I kept screaming for help, my voice tearing through the smoke, but no one came.
Each cry was weaker than the last, fading into the crackling roar around me. The fire wasn't dying down; it was alive, ravenous, climbing the walls and eating through everything like it knew I was still here.
"Help," I whispered again, or maybe I thought I did. My throat was raw, my voice broken. My body… wasn't mine anymore. I couldn't move. Everything was too heavy: my arms, my legs, even my breath.
Then I felt it. Not the pain at first, but the warmth.
Sticky, wet.
I looked down, or tried to and saw the red soaking into my shirt, spreading slowly, thickly. It was blood. My blood. I hadn't even noticed until the heat of it reached my skin, seeping from my stomach where something sharp had found a home. Shards of glass, jagged, glittering like cruel little stars, were buried deep.
I coughed. The taste of iron filled my mouth, and blood bubbled up my throat.
This was it.
