Mumin surfaced from sleep into that uncertain space between dreaming and waking. The room lay drowned in darkness. Through a gap in the curtain, a streetlamp cast a thin, pale stripe of light across the wall. It was the only thing he could see clearly. Everything else had dissolved into shadow.
Then his gaze caught on a corner of the wall.
A dot. Red.
For a moment, he thought it was only a reflection—perhaps a car's headlights slipping across the plaster outside. But their apartment was on the third floor, and the night beyond the window was utterly still. There was no engine, no passing traffic, not even the distant hush of a vehicle moving along the road.
The red dot moved.
Mumin's breath caught in his throat. The point of light began to widen, slowly and deliberately, as if something on the other side of the wall were opening an eye. Before he could make sense of what he was seeing, a flower of fire began to bloom across the plaster. One petal unfurled, then another. The flames spread outward, quietly, with a terrible patience.
The room seemed to grow hotter all at once. Gooseflesh prickled across Mumin's arms, even as beads of sweat gathered on his forehead and slid toward his temples. Heat radiated from the wall, thickening the air until every breath felt heavy and insufficient. He lay rigid beneath the bedsheet, his muscles locked, unable to make his body obey him.
A shadow stood within the fire.
It had the shape of a person: a head, shoulders, the suggestion of a torso. Yet the flames burned only inside its outline, as though the figure itself were a hollow cut from the darkness. Fire curled and danced through that empty shape, bright enough to stain the wall with red, but it made no sound. No crackle. No roar. Nothing.
The only noise in the room was the frantic pounding of Mumin's heart.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Two eyes burned in the shadow's head. Through the gaps in the flames, they fixed on him and did not move. They only stared. Mumin tried to look away, but his gaze seemed caught in place. Something tightened inside his chest, rising slowly, painfully, toward a sob he could not release.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
There was no answer. The fire simply grew. The wall began to sag and melt; flakes of plaster peeled away, exposing the bricks beneath. The bricks were burning too. A crack split the ceiling, followed by another, and then fire poured through the opening like a waterfall turned upside down. Beneath Mumin, the floor seemed to soften, sinking under a weight he could neither see nor explain.
Survive.
The thought struck him like a blow and jolted his body into motion. He threw himself out of bed and landed hard on the floor. Heat surged through the soles of his bare feet. There was no time to search for slippers. He staggered once, caught his balance, and sprinted for the door.
Behind him, the fire had spread across the entire wall. Its tongues reached outward, stretching farther with every breath, hungry and intent. Mumin did not turn around. Somehow, he knew that looking back was how the fire caught you. Those who looked back were the ones it claimed.
His breath began to fail. A sharp pain drove into his chest. His lips felt cracked and dry, and his legs trembled beneath him. He seized the doorknob. It was hot—far too hot—but he held on, twisted it, and yanked the door open. Then he stumbled out onto the balcony.
The stairs. He had to reach the stairs and get down.
But at the stairwell, he stopped short. Fire was rising from below as well. It climbed the walls and crept along the railings, slow but certain, as if it had all the time in the world. Mumin glanced over his shoulder. The fire had already escaped his room; it was spreading across the balcony now, closing the space behind him.
Fire everywhere. Only fire.
He ran to the far end of the balcony. There was a window beyond it, and jumping from that height was the only other way out. He looked down, trying to judge the distance, but the ground seemed impossibly far away. Would he survive the fall? The thought barely formed before another came: the fire would reduce him to ash before he ever reached the ground.
Then he saw a room to his left. Its door stood open. There was nothing visible inside—only a darkness deeper than the shadows around it. Behind him was fire. Ahead of him was darkness.
He chose the darkness.
The room appeared to be a storage space, long forgotten and left to gather dust. A broken almirah leaned against one wall. An old iron bed, mottled with rust, stood awkwardly in the middle. Dust lay thick across the floor, softening the edges of footprints that might have been there—or might only have been stains.
Mumin kept running.
Behind him, the fire reached the doorway. Then it entered. At last, the silent flames found their voice: a low, hungry roar that filled the room. Whoosh. Hiss. Crackle.
"Is anyone there?" Mumin screamed.
No one answered.
He shoved past the iron bed and pushed the almirah aside, its legs scraping over the dusty floor. The fire was close enough now for its heat to sear his back. A sharp, sickening smell rose around him. His hair—he could smell his own hair burning.
Then—
His foot slipped.
A hole gaped in the floor beneath him. Had it always been there, hidden under the dust? Had it appeared only now? There was no time to know. The floor vanished under his feet, and he was falling. His arms and legs thrashed wildly, reaching for anything—a wall, a ledge, a piece of furniture. His hands closed on nothing. There was nothing to catch him. Only the fall.
Below him waited darkness. Not the ordinary darkness of an unlit room, but something vast and depthless, stretching down and down without end.
As he fell, time seemed to stop. He could no longer tell whether he was dropping or rising. Up and down lost their meaning; the world had become motion without direction. He squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them again, he realized he had caught himself. No—he was not falling anymore. He was jumping.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
His body jolted.
His eyes snapped open.
The room was dark. The ceiling fan spun overhead, its familiar blades circling through the air. His pillow was soaked with sweat, and his heart still hammered against his ribs as though it were trying to escape. He turned his head slowly, searching the walls and corners. No fire. The wall was cold. Pale morning light seeped through the window, quietly reclaiming the room from the night.
From somewhere in the distance, the Fajr adhan drifted through the stillness.
"Allahu Akbar... Allahu Akbar..."
Mumin sank back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. Relief washed over him, loosening the fear that had locked his body in place. It had only been a dream.
But why did his hand still feel warm?
He slowly opened his palm. It was empty. There was nothing there.
And yet, he was afraid.
Because the fire had not caught him today. But Mumin knew, with a certainty he could not explain, that the fire had not been chasing him. He had only been running. Fire never runs. Fire only burns. It waits.
And tomorrow night, it would burn again.
Mumin knew
this was not the end.
This was only the beginning.