Blood, light, and heat.
That's all I remember.
I couldn't see anything, no matter how hard I tried.
At that moment, I didn't hear the explosion… I felt it.
I didn't know my hands were torn apart, that the heat was burning my skin.
I didn't know I was screaming.
The second stretched on like an endless thread.
I saw her at last. I glimpsed her at last.
I saw her beautiful face at last.
My little sister, my sweet, precious one.
I looked all around, searching for Michael.
He stood there, motionless, without a scream, unable to believe it.
Just a moment ago, she was waving to him with a small smile, and then everything was fire, smoke, and a heavy silence.
He didn't run to her, he didn't call out her name. He just kept looking around, as if the world had gone wrong, as if someone would have to rewind the footage to fix it.
His heart didn't break all at once, but shattered slowly with every spark that fell to the ground.
He felt his body empty, his soul trapped there, between the flames and the twisting iron.
He didn't cry… because crying requires certainty, and until that moment, he had been waiting for her to emerge from the smoke, laugh, and say it was all just a misunderstanding.
Sound began to return to the world gradually: distant screams, sirens, running feet, and hearts unsure of what to do.
But he was still in that first second, stuck between "before" and "after." He felt the ground tilt beneath him, not because he had lost his balance, but because he had lost the meaning that had anchored him to it.
He took a step forward, then another, as if his feet didn't belong to him. He called her name inside, in a voice that wouldn't come out.
Everything around him was moving at a frantic pace, except his heart… it was slow, refusing to understand.
When he tried to scream, his voice came out broken, alien to him.
It wasn't just a scream of pain, but a scream of denial, the scream of someone trying to force time back.
He reached out toward the void, toward the spot where it had been a moment before, as if he could grasp it before the light swallowed it up. But his hand returned empty… cold.
From that moment, I knew a lot of blood would be spilled and that life would soon end.
Michael was done living.
As for me, I had nothing, and now I'd lost something precious, so the end was inevitable.
Damn it, why?
That baby girl.
Just when I took her out of the car,
I was just waiting for anyone,
any angel, any God, anything to take from my life and give to her.
You might think I'm exaggerating, but damn it, those were two of the best years.
Michael gave me a sister I never thought I'd have.
I stood holding her and told Michael we were going.
He stood and walked beside me, and all of Michael's followers came and secured the area and walked behind us.
I don't know how, I don't know by what power, I don't know how I found the place.
But we entered the hospital. They wanted to take her from us, but we refused.
I gave her to Michael and brought in a doctor to pronounce her dead.
Only at that moment did Michael break down.
He didn't cry, he didn't. Anything but looking at her in his arms.
But I knew destruction was coming.