Chapter 1 - The Smoke and the Silence
The air in the room had turned from thin to suffocating in a matter of seconds. It was a thick, gray veil that tasted of burning synthetic carpet and old dust. Caitlyn coughed, her small chest heaving as she pressed her face against the sliver of space beneath the door.
"Mommy! Please! There's smoke!"
She heard footsteps in the hallway. Her heart leaped—a frantic, desperate rhythm. Her mother, Sarah, was just feet away. Caitlyn could see the silhouette of her mother’s feet through the gap under the door, perfectly still, perfectly calm. Then, the silhouette turned.
Her mother walked away.
The silence that followed was louder than the flames beginning to lick the edges of her toy chest. Caitlyn didn't cry anymore; she didn't have the breath. She scrambled backward, her hands scraping against the floorboards until they hit the wooden frame of her bed.
She remembered.
Months ago, she had found the old leather boot in the attic while playing hide-and-seek. It was heavy, out of place among the pristine storage boxes. She had hidden it beneath her bed, an instinctive act of hoarding something that felt "real" in a house filled with staged perfection.
Her fingers trembled as she jammed her hand into the darkness under the bed. Her skin brushed against cold, cracked leather. She pulled the boot out, its heel dragging against the wood. With her last bit of strength, she peeled back the worn-out insole.
There, tucked into the hollow of the heel, was a small, digital voice recorder—a relic from years before she was even born—and a folded piece of yellowed stationery.
She didn't have time to read it. She didn't have time to listen. The door groaned. The heat on the other side of the wood was no longer just the fire; it was a violent, human force.
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CRASH.
The wood splintered. The lock, weakened by the heat and the impact, snapped like a dry twig. A shadow filled the doorway—not her mother’s, but someone else’s. Someone with heavy, smoke-stained boots and a face obscured by a mask.
