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 sky burned first.
Suzy stood barefoot on cracked asphalt as the sun swelled into a red, swollen eye. Heat slammed into her like a physical blow. Pavement blistered. Cars melted into gleaming puddles of metal and glass. People screamed, skin peeling in sheets, and then the rain came—thick, hissing, green-tinged. It ate through umbrellas, through flesh, through bone. She watched a woman's face dissolve before the water even reached the ground.
The temperature plummeted next. One breath the air was fire; the next it was knives. Frost raced across the ruins in jagged white veins. Bodies locked mid-scream, eyes frozen open. Suzy's own lungs seized. Ice climbed her throat.
She tried to run. The ground opened. Black water swallowed city blocks. Something vast moved beneath the surface.
She woke choking on a scream that never left her throat.
Silk sheets. Canopy bed. The soft tick of a crystal clock. Morning light filtered through heavy curtains, gold and ordinary. Suzy sat up too fast. The room spun. Her heart hammered against ribs that felt too narrow, too soft.
This was not her apartment. This was not her body.
She stared at the hands resting on the duvet—pale, slender, nails manicured in soft pink. A gold signet ring sat on the right middle finger, engraved with a curling *K*. Memory that was not hers flooded in like cold water.
Suzy Kale.
First daughter of the Kale family.
Villainess.
The plot unspooled with sickening clarity. In three months the world would end exactly as her dream had shown: heat that cooked cities, acid rain that stripped flesh, deep freezes that entombed the survivors, floods, earthquakes, plagues. Society would collapse into blood and scavenger gangs. And in that novel—*Apocalypse: Rebirth of the Phoenix*—Wendy Kale, the pure-hearted stepsister and secret transmigrator, would rise. Wendy would gather powerful men, claim a miraculous spatial bracelet, and become the queen of the new world.
Suzy's role was simple.
Betray Wendy.
Steal from her.
Die by Wendy's hand, publicly, messily, so the heroine's hands stayed clean while the readers cheered.
Suzy's mouth went dry. She was the cannon fodder. The disposable obstacle. And the original Suzy had already started walking the path that led to that death.
She scrambled for the phone on the nightstand—an expensive, slim device with a cracked protective case. The lock screen opened to her face. Date: May 12.
Three months. Exactly three months until the first disaster struck.
A shaky laugh escaped her. "Of course."
She slid out of bed. The floor was cool marble under bare feet. Her reflection in the full-length mirror showed a beautiful, sharp-faced young woman of twenty-two with long black hair and cold gray eyes—the face of someone designed to be hated. She looked nothing like the soft, ordinary girl who had fallen asleep in her own world the night before.
Jewelry box. The original Suzy kept valuables in the carved rosewood box on the vanity. Suzy opened it with trembling fingers. Earrings, necklaces, a diamond tennis bracelet she vaguely remembered buying to spite Wendy. And at the bottom, half-hidden under a silk pouch, a plain gold bracelet. No stones. No engraving. Just warm, heavy metal that seemed to pulse faintly against her skin when she lifted it.
In the novel, this was Wendy's. Wendy had found it first, bound it with blood, and discovered the vast spatial realm inside—acres of fertile land, a crystal spring, a modern villa stocked with endless supplies. The foundation of her empire.
Suzy's pulse kicked. The original plot said the bracelet was still with Wendy. Yet here it sat in *her* jewelry box.
She didn't hesitate. She found a letter opener, pressed the tip into the pad of her left index finger, and watched a dark bead of blood well up. She smeared it across the gold.
The world tilted.
Cool air replaced the climate-controlled bedroom. Soft earth gave under her bare feet. The scent of pine and damp soil filled her lungs. Suzy stood in a small clearing ringed by young trees—birch, maple, a few fruit trees already heavy with unripe apples and peaches. A narrow stream murmured nearby. And in the center of the clearing sat a modest wooden house, single-story, with a low porch and shutters the color of old honey.
No crystal villa.
No endless fields.
No high-tech storage warehouses.
Just this quiet, living pocket of forest and a simple house that looked like it had been waiting.
Suzy turned slowly, the gold bracelet warm against her wrist. The space felt… aware. Protective. Nothing like the vast, showy domain the novel had described for Wendy.
A soft breeze stirred the leaves. Somewhere a bird called.
This space... was hers.