PROLOGUE

The fire was so intense it was horrifying. Acrid smoke so thick that Nicholas could not see two inches in front of himself covered everything. It watered his sore stinging eyes and filled his lungs. Nicholas coughed. He inhaled deeply, his body seeking fresh air but instead his nose was filled with the same choking fume and he almost convulsed. "Anna! Anna!" He screamed his sister's name out loud. The building shook terribly and some ceiling boards showered down to the floor burning with sulphur yellow fire. Nicholas crawled towards the door. It seemed the smoke filling the entire room was coming from underneath it. He could feel the biting heat around him intensify. A roar as of a thousand thunders sounded from the other side of the door indicating something had just exploded, and the door was engulfed in flames. He screamed. Nicholas crawled away from the snarling flames and curled himself into a ball at a corner of the room.

Fear. Untainted fear. The kind of fear that automatically paralyzes the limbs and shuts off the brain. That was what he felt as he sat down there. When he'd followed Anna to church that day, the priest had preached on hell fire. A place of terrible torment where the fire torturing all sinful souls was never quenched. Could that be where he had just ended all of a sudden? He wondered. But hell was a place meant for the devil and his angels. And he'd been extra good throughout this week! He argued in his little mind.

He could no longer breathe now, and his throat burned from calling out for his sister for so long. Just as he felt he was falling asleep, he prayed to Jesus to send an angel to deliver him from the terrible fire. Just then, he faintly heard the door being broken, and strong solid fingers laced into his. "Anna!" He croaked out trying to see the angel's face past the smoke blinding his vision. She lifted him up into her arms, her familiar voice soothing him. His sister. Bursting through the door she'd broken open, she tore down the stairs in a bid to reach the fire exit at the ground floor below. They'd barely passed the third flight of stairs when a large pillar in the building crumbled apart, raining large hailstones of burning bricks from above.

Anna screamed. Throwing herself to a corner, she shielded him from danger with her body. The next time he raised his head and looked at her, a trail of blood was seeping from her head, down her face. Nicholas looked at the angry red-orange flames consuming the inner recesses of their neighbor's flat from his wide open door. The entire structure began to quake terribly now. Holding him tighter, his sister made to continue down the stairs, but almost immediately the rest of the stairs leading to the fire exit crumbled apart and into the fire pit at the bottom.

"Help! Someone please help!" She screamed. The tiny window beside them burst open as an elbow was thrown into it. The fresh air seeping in from the small space was overwhelming. Nicholas started crying again as he was squeezed through the small opening to the outside world. "Anna! Anna!" He yelled grasping her partly burnt hands tighter as a pair of waiting ones received him into the outside world. Then the rest of the stairs gave way and his sister was swallowed up by the fiery furnace inside. Nicholas screamed in terror.