Important note so that the readers don't get cheated on the experience: This is, first and foremost, an apocalypse novel. This is a story about raw survival. The heroine is strong, ruthless, calculating, and blunt. The only reason why she goes after men is because the system tells her to. She needs to do it in order to become stronger. She does, however, learn to genuinely care for her companions, but it's important to remember that romance is not the key element of this novel.
With that being said, I hope you enjoy this book!
The world had ended in fire and ice, in storms that tore cities apart and silences that buried the living under ash. Heat that blistered skin in seconds. Rain that ate through metal. Waves that swallowed coastlines whole. Cold that cracked bone and stopped hearts mid-beat.
It never stopped.
Disaster after disaster, relentless, until nothing remained but ruin and the things that crawled through it.
"No—"
Suzy jolted upright, breath tearing from her throat in a ragged gasp. Sweat soaked the sheets. Her pulse hammered against her ribs as if it still believed the ground was collapsing beneath her. For a moment the ceiling swam, and she could still feel teeth closing on her limbs, the wet sound of her own body coming apart in the dark.
Then the familiar lines of her bedroom settled into place—pale walls, the soft glow of the night-light she had never bothered to replace, the faint hum of the air conditioner fighting a battle it was already losing.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until the afterimages faded. Another dream. The same one that had been stalking her for weeks.
Not a dream. A memory of a story she had never lived.
In that story she had been disposable. A secondary character written only to be used and discarded. Her half-sister, Wendy, had been the true heroine—a soul from another world who woke inside Wendy's body with full knowledge of the coming collapse. While the planet burned and drowned and froze, Wendy gathered power, admirers, and every resource that mattered. Suzy's role had been simpler: hand over the family heirloom, the gold bracelet that held an endless pocket dimension, then pour money and supplies into Wendy's hands until there was nothing left.
She had done it willingly in the story. Obsessed. Humiliated. Jealous. In the end she had tried to sabotage her sister and been left behind in the wasteland for her trouble. The things that found her afterward had not been quick.
Suzy's stomach turned. She could still taste the copper of that death.
She reached for the phone on the nightstand. The screen lit the dark with a date that made her blood run cold.
15 November 2045.
A government alert scrolled across the top in stark red letters:
**Extreme temperature anomalies confirmed nationwide. Prolonged heat advisory in effect. Preparations advised.**
Outside the window the night air shimmered at nearly thirty degrees. The air conditioner labored without pause. November should have been cooling. It was not.
Three months. Exactly three months before the first true catastrophe in the story she remembered.
Wendy had already been replaced by then. The new soul inside her sister's body had known every twist, every opportunity, every weakness. Including the bracelet.
Suzy threw off the covers. Bare feet silent on the floor, she crossed to the walk-in closet and opened the old jewelry case that had belonged to their grandmother. The bracelet lay on top, dull gold worn smooth by generations of hands. In the story it had answered to a single drop of blood and revealed a boundless storage realm.
She found a pair of nail scissors, drew the blade across the pad of her thumb, and pressed the welling blood to the metal.
Nothing.
No light. No shift. No answering pulse.
She stared at the unresponsive gold until the cut began to sting. Perhaps the space recognized only Wendy's bloodline, or only the transmigrator's will. The thought left a sour taste. A treasure she could never use, waiting to be claimed by the same person who would take everything else.
A low, bitter laugh escaped her. If she could not keep it, she would not leave it for someone else.
The moment the decision settled, white light flared behind her eyes. The closet, the apartment, the heat—everything folded inward. Vertigo slammed through her. For several heartbeats she felt as if she were falling through her own skull.
When the world steadied again, she stood inside a modest wooden cabin.
Rough-hewn walls. A narrow bed. A simple table. A tiny kitchen corner with a cold stove. A door that opened onto a bathroom no larger than a closet, and another that led to a storage room scarcely bigger than the first. The air smelled of dry timber and dust. No vast fields. No endless warehouses. Just this compact, complete little shelter, as if someone had built a single safe room and forgotten the rest of the world.
Suzy turned slowly in place, heart still racing, the bracelet cool against her palm.
This was not the space from the story.
This one was hers.