<<CanYouFeelTheFireGrowing>> [Part I]

Sleep’s escape from exhaustion was short-lived. Deep into the night, in the darkness of the witching hour, new explosions began. This time, they were not muted. Their blazes lit up the darkened city below and poured orange light into the windows.

Miu stirred at the light and sound just as the thundering thuds reached their building and shook the walls.

“Yuki? Yuki?!” she asked as she shook Yuki, who was already waking from the sound.

“What’s happening?” he asked in a nervous voice.

Before Miu could reply, more explosions began. Within seconds, the entire eastern side of the mountain range was incinerated. Terror flooded Miu and Yuki as they watched the fireballs consume the hillside.

Their phones both began to buzz with emergency alerts.

“Evacuation notices?!” Yuki sputtered as he fumbled out from under the sheets.

“What’s happening?! Those look like bombs!!” Miu cried as she ripped the bedding away.

Another wave of cataclysmic explosions arrived. Concussions followed, and their window cracked. Miu let out a scream as the entirety of the sky turned red in response to the fire. Surges of neon light screamed across the heavens as a vortex of energy appeared. It lifted into the clouds, then slammed down like a fist being guided. Within a second, complete chunks of mountain were shattered and hurled into the air.

Burning sigils and glyphs appeared across the vista in pink and blue crystalline flashes. Both children screamed out as they tried to get up.

Yuki fell into his chair and flipped himself over. Miu jumped past him to grab their coats and shoes. All the while, the sirens and phone alerts continued.

“Oh gods. Oh gods, what’s happening?” Yuki whispered as a single beam of raw energy fired down from the stars.

It howled like a digital bird being gutted alive as it tore across the edges of the city. Then tracers of surface-to-air defense systems roared out to meet it. Yuki froze in horror as he watched unseen human weapons firing at unseen Arcan power.

Miu burst back into the room with clothes and their backpack.

“I’ve got the guardianship forms and our identification cards. What else do you need?!”

“N-nothing, just that,” Yuki responded.

“Wait! Hana!” he called out as he lurched forward to grab the doll that was buried in the bed.

“Thank you!” Miu gasped as she shoved Hana into the backpack.

Miu yanked her clothes over her pajamas and grabbed two blankets as Yuki struggled to pull his coverings on. Miu rushed to his side to aid him, and once he was dressed, she pulled his jacket over his arms and threw the blankets in his lap. As she moved, Yuki caught a glimpse of her face. Wild terror was mixing with focused task control. Her eyes were wide and empty with horror, but focused with goals.

She crawled over the table and reached the door, then immediately began to back Yuki’s chair out.

“Where is it saying to go?” Miu asked as Yuki read his phone’s emergency notice.

“It’s saying take the trains. This place is condemned?! It’s saying we’re going to be taken to Sapporo?!” Yuki whimpered in confusion.

“Why is it taking us so far away?!” Miu asked as she ripped the door open.

Cold, biting air snapped at their faces as more explosions lit up the buildings beside theirs. All around them, the small rivulets of shards were pulsing with light. Tiny flecks of incandescent stone drifted in the air and glinted light like small warning beacons. An unsettling droning hum was building in the wind.

More explosions shook the building as Miu rushed them to the elevator. Screams were now building as the entire city awoke to the unexplained conflict.

“Are we under attack?!” Miu screamed.

“I don’t know, it doesn’t say!!”

Their elevator arrived, and Miu dared to use it against her better judgment.

“Please don’t get stuck. Please don’t get stuck. Please don’t break,” she begged as they entered.

Just as the doors closed, Miu caught a glimpse of more colossal vortexes ravaging the mountainside as helicopters rushed forward with all weapons unleashed.

Their elevator endured long enough to shepherd them to the ground, where Miu immediately continued to rush them forward. Hundreds of other residents were now running through the streets in panic. Bedtime clothes and open robes billowed as shouts of horror were drowned out by automated defensive weaponry. Shells as large as fists fell around them with searing heat.

Miu and Yuki couldn’t control their screaming, but Miu continued to push them towards the distant train station as swiftly as possible. Unseen voices spoke unknown languages in a haunting chant, and the small crystal flakes in the air began to echo their words. A horrifying choir of strange words narrated the destruction unfolding. Miu wanted to cover her ears to drown out the horrible sounds, but her hands stayed on his chair.

Screams of jet engines roared overhead, and Miu looked up to see a half dozen planes burst past them as missiles dislodged from wings and erupted forth with murderous intent. But then a glyph as big as a skyscraper appeared and absorbed the missiles without a sound. Then another glyph appeared, and the missiles returned, now firing back in the direction from where they had come.

One of the missiles snapped and careened downwards, directly into their building. There was a wave of heat that felt like it was going to burn all of Miu’s skin from her back, then a concussion that shattered every window and eardrum in range. Miu and Yuki were thrown forward and struck the concrete with a shout. But Miu was unstoppable.

As soon as she hit the ground, she rolled over and screamed out in pain, but she forced herself up and immediately moved to return Yuki to his chair. Within seconds, they were moving again. Tears and blood burned down her face as she looked forward towards their destination. Yuki’s focus was on their former home, which was gone in seconds. Now, only elevator columns and smoldering ruins remained. Flames rose like demons awaking from slumber, casting heat onto the pavement. For the first time in her life, Miu was warm in December. But that heat was threatening to kill them all.

Finally, they reached the station entrance. To Miu’s relief, the elevators were working. Overhead sirens continued to howl as police officers and station workers waved the horrified populace below. Miu and Yuki were shoved into an elevator and sent downwards. They didn’t even have time to get a final look at their former neighborhood and the small scraps of tranquility they’d known.

The last thing they saw of their tranquility was the image of another wave of carpet bombing being absorbed by glyphs, then cast back across the sky like a dragon's last exhale.

Buildings and infrastructure folded and melted instantly as fire consumed everything in sight.

"Oh no," was all Miu could cry.

Once they were subterranean, the station attendants guided them and dozens more onto waiting train cars. Before the blood had even dried or the tears had stopped falling, the two children were part of a convoy of hundreds who were now hurtling away from the ruins of their home and out to Sapporo’s snowy embrace.