The blade slid into her chest so smoothly that for a moment, Freya thought it was a mistake.
A stumble.
An accident.
Then she felt the warmth.
Blood bloomed beneath her palm as she looked down at the hilt buried just left of her sternum. The steel trembled slightly—along with the hand holding it.
Her best friend's hand.
"…Why?" Freya's voice was quiet, more confused than angry.
Across from her, Liana's face twisted—not with regret, but with something uglier. Something festering.
Jealousy.
"You had everything," Liana hissed. "The powers. The attention. The way they all looked at you like you were some kind of savior." Her grip tightened. "And that space. That pocket dimension. Do you know what people would give for that?"
Freya did know.
Fourteen years into the apocalypse, her portable space dimension was more valuable than gold had ever been. Food didn't rot inside it. Weapons stayed sharp. Medicine stayed potent. It was a moving fortress, an invisible vault bound to her will.
Bound to her soul.
"You thought…" Freya coughed, blood spilling from her lips, "…you'd get it if I died?"
Liana's silence was answer enough.
What she didn't know—what no one knew—was that the space wasn't something that could be stolen. It wasn't a bag to be looted.
It was her.
The bond had formed the day her powers awakened. Elemental manipulation. Accelerated healing so potent she could regrow a severed limb. And the endless void-space that answered only to her thoughts.
But even gods had weaknesses.
Freya could regenerate torn flesh, shattered bones, punctured lungs.
She could not regenerate her heart.
And she could not regrow her brain.
She hadn't guarded against Liana.
Why would she?
They had survived five years together.
Freya had been fifteen the day she found Liana.
Liana had been seventeen.
It was the fifth year of the apocalypse. Freya still remembered it clearly—Liana strung up like livestock in a crumbling supermarket parking lot, surrounded by a group of cannibalistic survivors who had already lit a fire. Her eyes had been hollow with terror, wrists raw from struggling against the rope.
Freya had descended like a storm that day.
Wind slicing through the air. Fire roaring. The ground splitting open beneath her enemies as jagged spikes of earth impaled without mercy.
When the screams ended, Freya had cut Liana down herself.
After that, they had been inseparable.
Almost ten years of shared shelters. Shared meals. Shared silent watches through long, dangerous nights. Liana was the only person Freya allowed close. The only one who saw her without the mask of indifference she wore for the rest of the world.
The only one she trusted enough to lower her guard.
The blade twisted.
White-hot agony exploded through her chest.
This time, Liana didn't hesitate.
The knife jerked upward.
Freya felt the rupture—felt her heartbeat stutter, falter, collapse into nothing.
Her legs gave out. The world tilted sideways.
Strangely, she wasn't angry.
Just tired.
So tired.
As darkness crept into the edges of her vision, she reached inward on instinct—toward the vast, familiar expanse of her pocket dimension.
It was still there.
Steady.
Waiting.
Liana's triumphant laughter rang faintly in her ears.
Freya almost pitied her.
You can't steal a soul-bound space.
Her last breath left her in a soft exhale.
And everything went black.
Birdsong.
Not the broken, desperate cries of mutated scavengers.
Not the distant groans of the undead.
Real birdsong.
Freya's eyes snapped open.
She did not gasp. Did not bolt upright.
She lay still.
Alive.
The first thing she noticed was the scent—clean earth, crushed leaves, something sweet and floral layered beneath it. No rot. No smoke. No blood.
The second thing she noticed was the sky.
Through a canopy of enormous leaves, she saw clouds drifting overhead.
They were fluffy.
And unmistakably purple.
Freya blinked once.
Then slowly, she sat up.
The forest around her was unlike anything she had seen—even before the apocalypse. The trees towered hundreds of feet into the air, their trunks so wide that twenty people linking hands couldn't encircle one. Their bark shimmered faintly, streaked with veins of silver light that pulsed like slow heartbeats.
Vines as thick as her arm spiraled upward, flowering with bioluminescent blossoms that glowed pale blue despite the daylight.
The plants carpeting the forest floor were stranger still—broad leaves shaped like spirals, ferns edged with crystalline growths, mushrooms the size of stools emitting soft golden mist.
A shadow passed overhead.
Freya's gaze lifted.
Something enormous crossed the sky.
Wings.
Massive, leathery wings.
The creature's silhouette resembled something pulled from a prehistoric textbook—long tail, horned head, talons extended.
Extinct.
Very extinct.
Her expression didn't change.
Instead, she listened.
The forest wasn't quiet.
It was… aware.
Leaves rustled without wind. Branches creaked as though adjusting their weight deliberately. Somewhere in the distance, something roared—deep and resonant enough to vibrate faintly in her ribcage.
Then a sharp buzzing cut through the air.
Freya turned her head slowly.
A bee hovered near a cluster of glowing flowers.
It was at least sixty times larger than a normal bee—its abdomen the size of a grapefruit, wings beating with a low mechanical hum. Its compound eyes gleamed iridescent green as it dipped lazily between blossoms.
Freya catalogued it.
Size: dangerous.
Stinger: likely lethal.
Speed: moderate.
Behavior: non-aggressive… for now.
She rose smoothly to her feet.
No dizziness. No weakness.
Her heart beat steady in her chest.
She placed a hand over it briefly.
No wound.
No scar.
She reached inward again.
The vast darkness of her pocket dimension responded instantly—
And froze.
It felt… different.
Larger.
Deeper.
The familiar endless void now pulsed with a faint current of energy she had never sensed before. The boundaries, once invisible but stable, seemed to stretch far beyond what they had been. There was a density to it now. A weight. As if something inside had changed.
Upgraded.
Evolved.
But the forest around her pressed in with silent tension, and another distant roar rolled through the trees.
This was not the place to explore internal mysteries.
Information later.
Safety first.
Freya withdrew her consciousness from the space dimension, forcing down the instinctive urge to investigate every change immediately.
She didn't know where she was.
But she knew what she wasn't hearing.
No distant gunfire.
No infected.
No human voices.
Only wilderness.
Her unease coiled low in her stomach—not panic, not fear. Instinct.
This forest was dangerous.
Not chaotic like the apocalypse.
Balanced.
Predatory.
She could feel it in the way the air pressed faintly against her skin, in the way the undergrowth seemed just slightly too still when she focused on it.
Something here was watching.
Freya didn't reach for a weapon.
Didn't ignite flames in her palm.
Instead, she closed her eyes briefly and extended her senses outward, brushing against the elements around her. The air was dense. The soil rich and powerful beneath her boots. Moisture heavy in the atmosphere.
Alive.
Very alive.
When she opened her eyes again, they were calm.
Analytical.
Where am I?
The apocalypse had trained one lesson into her bones:
Panic gets you killed.
Observation keeps you alive.
A branch snapped somewhere behind her.
Freya turned slowly toward the sound, posture relaxed but ready, mind already mapping escape routes, defensive angles, elemental leverage points.
Whatever world she had woken up in—
It wasn't Earth.
And it definitely wasn't safe.
Good.
She'd always thrived in dangerous places.