Inside those apartments, life moved in its usual predictable rhythm. Someone was reheating leftovers. A teenager was finishing homework at a kitchen table. An elderly couple argued gently over what program to watch on television. The street itself felt ordinary in the quiet way cities often do when nothing dramatic is expected to happen.
And then, without warning, the ordinary cracked.
The first sign was a thin curl of smoke escaping from a window on the second floor of apartment 2B. At first it looked harmless enough, the kind of thing someone might mistake for burnt food drifting from a kitchen. But within seconds the smoke thickened, turning from gray to black as it spilled outward like something alive.
Behind the walls, ancient electrical wiring sparked violently.
Dry wood beams caught fire.
Flames erupted with frightening speed.
Within less than a minute the small apartment was transforming into something dangerous and uncontrollable.
