The path back seems longer, more treacherous.
For a split second I hear nothing but the sharp, splintering snap above us—a sound every firefighter instinctively recognizes and never forgets. The beam drops fast, a dark shape cutting through the smoke. My body moves before my mind does, training and something far more primal overtaking thought. I drop lower over her, pressing her to my chest, bracing for impact.
Heat washes across my back, intense enough that I feel it through my turnout gear. Embers bite at my neck and exposed jawline, but she’s fully covered beneath me. I feel her flinch against my chest, her breath hitching against the mask I’m holding to her face.
For a terrifying moment, I’m certain the beam will connect, but it slams into the floor inches behind us, showering sparks across the debris instead.
Parker appears from the smoke to my right, signaling toward a clearer path.
Each step is deliberate, measured. The weight of her in my arms centers me, focuses me. I refuse to stumble, refuse to falter. Not with her life in my hands. Not with Paul's trust on my shoulders.
The doorway appears through the smoke, a rectangle of evening sky, a promise of safety. Three more steps. Two. One.
Clean, cold air hits my face as we emerge from the burning building. I hear shouting, see movement as the medical team rushes forward with a gurney. Paul's face appears in my field of vision, pale beneath the soot from the command post, his eyes fixed on his sister's still form in my arms.
I don't release her until Paul reaches us, his hand gripping my shoulder in silent acknowledgment as the paramedics take over. Michelle's face is peaceful despite everything, the clay smudge still visible beneath the soot. Something fierce and protective surges through me as I watch them place an oxygen mask over her face.
Cold air stings the back of my neck, sharp enough to make me wince. Only then do I register the raw burn along my jawlinewhere the embers must’ve caught me, but it barely registers under the adrenaline still flooding my system.
"Rivers," Paul says, his voice rough.
I nod, understanding. Behind us, the studio continues to burn, flames now visible through the roof.
Chapter 3 – Michelle
Smoke claws at my lungs like something alive, something hungry. I can't see. Can't think. Can't breathe.
I stumble forward, one arm outstretched, the other pressed against my mouth, though it does nothing to filter the acrid chemical burn of burning glazes and clay dust. The air itself feels toxic, heavy with particles that scratch my throat raw with each desperate inhale.
My eyes sting so badly I can barely keep them open. Tears stream down my face, cutting paths through what must be soot and ash on my cheeks. The heat is a physical presence, pressing against my skin from all directions, stealing what little breath I have left.
"Hello?" I try to call out, but it emerges as a ragged cough that doubles me over, sends spasms through my chest. "Anyone?"
My voice disappears into the roar of the fire, a sound like angry breathing, like something vast and hungry consuming everything I've built. Beneath it runs a continuous crackling, popping, the terrible music of destruction. I strain to hear voices, sirens, anything from the world outside, but there's only the fire's voice, drowning everything else.
Now I'm going to die here.
The realization isn't dramatic. It settles in my mind with terrifying clarity, as solid as the floor beneath my feet. I am going to die surrounded by the art I've created, by the dreams I've shaped from earth. There's a bitter poetry to it that my oxygen-starved brain can almost appreciate.
A shelf collapses somewhere to my right, sending a shower of ceramic pieces crashing to the floor. The sound is dull through the ringing in my ears, but I feel the vibration in my bones. Pots and mugs I spent weeks creating shatter in an instant. I lurch away from it, toward where I hope the door might be.
My body feels heavy, clumsy, each movement requiring twice the effort it should. My lungs burn with each breath. My head spins like I'm drunk, thoughts fracturing, reforming.
Through the smoke, orange flames lick up the far wall, illuminating the windows where twilight presses in from outside. I cry out, the sound swallowed by the fire's roar. Black spots swim at the edges of my vision, expanding, contracting with each labored heartbeat.
I pull my shirt up over my mouth, a desperate, useless gesture. The fabric is already saturated with smoke, and it finds its way in anyway, slipping past my feeble barrier. My chest heaves, fighting for oxygen that isn't there. My throat burns like I've swallowed glass. Somewhere, distantly, I hear a terrible crackling sound—the beams above, I realize, weakening in the heat.
I think, absurdly, of the mugs I was glazing, of the Winter Market I'll never see, of Paul waiting for me at Sunday dinner.
I sink lower, the heat rolling over me in waves that distort the air like a mirage.
Then something massive moves through the smoke—not flame, not shadow, but solid and determined. A figure in heavy gear bursts through the wall of black, sweeping a beam of light that cuts through the darkness in sharp, desperate arcs.
I see him in fragments, revealed in flashes through the shifting smoke: the gleam of a helmet, the reflective strips on bunker gear, powerful shoulders turning as he scans the burning room.
When he turns and sees me half-collapsed against my work table, I hear him make a sound that doesn't seem human, a choked noise that cuts through even the roar of the fire. It's raw, primal, a sound of fear so acute it borders on pain.
"Michelle!" Austin's voice breaks around my name, my two syllables fractured by terror.
