After the tense discussion faded into silence, Alger approached us quietly. His footsteps were soft, his expression unreadable. He reached out and placed a gentle hand on Lily's shoulder. His eyes, devoid of emotion, met hers for only a moment before he spoke.
"For your safety," he said, voice low but firm, "there is another orphanage nearby. You'll all be transferred there by nightfall."
None of us responded. There was nothing left to say.
Alger didn't leave right away. Instead, he sat down beside us, as if trying to share in our grief, though his presence only deepened the stillness. The air hung heavy, filled with unspoken thoughts and the faint scent of smoke that still clung to our clothes.
"How did things go so wrong?" Victor murmured, his voice thin and cracked. His eyes were distant, glazed with disbelief. No one had the answer.
Alger rose without a word and disappeared down the hallway. The minutes crawled by like hours. When he returned, he held a thick file in his hands—worn at the edges, the paper inside slightly curled as if it had soaked in sorrow.
Lily's eyes narrowed slightly. "What is that?" she asked, her voice cautious.
"A report," Alger replied simply, his tone neutral. "The firefighters who entered the building—those who tried to save the children—are required to write an official account. Scene by scene. What they saw. What they did. What they couldn't do."
Victor let out a quiet, bitter whisper. "What's the point of reading it? They're dead."
Alger didn't answer. He only extended the file toward Lily.
She hesitated, then took it. The weight of it surprised her.
As she opened the folder, a strange chill traced her spine. The first page crackled slightly under her fingers. It didn't feel like a report—it felt like a chronicle. A script written by some unseen force. As though fate itself had documented the final moments of those we lost.
Lily stared at the words but didn't speak. A silence fell over us again, thicker than before.
That report was more than just paper and ink. It was a mirror of loss—a haunting tale of a night that would never leave us.
And somehow, it felt like it had been written long before the fire ever began.
The report :
The call came in just after dusk—a fire at St. Helena Orphanage. No details. Just the urgency in the dispatcher's voice. Within thirty minutes, we were geared up and racing through the night, sirens wailing, hearts pounding.
The building loomed like a shadow as we arrived, smoke curling from its broken windows. Flames danced inside, alive and ravenous. We stormed in without hesitation.
It was chaos from the start.
A faint scream echoed through the blackened hallways. One of the nuns—we could barely recognize her—was staggering toward us, her robes scorched and skin blistered. Then, in a flash, a collapsing timber flared and struck one of our own. He cried out, falling hard. We pulled him back, and when we looked up again, the nun was gone—swallowed by the flames or by something else.
We pressed deeper into the orphanage, but something was wrong. Too quiet. No children. Not even signs of them. We called out—nothing. Smoke choked the halls, and the air was heavy with confusion. It was as if we'd walked into a nightmare, halfway through the dream.
Outside, we regrouped, gasping for breath. A girl stood there—alone. Pale. Silent. We asked her what happened, but she only shook her head. Her eyes were glassy, distant.
Then the screams came.
Dozens of children burst from the far side of the building, wailing in terror, darting in every direction like frightened birds. We ran toward them, calling, waving them over, trying to calm them.
Most wouldn't come near us. Their eyes were wild with fear, and it took everything we had to coax them into following us. Eventually, they began to trust us, moving hesitantly away from the fire.
All except one.
He was sitting alone in a corner room, staring blankly at a broken television. The screen flickered static—pure white noise, like snow. The boy didn't blink. Didn't speak. He didn't even flinch at the sound of crackling wood or falling debris. He just sat there, his face bathed in that eerie glow, as if the flames couldn't touch him.
We shouted at him—he didn't respond. Finally, we dragged him out by force, carrying him through the smoke and ash until we reached the others.
After the last of the children were accounted for and the fire finally subdued, one little girl came forward. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
"There was a man," she whispered, "in the old storage room. I saw him before the fire started. He was standing in a circle of gasoline. He didn't move. He just looked at me."
She paused, her eyes watering. "His eyes were red. Like… glowing. Like something not human. A monster."
Her small hands clenched tightly as she continued. "He started walking toward me. I ran. I didn't stop until I reached my bedroom. Then… there was a red light. Bright. Blinding. I was too scared to look, but I forced myself. When I did, I saw the fire—huge flames swallowing everything. I screamed so loud."
Her voice cracked.
"Then Mother Mary came. She was bleeding… but she smiled at us. She led us to a tunnel beneath the building—some old emergency passage. She told us to stay there, that the fire wouldn't reach us. She saved us."
The girl looked away.
"She went back… but she never returned."
There was nothing more to say. The children were silent. The fire was out. But something unnatural had lingered in those flames—something unspoken.
By evening, arrangements were made. The children would be transferred to a new orphanage, far from the ruins of the one they had barely escaped.
But some of them—especially the quiet boy—kept glancing back. As if something hadn't finished with them yet.
The report ended.
After hearing the girl's story, a strange stillness fell upon us. It was all so mysterious—so unreal. The children sat quietly beneath an old tree, the sun low on the horizon casting a warm amber glow across the earth. The sky looked peaceful, but nothing inside us matched it.
Then, without warning, a soft gust of wind passed through. It wasn't cold. It wasn't warm. Just a whisper of air, like the world itself sighing in grief. The children barely stirred, but it was as if the wind carried with it the weight of everything unspoken.
Lily walked toward the children and sat beside them without making a sound. None of them noticed her at first. She looked at the faces around her—so young, yet so broken. Her voice trembled as she finally spoke.
"Don't be sad," she said softly, her tone heavy and reluctant, as if every word had to fight its way out. "We'll find a new home. We're going to be transferred there tonight…"
But she couldn't finish. Saying it out loud made it too real, and it hurt in ways she couldn't explain.
Then Glen, a sharp-eyed boy with a cautious nature, turned toward her. "You're not with us while in the chaos" he asked, his voice strangely calm. "You might've been the one who lit the fire."
The accusation hung in the air like thick smoke. Lily froze. Her eyes widened as she stared off into the trees, unable to speak. She didn't even deny it. Silence swallowed the space between them. Even the wind seemed to pause.
The laughter and joy that once filled these grounds had vanished. Stolen in a single night.
Then another child, barely five years old, a bandage knotted around his forehead, looked up at Lily with teary eyes.
"Who could have killed our Mother Mary?" he asked. "If it was one of us… why? She loved us. She cared for everyone."
No one answered. There was no explanation. Just more silence.
Everyone drifted into their own thoughts, haunted by the same question: *Why did it have to end this way?*
As the sun disappeared, night crept in. Shadows stretched long and wide, and the warmth of the day vanished with it. The chill wasn't just in the air—it was in our bones, in our hearts. No one really spoke. The pain was too deep to name, too raw to share.
We began gathering our things, but it wasn't just luggage we packed. We were trying to carry memories, to hold on to whatever pieces we could salvage from a home that was no more. We moved slowly, as if trying to delay the inevitable.
Victor, quiet and thoughtful, stepped into the garden and took a small shovel meant for planting. Wordlessly, he began to dig beneath the tree where they had once played. The earth was stubborn, clinging to itself like it didn't want to let go. Each scoop was like peeling away layers of memory.
The deeper he dug, the harder it became—not just physically, but emotionally. It felt like burying the past. The deeper the pit, the more it felt like letting go of something sacred.
One by one, the other children joined him. They brought items from the orphanage—fragments of their lives. A handmade bracelet. A drawing. A cracked doll. Letters. Trinkets once full of joy now weighed down with sorrow.
Victor reached into his coat and pulled out a scorched metal flask—burnt around the edges, a gift from Mary on his last birthday. He held it for a long moment before dropping it into the pit.
They all began to place their things inside, as if they were burying the very essence of the orphanage itself. A silent funeral for their memories.
When the pit was full, Victor began to cover it with soil. With every motion, the past disappeared a little more.
When he was done, he stood and turned. The first thing he saw was Lily, sitting on the steps of the porch, staring up at the moon. There was a quiet grace about her, something unspoken that tugged at him. He'd always had a small affection for her, but never the courage to say it. Not now. Not like this.
Off to the side, Orion sat beneath a tree, dressed in his usual white. He didn't seem like one of the others—always lost in his own world, his notebook always open, his pen always moving. Even now, in the moonlight, he was writing. A poem. No one knew what he wrote, but there was a sorrow to it. A haunting rhythm.
Frank hadn't spoken since the fire. Since the moment they confirmed Mary was gone. He sat alone, completely still. Whatever had happened to him inside that building had hollowed him out.
Then came the bus.
Its headlights pierced the night, its horn low and discordant—too loud, too real. The children lined up and boarded in silence. No chatter. No laughter. Just tired feet and broken hearts.
I found a seat beside Frank. He didn't even look up.
"We didn't lose anything," he muttered coldly. "Just a home. We'll get another."
His words felt empty. Like ashes after a fire.
I turned to him, frustration rising in my voice. "What do you mean by that?"
He just shook his head. "Forget it. Let's just say we found a new home."
And then, as if the weight of it all finally caught up with him, he closed his eyes and drifted into sleep. None of us had really slept since the fire.
I turned to the window and stared at the moon. It looked red—crimson, almost like it had bled for us. Everything bad seemed to happen beneath its gaze. That night didn't feel like the end of a chapter.
It felt like the death of an entire life.
The moon hung there, watching. Cold. Silent.
It felt like it was the only one that truly understood what we were leaving behind.