ASHES OF THE ORDINARY

CHAPTER ONE:THE SPILL

Third party pov.

It started with coffee. Always coffee.

Why not tea or water or something...

She stood in her cramped apartment kitchen, staring at the stain spreading across her white shirt. The mug had slipped from her hand, shattering against the tiles, and now the bitter smell clung to her like a warning.Great, she muttered to herself as she tried to salvage the rest of her shirt but it was no use. All the hopes were on her white shirt, which she always considered her "lucky shirt." for important occasions. She scrambled out of the shirt as she changed into a light pink shirt which definitely did not scream exactly like job interview type as she straightened her amber hair which mimicked the colour of fire. After all, being late for an interview is not exactly the first impression she had hoped to achieve on her first day. She hurriedly ran to the bus stop hoping to find a cab which would be fast enough to get her to her destination, but it seemed she was not as lucky as she thought.

Outside, the city hummed with its usual chaos, cars honking, vendors shouting, the restless rhythm of the city buzzing in the air. But beneath it all was something else. A silence threaded through the noise, like a pause before a scream. The air brewed trouble, but the atmosphere seemed normal for a normal day in the city. She stepped out, pulling her jacket tight. The sky was wrong. Clouds hung low, swollen and bruised, and the air carried a faint metallic tang. Weird, she muttered as she waited for a ride to her destination.

At the bus stop, a man with grey hair indicating his long experience of life brushed past her, muttering to himself: “It begins.”

She froze, looking at the man muttering. “What did you say?”

But he was long gone, swallowed by the crowd like he had just vanished in the air. Not long after, a cab arrived which took her to her point of destination as she rehearsed what she was going to say at her interview, which was supposed to begin at 8:00 in the morning.

Her phone buzzed. Notifications stacked one after another: weather alerts, power outages, strange warnings. Each ended with the same phrase—This is only rehearsal.

Ammie’s chest tightened as her heart began to become restless. She wanted to laugh it off, call it paranoia, but the shadows stretching across the road pavement seemed to move with intent with the cab. She alighted at her destination, not knowing that everything she saw would only be the beginning of what was to come as she hurriedly entered the building where her interview is to commence.

By noon, the city was restless. Traffic lights flickered between red and green without order. The air smelled faintly of smoke.

She ducked into a café which was scarcely populated, hoping for normalcy after a hectic battle with her interviewers and also to cool her head after a strange series of events that happened in the morning. The barista smiled too wider than normal as he welcomed her to the café.

“ Coffee or Tea?” he asked.

She hesitated, glancing around at the nearly deserted café. “Do you smell that? Like…burning?”

The barista’s grin faltered. “You shouldn’t ask, it's not time yet.” He hurriedly ran to the kitchen to prepare my order which i had barely placed. Everybody is behaving strangely today, she whispered to herself as she still glanced to the strange messages she received on her phone in the morning, wondering what it could mean.

As she left the café, the outside skies began to change. Clouds hung low ,bruised purple and the air still smelled faintly of smoke as she had smelled at the café. Traffic lights flickered between red and green without order as the city became restless. Shadows stretched unnaturally across the pavement, bending towards her feet.

And then, at three o’clock, the sky tore open like literally.

Crimson fire spilled across the horizon, ash falling like snowflakes. Screams erupted as people scattered many running towards any shelter they could find to shield themselves, but Ammie stood frozen, her amber hair flying on her face violently, watching the flames spiral in patterns—repeating, rehearsing like an apocalypse that had finally exploded after decades of brewing in the horizon.

“This isn’t the end,” she whispered. “It’s practice. It's the beginning of what is yet to come...”