Millie Poole trudged home from her second-shift cashier job, the soles of her discount sneakers slapping against wet pavement. The fluorescent lights of the 24-hour diner across the street buzzed faintly in the misty air. She paused for a moment, staring at the sign—a plate of pancakes frozen mid-flip—and imagined herself walking in, sitting at the counter, and ordering a coffee she couldn’t afford. But instead, she turned toward her apartment building, where every bulb in the hallway flickered like a dying firefly.

Inside her tiny studio, Millie kicked off her shoes and sank onto the couch that doubled as her bed. Another day down. Another paycheck already spent. She had once dreamed of doing more, of being more, but life had ground those ambitions into dust years ago.

The heat started that night.

At first, it was subtle—a faint warmth blooming in her chest, like the embers of a campfire stirring under ashes. She pressed her hand to her sternum, expecting to find some physical sign, but her skin was cool to the touch. It wasn’t pain, exactly, but it was persistent, radiating outward in rhythmic pulses.

By the third day, it became impossible to ignore.

“Stress,” the urgent care doctor said, barely looking up from her clipboard. “Take some time off work. Maybe try yoga.”

Millie almost laughed. Time off meant unpaid bills, and yoga was for people who didn’t count every dollar at the grocery store. She left the clinic with a pamphlet about mindfulness and a gnawing sense that something deeper was wrong.

---

Weeks passed, and the heat grew unbearable. Her skin flushed red at odd moments, her breath carried the faint smell of smoke, and her clothes clung to her like they’d been left too close to a radiator. Millie called off work more often, claiming flu symptoms to avoid questions. She stayed inside, curtains drawn, watching the lines of sunlight stretch and shrink across her floor.

Her neighbor, Carmen, knocked one evening.

“Millie, I smelled burning. You okay in there?”

“Fine,” Millie called back, her voice hoarse. “Just burned toast.”

But there was no toast. Only her.

One sleepless night, she searched online for anything that might explain her condition. Among the usual hypochondriac fodder and conspiracy theories, she found something that chilled her to the bone.

“The Ember Phenomenon,” the blog post was titled. Written by a self-proclaimed “afterlife specialist,” it described cases eerily similar to hers: people experiencing unexplainable heat, smoke-scented breath, and eventual combustion. The author claimed it was a sign of impending death—not as a victim, but as a catalyst. A living spark meant to ignite something greater.

Millie slammed her laptop shut. It was ridiculous, like something out of a horror movie.

Yet when she lifted her hand to her chest, she felt the ember pulse beneath her palm, hotter than ever.

---

She wasn’t alone.

The afterlife specialist had left a contact email, and in desperation, Millie reached out. A week later, she met Dr. Albright in a coffee shop. He was a wiry man with sunken eyes, a constant tremor in his hands, and a briefcase that looked older than she was.

“I’ve only seen this a handful of times,” Albright said, sliding a folder across the table. “But every case ended the same way.”

Millie flipped through the photographs—charred remains, blackened silhouettes where people had stood moments before. Her stomach churned.

“Why me?” she whispered.

Albright leaned forward, his expression grim. “You’ve been chosen. The ember is… a tool. A weapon. But whether you use it—or let it consume you—is up to you.”

The words clung to her like smoke.

---

In the weeks that followed, Millie began noticing things she hadn’t before. The way Carmen shielded her kids from their father’s temper. The old man on the corner who begged for spare change, his eyes sunken with hunger. The teenage girl in the apartment above her who came home every night with fresh bruises she tried to hide.

The ember burned hotter whenever she saw them, as if urging her to act.

One night, she couldn’t ignore it any longer. The screams from upstairs tore through the thin walls, and before she realized what she was doing, Millie was at the door, pounding with her fist.

When the man answered, his face twisted in anger, the ember flared. For the first time, Millie felt its power ripple through her veins, filling her lungs with fire. The man stepped back, his anger replaced with fear as smoke rose from her skin, her eyes glowing like coals.

“Leave,” she said, her voice crackling with heat. “Now.”

He ran.

---

The ember’s demands grew insatiable. Millie became a quiet force in her neighborhood, stepping in where others wouldn’t. But with every act of intervention, the fire inside her consumed more of her. Her reflection in the mirror became gaunt, her hair singed at the tips, her skin ashen.

One night, Albright called.

“It’s time,” he said.

Millie stood on the rooftop of her apartment building, the city sprawling below her like a patchwork quilt. She could feel it now—the ember wasn’t just inside her. It was her. A living flame, destined to burn away the rot of the world.

As the first tendrils of fire licked at her skin, she smiled. For the first time in her life, she felt alive.

---

When the firestorm came, it didn’t just take Millie. It spread, igniting change across the city. Her neighbors spoke of her as a hero, a savior who burned herself to save others.

And somewhere, in the ashes of her old life, the ember smoldered still—waiting for the next soul to carry its flame.