state of the brown-haired nine-year-old and found he was still breathing.
Checking the room, Lore saw another brown-haired child in the rightmost corner of the room, right in front of the most scorching white fire.
He picked Ollie up and put him on his shoulder and made his way to Marie, sprinting through the fires between them and burning his legs and back in the process.
The bed at the corner was burning, and near it Marie was lying against the wall, looking far worse than Ollie. She had burn marks all over.
Lore picked up the eleven-year-old and moved her away from the bed and wall.
"Ah, dammit, Marie! Marie, wake up!"
Lore was burning up; the searing heat from the scorching wall on the other side was getting to his brain. With effort, he put Ollie near Marie. And fell on his knees once again...
_I can't move them both out of the fire, and I'm way too tired and burned already._
From his lips he could taste a bit of iron. He put his hand, which was blocking his mouth and nose, on his lips and saw blood.
A thought made its way to his brain.
"I'm already dying." Lore knew what it meant to enter a burning building and what the result would be of acting like a hero.
But even then he didn't think it had been the wrong choice.
_Would I still stupidly run into the fire if I knew it'd end like this?_
Even though Lore doesn't think of himself as a hero, he still wanted to protect the siblings.
He smiled. "Some things really have become important to me. I'm happy I got to at least treasure things to this extent."
_This damned fire_
"Just an inevitable stroke of bad luck."
The wall that was left to his back began burning even brighter.
Lore faced the wall, deciding to take a good look at it. His eyes were trying to adjust to the brightness.
_Based on the heat, this must be the source of the fire, so what started it?_
As his eyes adjusted, Lore came to see a few neatly grouped, contorted crimson lines on the wall. Forming a total of three of what seemed to be symbols.
They were crude, drawn in uneven crimson lines that soaked into the wall. For some unfathomable reason they sent chills through Lore's spine.
His head throbbed.
The first symbol sat higher than the others, built from arched strokes that branched outward. A vertical line running through it's center.
Next to it, on its right was another mark. A long continuous line twisting through a rough circle, crossing over itself again and again, its ends and beginnings squared off.
Below them was a third. A single vertical stroke, interrupted at several points by thickened segments, with warped horizontal cuts that formed star-like shapes.
Lore swallowed as his vision blurred.
The pressure in his head returned all at once.
"Aaagh!"
Pain exploded behind his eyes. It felt like something was being driven straight through his skull.
Lore cried out, clutching his head as his knees hit the floor once again.
However this time Lore wasn't blinded.
Struggling, Lore faced the three crimson symbols.
The symbols brightened, each covering a layer of the world like a blanket.
Then his sight began to fade.
The flames dimmed at the edges of his vision. The ceiling dissolved into brightness. Even the children beside him became distant shapes.
Lore tried to reach for them.
His fingers never made it.
Crimson light swallowed everything.