Burning Questions: Go down the far stairs

Author: AdventuresAndSearches

This is "slapdashmonuments" creating a new Ficlatte account for the purpose of trying to write some Choose Your Own Adventure stories using Ficlatte's sequeling features. I'll tag work-in-progress parts WIP until the whole story is ready to play.

The first full story, "Burning Questions," is available now:

https://ficlatte.com/stories/41125

You can feel the heat rising up the stairwell as you go down to the landing. With trepidation, you turn to face the first floor's back hallway, and it is quite a sight. The floor itself seems to be on fire! What's more, it seems to be following a pattern, as if someone had written on it with a pen of fire. The line of fire goes from the far end of this hallway—near the far stairs—over to the bottom of the stairs where you're standing, and down the hall to your right, where it seems to be more widespread; as you know, the whole stairway down there is on fire.

The back entrance is here, but a bright line of fire stands between you and the doors, which do not appear to be locked, but then again, there is never a chain closing that door. It's hard to tell if you will be able to open it, and it might not be worth your while. Perhaps you'd be better off heading back upstairs.