The brass doorknob turned with a dry click.

Yet, exactly a hairsbreadth before the door could slide open even a single millimeter, the atmosphere inside the house detonated into a terrifying transformation. All the false warmth, the gentle serenity of his mother’s smile, and the calm charisma of his father dissolved in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a chilling, pure despair.

"WILDAN! NO!"

The roar was no longer human. It was a chorus of raw, fractured screams heavy with a bottomless, agonizing grief. Wildan flinched, his instincts forcing him to whip his head backward.

At that exact second, Wildan’s heart stopped beating.

His three family members no longer stood like human beings. Their once-pale faces now looked stiff and glossy, like porcelain or baked plastic mannequins. Their skin was fractured across a dozen seams, and from beneath those cracks, no blood flowed—only thick, billowing black smoke. Their eyes bulged wide without blinking, radiating a massive, crushing despair, as though they were souls being violently dragged toward the depths of hell.

"Stay here, Le! It's safe here! Don't leave Mom!" his mother screamed. Her fractured mannequin face split apart as she forced her mouth open far too wide.

Before Wildan could process the horror, three massive waves of freezing cold slammed into his body.

His father, mother, and Rian lunged forward simultaneously. They glided through the air without touching the floor, their rigid, ice-cold hands instantly clamping onto Wildan's frame.

His father seized Wildan's right shoulder, his mother wrapped her arms around his waist from the left, while Rian clung desperately to both of Wildan's legs. Their grip felt nothing like human fingers; it felt like iron vises locking down Wildan's blood circulation until his arms went entirely numb.

"Let go! Let me go!" Wildan shrieked hysterically, thrashing with every last ounce of strength he had left.

Yet their strength was monstrous, defying all logic for their size. Wildan’s body was jerked backward with a yank so violent that his heels dragged across the scorching cement floor. Their freezing-cold touch clashed violently with the baking heat of the tiles, sending a burning, bone-aching numbness rippling across Wildan's entire body.

"Big Brother shouldn't leave! Rian is all alone out there! Rian is scared of the ash, Big Brother! Rian is scared of the ash!" Rian tilted his head up; the boy's face was now webbed with black lines branching like dead veins, while his eyes had hollowed out into pitch-black sockets.

"Wildan, listen to Dad! If you go outside, you'll be destroyed! Stay inside this house!" his father roared, his grip on Wildan's shoulder cracking audibly, nearly crushing his collarbone.

"No! You're not my family! Let go!" Wildan wept openly. Frustration, terror, and the crushing tightness in his chest fused into a reckless, desperate strength.

He knew that if he gave in right now and let himself be dragged back into the dark core of this house, he would never wake up again. The woman's voice echoing from the outside world—sounding identical to his mother's—crashed through his consciousness once more: “His heartbeat is fading! Paddle him now, Doc! Wildan, wake up, Son!!!”

"I HAVE TO WAKE UP!"

Wildan growled, pooling every ounce of his body weight, and slammed his free foot down onto the cement floor. With a brutal, twisting pivot, he drove his elbow into his mother's mannequin face with a sharp crack like breaking porcelain. His mother's embrace shattered away.

Seizing the gap, Wildan yanked the doorknob backward with his free left hand, hurling his entire body forward toward the slightly ajar threshold.

BANG!

The crushing pull of his father and Rian suddenly vanished like a snapped rope. Wildan’s body catapulted forward, clearing the doorway of the house.

Yet, there was no cool night breeze. No quiet neighborhood street with dim amber streetlamps.

The moment his body crossed the threshold, Wildan's vision was smashed by a sight that froze him in absolute emptiness.

Before him, as far as the eye could see, was a raging ocean of fire.

The house he had just left wasn't standing in a peaceful residential complex. That house—their second-floor shop lot—was trapped in the dead center of a massive, roaring inferno of red and orange flames licking wildly toward the sky. The wooden support pillars around him groaned loudly, snapping and collapsing while showering sparks through the air.

Thick, billowing black smoke choked Wildan's field of vision. The searing heat that he had previously felt only on the cement floor now slammed into his face and body like the blow of a glowing iron hammer. The wail of fire trucks shrieked close by, deafeningly loud, mingling with the hysterical screams of hundreds of people nearly swallowed by the roar of the flames.

Wildan whipped his head backward on reflex, desperate to look at the house he had just escaped.

There was no teak door.

There was no living room.

Behind him lay only charred, blackened structural ruins, completely collapsed into a pile of burning charcoal and ash. And right in the middle of those blazing wreckage, Wildan caught sight of three charred black silhouettes lying side by side, motionless beneath the crushing weight of a burning overhead timber beam.

The illusion had utterly collapsed. The veil had been torn away.

Wildan jolted awake from his spiritual hypnosis. That third day in the slow-turning house hadn't been a vacation or a miracle. It was a waiting room for death, a protective bubble spun from the residual love of his family who had perished on the first night when their home caught fire from an electrical short circuit—a mannequin of affection holding him back so his soul wouldn't have to feel the agony of being burned alive.

"Dad... Mom... Rian..." Wildan dropped to his knees on the blistering earth, his tears evaporating before they could even touch his cheeks, while all around him, the flames swelled higher, caging his consciousness as it slowly faded into the ultimate, final darkness.