The fire that destroys

The three girls ran until the school was a blur behind them, the sky brightening up as they got further away.

“That was crazy!” Rin wheezed, gulping air as she ran. Kumi pressed the heel of her hand against her chest, trying to breathe around the stitch growing there. The red stone was still in her fist, hot and solid.

“Kumi, what was that?” Yuna said. Her voice came out high and tight between gasps. “You’re going to be in so much trouble.” Kumi stared at the road ahead, the tarmac wobbling slightly in her vision.

“Did you see what he turned into?” she said. “He’s just like them, guys. Another monster.”

“We don’t know that, for sure,” Rin shot back. “Sure as hell didn’t give him a chance to explain himself.” Only then did their legs finally give out. They staggered to a halt on a quiet side street between small houses and dropped in a tangle onto the pavement, backs against a low wall, lungs burning.

“Should we go back?” Yuna asked once she caught some of her breath. Her fingers were worrying the edge of the bandage Hiro had taped onto her side. “He might be really hurt.”

“Forget it,” Kumi said. She let her head fall back against the cool brick, sliding down until she was almost slumped on the pavement. “He got what he deserved.”​

“Kumi, you can’t keep blaming him,” Yuna said, too loudly. “What happened to your Mum wasn’t his fault!”

“Then whose was it, huh? Mine?” Kumi snapped. The words cracked through the quiet street, sharp enough that a couple of crows on a nearby wire lifted off in a clatter of wings. Her fingers dug into the stone until her knuckles ached.

“No…” Yuna stuttered, shoulders sinking as she looked away.

“What’s the plan now, then?” Rin asked. “Are we going to do anything about Hiro or just sit here?” Kumi opened her mouth to answer.

“I’m going home,” Yuna said quietly.

“Wait, what?” Rin turned, but Yuna had already started walking the other way. “Yuna, wait! Kumi, I’m going to bring her back. Are you going to be-”

“I’ll be fine,” Kumi cut in. Yuna turned the corner, and Rin rushed after her. Their footsteps faded, leaving the little side street hollow and thin.​

When they were gone, Kumi folded her arms on her knees and dropped her forehead onto them. A long, shaky sigh leaked out before she could stop it.​ Hiro’s red stone was her only sense of warmth. It sat in her palm like a coal, heat seeping slowly into her skin while the evening air crept cool under her damp collar. She turned it over with her fingers, watching the way the light caught inside it. It glowed faintly, like a tiny, angry sun. Or a hot lightbulb. With a small, annoyed huff at herself, Kumi curled her fingers around the stone and dropped it into the inner pocket of her bag, where it thumped against her notebook and went on glowing.

The sirens started a second later. Not the usual police or ambulance wail. The other ones. The ones with the low, rising tone everyone in the city knew by heart. Kaen alert.

Kumi’s head snapped up. The sound bounced off the buildings, the long howl rising and falling. Somewhere closer to the centre, speakers would be blaring recorded instructions – move indoors, avoid roads leading to the pit, follow evacuation signs. Out here, the road still looked ordinary. A plastic bag skittered along the gutter. No one was screaming yet.

She checked the nearest street sign. They weren’t that close to the pit – this was a residential area, a few districts out. If everyone else stayed inside, maybe she could just… go home. Pretend she’d never heard it. Kumi pushed herself to her feet, her legs shivering. She figured she’d take cloud home, just to be safe. She had just started to reach up when movement flickered at the corner she’d watched her friends disappear around.

“Guys?” Yuna and Rin came pelting back into view like they’d been thrown. Their faces were pure panic. Behind them, the street glowed.

A Kaen rounded the corner on all fours, claws scraping deep gouges into the asphalt. It was at least fifteen metres tall, a mass of flame in the shape of some nightmare beast. Its body was all shifting tongues of orange and white, too bright to look at for long. Where its eyes should have been, two pits of white fire burned.

“Why is that thing here?!” Kumi shrieked.

“I don’t know!” Yuna cried. The Kaen lunged.

Kumi threw her hand forward. A cloud yanked itself together under Yuna and Rin’s feet and slid them sideways like they were pieces on a board, hauling them out of reach of the snapping jaws. The Kaen’s flaming teeth clashed shut on empty air.

Kumi dragged the cloud to her, pulling Yuna and Rin in close. She scrambled up onto the misty surface beside them, knees almost giving out. The Kaen barrelled straight past where they’d been, momentum carrying it into the nearest house. The front wall exploded in a spray of bricks. Fire crawled up the curtains in a heartbeat.

It sounded like no one was home. No screams, no silhouettes at the windows. Kumi clung to that as she forced the cloud higher. The Kaen roared and twisted, spotting them again. It leapt, jaws bared. Kumi yanked the cloud up. The monster’s teeth snapped shut just below their feet. Hot wind from its breath seared her shins. The cloud shuddered but held. Once they were out of reach, Kumi risked a look across the city. From this height, she could see over the rooftops toward the pit.

Three more Kaen burned their way through the streets – a pair of smaller, five‑storey shapes and one towering giant even bigger than the fifteen‑metre one below them. All of them were moving in the same general direction. Toward them.

“Guys, what the heck!” Kumi breathed.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Yuna sobbed, clinging to Kumi’s leg with both arms. Rin latched onto the other, water gun bouncing uselessly against her hip. “You saved us, Kumi!”

“It’s fine,” Kumi said automatically. Her voice shook. “We’ll just stay up here until it blows over.”

“Wait.” Yuna dragged in a ragged breath. “Hiro. I don’t think he’s in any shape to fight them. I told you we should’ve gone back for him!” The Kaen below them leapt again, claws raking the side of a building as it scrabbled after the cloud. Another, smaller Kaen barrelled into the same street from the opposite end, turning its white‑hot face up toward them.

“They’re both after us now?!” Rin yelped.

“What do we do?” Yuna said. Kumi weighed her options in an instant.

“Hang on,” Kumi answered. She split the cloud into three. One puff of mist slid Yuna away, another carried Rin, and Kumi stayed on the original. The fragments drifted apart as she widened the gap, testing. The Kaen below them howled and sprang. Its gaze tracked only one of the fleeing clouds. The middle one. Hers.

Of course it wants me, she thought. Here to finish off the rest of the Amaya family. Her stomach twisted, but a thin, fierce thread uncoiled under the fear. If they wanted her, she could use that. She flicked her fingers. Yuna’s cloud swung away, angling toward the direction of home.

“Go!” Kumi shouted. “Straight home, don’t stop!”

“Kumi?” Yuna gripped onto her cloud as it teetered off, her voice fading.

Rin, meanwhile, was hanging half off her own, firing the water pistol down at the nearest Kaen. The thin stream hissed into steam before it even got close. Rin kept squeezing until the gun spluttered empty. She stared at it like it had betrayed her.

Kumi pulled another cloud into being above the charging Kaen and dumped as much water as she could. A true torrent slammed down, punching through the fire and briefly exposing the dark, stony skeleton beneath.

For a second, the Kaen’s flames guttered. Then they flared again, crawling back over the rock like fire re‑licking old coals. It shook itself once and roared, completely uninterested in staying dead. It gathered itself and leapt. Its teeth tore a chunk out of the rain‑cloud, shredding the vapour before Kumi could pull it away.

Then it jumped again, jaws snapping just below Kumi’s toes. Kumi hit it with a strong gust and jerked the cloud higher, heart hammering. The air up here was hotter than it should have been, smoke from distant fires smearing the sky. Through a sudden epiphany, Kumi realised batting the thing with oxygen would only stir the flames, not smother them. So, she couldn’t rely on the wind either.

“Rin, your turn!” she shouted. She sent Rin’s cloud skidding sideways and down towards the edge of the residential district, away from the main streets the Kaen were following. Rin clung to the edge, eyes wide, but she didn’t argue. That left Kumi alone in the air, one cloud between her and four monsters.

Angry, heavy footfalls shook the street. When she dared a glance back, all four Kaen were visible now – three smaller ones tearing along the roads below, and the towering one in the distance heaving itself between buildings like a living inferno. Damn, that was about as bad as things could get.

She was wrong. The largest Kaen – a massive thing that had to be twenty metres at least – threw its head back and opened its mouth. A plume of fire blasted out, a wide, rolling wave of orange so bright it turned the sky above the city white.

Kumi’s breath stopped. She dropped her cloud just enough for the flame to pass overhead, a sheet of heat that licked at the soles of her shoes and left the air boiling. She shoved herself back up immediately to avoid the fifteen‑metre’s next leap, her whole body shaking with the effort of keeping the cloud moving.

She pushed the speed as high as she could, the wind whipping at her hair as the cloud skimmed up the slope toward the hill at the city’s edge – the one with the viewing platform where she’d first met the man in the green tie. Her lungs burned. Her muscles trembled like she’d been running for hours instead of riding. She clenched her teeth and forced the cloud higher.

The hill rose beneath her like a dark wave. Kumi steered toward the platform, then jumped, letting the cloud dissolve under her feet as she landed behind the safety rail. Her knees nearly buckled. She grabbed the cold metal bar to steady herself.

Below, the Kaen were already climbing. The fifteen‑metre dug its claws into the slope, dragging itself up with disturbing speed. The others fanned out behind it, flames licking at the grass and stone. Kumi’s hands shook as she raised them. Her fingers spread wide. A little rain wasn’t going to do anything. A strong gust wouldn’t even ruffle them. Hail would melt before it hurt. She needed more.

“I wish it would rain,” Kumi whispered. The sky darkened all over. Clouds thickened above her, folding over each other until the blue vanished. The first drops fell, slow and fat, pattering onto her face and the rail. Not enough.

She pulled more moisture together, dragging every scrap of damp into heavy, dense masses. The rain grew heavier, turning into a proper shower. The hill darkened; the city blurred. The Kaen kept climbing. Fire rolled off them in sheets.

“I wish it would rain so heavy,” she said, voice rising. The clouds obeyed. The shower became a deluge. Water slammed down in sheets so thick she could barely see the slope in front of her. Her hair plastered itself to her skull. Her uniform clung cold and heavy to her skin. Her school bag dragged at her shoulder like a sack of stones. Still, the Kaen came. Their footfalls shook the hill. Fire breath shot up through the rain, huge blasts of orange that punched holes in the clouds before the water erased them.

“I wish it would rain enough to drown them!” Kumi shouted. Rain hammered so hard it stung. It bounced knee‑high off the concrete. It ran in rivers down the path, pooling in hollows, turning the slope into a rushing sheet of water. The air was a wall of noise and cold. Somewhere below, distorted by the downpour, the Kaen roared. Their flames guttered where the water hit hardest, but still they climbed. Fire blasted again and again, bursts of heat that tore gaps in the cloud cover as fast as Kumi could knit it back together.

The largest Kaen’s head rose into view at the edge of the platform, a jagged crown of flame and teeth. Kumi stared straight into its fire‑pit eyes and was sent back to her mother’s flaming corpse. Her hands ached. Her arms shook. Her whole body felt like it was being pushed down.

“Rain more than all the water in the sea!” she screamed. The sky obliged. Water fell. It didn’t feel like rain anymore. It felt like a curtain of ocean tipping over. The world fell away. She was rendered blind by the blue. The downpour was so dense it filled her eyes, her nose, her ears. It crashed onto her shoulders hard enough to drive her to her knees. Her fingers slipped on the rail; she clung anyway, arms locked, every muscle straining. She couldn’t hear the Kaen over the roar. She couldn’t even hear herself. The hill shook beneath her, but whether from monster steps or the weight of water, she couldn’t tell.

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Her arms finally gave out. She curled in on herself, hands over her head, the world nothing but cold and force and the taste of metal and sky in her mouth.

Gradually, the pressure eased. The weight lifted in stages, hammering turning to pounding, pounding to heavy patter, patter to an ordinary downpour, then to something kind and gentle. Sound returned in pieces – the hiss of water running off the platform, the distant wail of sirens carried on the wind. Kumi stayed curled for a moment longer, eyes screwed shut. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see whether anything had worked.

But her body knew how to breathe, how to blink. Her eyelids fluttered open on their own. The first thing she saw was the concrete in front of her, washed clean. She pushed herself up on shaking arms and forced her gaze to the edge. The Kaen’s flaming head was gone.

In its place, sprawling across the slope below the platform, lay a hulking, blackened husk, steam curling from its cracked surface. Its once‑white fire‑pits were empty sockets. The flames were gone, snuffed out. Kumi stared. Her heart beat in her throat. Before her lay the corpses of the monsters brought down by her own hands.