By morning, the fire’s violence had given way to a strange, aching stillness. Streets were lined with the skeletons of once-breathing buildings, their windows blown out like stunned eyes. Cafés that held first kisses, apartments that held last arguments, and corner stores that knew everyone’s name were now nothing but char and twisted metal. The city’s layout remained, but its soul felt scattered, as if each address had been forced to remember what it could lose.

Yet in that ash-dusted light, something stubborn refused to burn. Extension cords snaked under doors, turning hallways into veins of borrowed electricity. Strangers knocked with thermoses of coffee and bags of clothes, then stayed to listen instead of rushing away. On sidewalks, clumsy clapping for soot-covered firefighters broke into sobs that no one tried to hide. In that shared, trembling honesty, the city realized survival wasn’t about rebuilding what was gone, but about choosing, again and again, to be responsible for one another’s hurt—and hope.