Light flickered to life revealing nothing obviously wrong within the room itself but those terrifying noises continued relentlessly overhead - rattling sounds moving back and forth across her roof tiles accompanied by occasional crashes loud enough to make paintings shake on walls.
Mrs. Soma wrapped herself tighter in blankets despite sweat prickling her skin beneath nightclothes. "Is someone trying to break into my house?"
"They hit with a violent drumming, making the ceiling joists vibrate and the light fixtures tremble".
From her small living room area , she heard a terrible sound.
"Jagged rocks rained down, skipping and tearing through the shingles, sending splinters of wood and asphalt flying". She ran to the living room. She froze in horror at what befell her eyes.
Time seemed to stutter as the stone collided with the glass. The tranquility of the shrine was broken by an intrusive, violent blow. For a second, the lamp hung in the air, a miniature sun suspended before it plunged downward. It shattered, and the fire did not just fall—it ignited.
A slick of fire spread across the timber floorboards, feeding on the dried oils of the sacred space, crawling up the wall to kiss the faces of the girls in their frames before roaring into a full, dancing inferno and turning the sanctuary of silence into a shrine of sudden, crackling light.
Mrs. Soma stood paralyzed in the doorway, watching as flames devoured years of cherished memories. The portraits of Akemi and Sora burned vividly against the wooden walls, their painted smiles twisting into grotesque masks of fire.
"No! Not my girls!" she screamed uselessly, reaching toward the blaze as if she could physically rescue them from destruction. She heard a shrieking laugh in the room but didn't see anyone, "You monster!" She scanned around, hoping to see the face of the one responsible for the fire.
Outside, neighbors began emerging from their homes drawn by smoke curling into the night sky. Shouts of alarm echoed through the narrow streets while distant bells tolled emergency signals across the area.
Inside Mrs. Soma's burning home however there was only chaos - flames licked greedily at the shrine , while smoke billowed thicker with each passing second threatening to choke anyone remaining inside.
After the fire had consumed the shrine , it suddenly subsided, turning into a fiery supernatural orange. The fire collapses into a smoldering bed of glowing embers. These cinders pulse like a heartbeat, waning with every breath of wind until they turn into grey, lifeless ash.
The inferno died as quickly as it had begun, leaving behind a surreal landscape of glowing embers that pulsed rhythmically across the charred floorboards.
Gray ash swirled in the air like ghostly snowflakes settling over what remained of Mrs. Soma's world. The sound of rocks had stopped and she could no longer hear the laughter
She sank to her knees amidst the smoldering wreckage, hands hovering over the ashes where there portraits once hung. The heat radiated upward from the cooling cinders, carrying with it the faint scent of burnt wood and something else - something acrid and unnatural.
Mrs. Soma whispered into the silence, her voice raw from smoke and emotion. Being a superstitious woman, she has a feeling that this was a bad omen , the gods punishing her for sins she knew not of "What terrible thing did they do that the gods wants to erase their memory?"
Footsteps approached from outside as neighbors gathered cautiously at her doorway. "Mrs. Soma! Are you alright in there?" a concerned neighbor called as they came to help her up .
They nod their head in worry and pity as they behold the sight before them, surprised that only the shrine was destroyed and nothing else.