The Fire They Cheered For

They stood on rooftops and highways, on hillsides and balconies, their faces bathed in the warm, pulsing glow of the city on fire.

It was a spectacle — flames dancing against the night like some holy ritual. Black smoke billowed upward, stretching toward the stars, blotting them out one by one. Skyscrapers cracked and fell like titans in slow motion. Storefronts exploded in showers of glass and light. Sirens wailed for the last time before fading into silence. What was once the crown jewel of a nation was now a funeral pyre.

And still, they cheered.

Some raised fists in triumph. Others wept openly, overcome by the weight of their supposed liberation. They had been told for years that this was necessary — that civilization itself was the cage, and fire would set them free. They believed it.

No one thought to ask what came next.

They had shouted down reason. Silenced the dissenters. Burned the books. Dismantled the systems. All in the name of progress, equity, and justice. But justice had turned blind not to prejudice — but to consequence. And now, standing before a horizon of flame, they mistook destruction for deliverance.

Some knelt, tears streaking their soot-covered faces, mouthing words like rebirth and revolution.

But there was no plan for after.

The supply chains were gone. The power grid failed days ago. The food would rot. The water was already tainted. Emergency services had fled or been dismantled. The old laws had been defunded, and the new ones had yet to be written — if they ever would be.

They had no leaders, only influencers. No builders, only ideologues.

And yet they stood transfixed, hypnotized by their own undoing. Children clutched the hands of parents who had just unknowingly sentenced them to starvation. College students took selfies with the inferno behind them, never imagining their phones would soon be useless relics. The air was thick with ash and delusion.

It felt like victory.

But it was the last illusion.

Tomorrow would bring hunger. Chaos. Violence. Betrayal. Neighbors would become enemies. Families would fracture. The smoke would clear, and the ruins beneath would not be fertile ground for some utopia — only the cracked skeleton of a world they had burned and could never rebuild.

They would look back one day, if they survived, and wonder how they didn’t see it.

How they stood there, watching their freedoms smolder, cheering like fools at the death of their own future.

But for now, they just stared.

And the fires raged on.