Blaze

When the last suppression towers failed, District Blaze did not burn clean. The fire learned the shape of lungs, crawled through ventilation shafts, and came back wearing the dead like blackened armor. In the furnace cathedral at the center of the district, one figure still moves through curtains of cinder with a skull-mask welded to its face and a heart glowing like an open kiln. Every siren that once warned the city now feeds it, turning smoke into command and command into slaughter. The streets are packed with kneeling silhouettes fused to the asphalt, still warm beneath the ash. Whatever survived the first ignition prays for rain, but the sky above the ruins only breathes embers.