Apocalypse Rebirth: Reclaiming My Infinite Space
I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage.
But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death.
As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket.
Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her.
Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved.
I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies.
They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die.
I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred.
Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me?
Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm.
I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12.
It was exactly three days before the world ended.
When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly.
"Just tell me where to send the money, Mom."
This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.
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Chapter 1
Ellery's eyes snapped open.
She sucked in a violent, ragged breath, her upper body launching off the mattress. Her hands flew to her throat, her fingers digging frantically into the flesh. She expected to feel the jagged, torn edges of her own windpipe. She expected the hot, thick spray of her own blood. She could still feel the phantom teeth of the mutated creature sinking into her cartilage, tearing her life away in the freezing snow.
But her skin was smooth. Intact. Warm.
Her chest heaved. She dragged her trembling hands down her neck, over her collarbones, feeling the steady, rapid thumping of her own heart.
She blinked through the dim light. The peeling wallpaper. The water stain shaped like a skull on the ceiling. The cheap, rattling window unit. This was her crappy studio apartment in downtown Seattle.
She scrambled to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet hit the freezing hardwood floor. Her legs gave out instantly, but she caught herself on the edge of the nightstand, dragging her body toward the tiny bathroom.
She slammed her palms against the edges of the porcelain sink. She stared into the mirror.
The face looking back at her was young. Her cheeks were full. The horrific, purple frostbite scars that had webbed across her jawline in her past life were completely gone.
She grabbed the faucet handle and cranked it to the left. Freezing tap water gushed out. She cupped her hands, splashing the icy water violently against her face. She did it again. And again. The biting cold stung her cheeks, shocking her nervous system.
This wasn't a dying hallucination. The cold was too real.
Her breathing began to slow. The frantic pounding in her ears faded into a dull roar.
She spun around and lunged for the nightstand. She snatched her smartphone off the charging cable. The screen illuminated her pale face.
November 12th.
Exactly three days before the global deep freeze would hit. Three days before the apocalypse.
Her knees finally buckled. She slid down the side of the mattress, hitting the floor hard. A sound ripped from her throat-a choked gasp that twisted into a low, terrifying laugh.
She was back.
The memory of her final moments flashed behind her eyes. The heavy steel door of the underground bunker slamming shut. The smug, disgustingly satisfied faces of the Burch family looking at her through the reinforced glass as they kicked her out into the negative-fifty-degree wasteland. They had drained her bank accounts, used her blood for transfusions, and then threw her to the monsters when she was no longer useful.
Her laugh died. Pure, unadulterated hatred flooded her veins, making her fingertips go numb.
She spent a full minute digging her nails into her palms, forcing the all-consuming, violent urge to kill back down into the depths of her mind. Revenge wasn't a momentary impulse; it was a precise, calculated execution. She took a slow, deep breath, forcing her facial muscles to relax. She unclenched her jaw. She had to play the part.
Suddenly, the phone in her palm vibrated violently. The default ringtone shattered the silence of the apartment.
Ellery stared at the screen.
Sharon Burch - Mom.
A wave of nausea hit Ellery's stomach. Her knuckles turned stark white as she gripped the phone. She wanted to smash it against the wall. She wanted to drive to their house and burn it to the ground.
She pressed the green accept button and brought the phone to her ear.
"Ellery?"
Sharon's voice came through the speaker, accompanied by a pathetic, exaggerated wheeze.
"Mom? What's wrong?" Ellery asked, injecting a sickening amount of panic into her tone.
"It's my gallbladder, sweetie," Sharon groaned, her voice trembling with fake agony. "The stones... they're blocking the duct. The doctor says I need emergency surgery today. But the insurance... they're refusing to cover the out-of-pocket deductible. It's thirty thousand dollars, Ellery. They won't even prep me for the OR without it."
Ellery's stomach churned. The memories overlapped perfectly. In her past life, she had panicked. She had emptied her life savings-every single penny she had scraped together from working sixty-hour weeks-to save the woman who had adopted her.
She knew exactly where that thirty thousand dollars had gone. It bought her sister, Kendal, a limited-edition designer handbag, and her brother, Cody, a down payment on a used sports car.
Ellery swallowed the bile in her throat.
"Oh my god, Mom. That's terrible," Ellery said, her voice dripping with fake concern.
As she spoke, she pulled the phone away from her ear for a fraction of a second. Her thumb swiped down on the screen, tapping the background call-recording app. A tiny red dot appeared at the top of her screen.
"Which hospital are you at?" Ellery demanded, her voice rising in urgency. "I'm calling out of work right now. I'll drive straight there. I can stay with you in the pre-op room."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. Sharon stammered, the fake wheezing momentarily forgotten.
"No! No, honey, you can't," Sharon rushed out. "The... the pre-op area is strictly no-visitors. COVID protocols, you know? They won't let you past the lobby."
Ellery stayed completely silent. She let the dead air stretch. She let the awkwardness and guilt fester on the other end of the line.
"Ellery, please," Sharon's voice shifted, the tone turning sharp, laced with emotional blackmail. "We took you in when you had nothing. We gave you a home when you were just a piece of trash left at the orphanage. I'm in agony here. Are you really going to let me suffer?"
The corner of Ellery's mouth twitched upward into a cold, terrifying smirk.
"Of course not, Mom," Ellery said softly into the microphone. "I'll wire the money right now. Just text me the account details."
"Oh, thank god," Sharon breathed out.
She didn't even say thank you. The line went dead instantly.
Ellery lowered the phone. Her eyes were as cold as the arctic ice that would soon cover the city.
She opened her mobile banking app. The screen loaded, displaying her hard-earned savings. Thirty thousand, two hundred and twelve dollars.
She stared at the numbers. She wasn't going to give them a single dime. Instead, she was going to use this exact lie to drain every last drop of blood from the Burch family before the world ended.
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9.5
Alina was the eldest daughter of the prestigious Padilla family, but everyone mocked her as a defective dud who couldn't cast a single spell.
The moment she woke up, her father and younger sister Karina barged into her room, demanding she sign a transfer agreement to the Aethelgard Order-the most brutal faction on the continent.
It wasn't just a transfer; it was a legal disownment. In her past life, Alina didn't realize Karina was also reborn. She had dropped to her knees and begged to stay. Her reward? Her magic was violently drained from her veins by her own family. Her fiancé drove a blade through her chest, and her sister stood over her bleeding body, smiling. She had ruined her hands making potions for them, only to be discarded like trash.
The phantom pain of her chest being ripped open still burned behind her ribs. Looking at the hypocritical family waiting for her tears, she felt nothing but exhausting disgust. Why should she ever be their stepping stone again?
"For the honor of the family, you leave today."
Her father sneered as she calmly bit her thumb and pressed her bloody fingerprint onto the contract. This time, Alina didn't cry. She packed a single bag and walked out the door, heading straight for the deadly Aethelgard Order to show them what a true monster looked like.
8.0
Scarlett Hayes thought marrying James Whitmore would finally make her family see her as more than a burden.
Instead, it destroyed her life.
Framed for crimes she didn't commit, betrayed by the people she trusted most, and sentenced to prison while pregnant, Scarlett lost everything in a single night.
Then came the cruelest blow of all.
After giving birth in chains, she was told her baby had died.
The people responsible believed she would spend the rest of her life rotting behind bars.
They were wrong.
Five years later, Scarlett returns.
No longer the discarded daughter of the Hayes family. No longer the broken woman they left behind.
Now she is Commander Scarlett Hayes-a decorated war hero, the unseen force behind a global intelligence empire, and a woman powerful enough to make governments tremble.
She comes back for one reason only: revenge.
Her ex-husband, the stepsister who stole her life, and the family who buried her alive are about to learn exactly what happens when a woman with nothing left to lose takes back everything they stole.
But as Scarlett tears through the secrets of her past, one truth threatens to change everything-
the child she mourned for years may not be dead.
And the mysterious man connected to the night that changed her life has been watching from the shadows all along.
7.1
I was the top commander of a black-ops military program. After slaughtering my way through a hellish mission, I reached the extraction helicopter, trusting my second-in-command to watch my back.
But the moment our hands locked, he didn't pull me up. Instead, he plunged a syringe of lethal neurotoxin directly into my neck.
He aimed his gun at my chest, coldly stating that I was too dangerous to live. My lungs stopped, and I died in a pool of my own blood. But the endless blackness suddenly shattered. My consciousness violently forced its way into a new, broken shell. I woke up in a freezing alley, soaked in muddy rain.
This body belonged to seventeen-year-old Eliza Wyatt. A massive wave of foreign memories crashed into my brain. Her own younger sister had just stood at the top of the stairs with a mocking smile, watching street thugs beat Eliza to death.
"Take good care of the Wyatt family's eldest daughter. Tonight is the night she finally disappears."
The endless humiliation, the cold stares of her family, and the brutal betrayal by her own blood flashed before my eyes. Why was this fragile girl treated like garbage and pushed to her death by the very people who should have protected her?
I looked down at my pale, trembling hands. The top commander was dead, but in this bleeding shell, Eliza Wyatt was very much alive. I picked up a switchblade from the bloody puddle and stood up in the storm. It was time to hunt.
9.7
Elara Voss was rejected by her Alpha on the night of the Blood Moon - cast aside as a nobody with no wolf, no rank, and no future. She ran. But fate had other plans.
In the human world, she collides with Damien Crest - cold, ruthless billionaire by day, the last living Shadowking by night. He offers her a contract marriage. She has nowhere else to go.
But ancient markings are awakening on her skin. A god is whispering her name. And Kael, the fearsome Werewolf High King, has declared across all supernatural realms that she is his fated mate.
Two kings. Two worlds. One woman who was never supposed to matter.
They all rejected her once. Now they'll burn their empires down to claim her.
7.7
I trusted the wrong people in my past life.
My supposed lover and my sweet sister conspired against me, locking me inside a burning warehouse to die.
But the man I had spent my life hating, my ruthless captor Damien Sterling, rushed straight into that inferno and burned alive just to try and save me.
In my past life, I was utterly blind. I believed Julian's forged documents and Scarlett's fake affection. I even tried to assassinate Damien with a silver dagger they provided, breaking the heart of the only man who truly loved me. I died choking on thick ash, realizing too late who the real monsters were.
Why was I so incredibly foolish? Why did I let their vicious manipulation turn me into a weapon against the one person who would sacrifice absolutely everything for me?
Opening my eyes again, the phantom smell of smoke vanished.
I was sitting in the bloody water of Damien's bathtub, right after my staged suicide attempt.
When my sister sneaked into my penthouse suite and handed me the dagger to kill him again, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed her hand tightly and plunged the sharp blade directly into my own shoulder.
"Please don't kill me, Scarlett!"
This time, I will ruthlessly ruin them both, and I will never let Damien go.
7.9
Estrella Ward gave five years of her life to her husband, draining her trust fund to save him from bankruptcy and raising his son as her own.
But one night, she woke up in a freezing hotel room, drugged, with a stranger's bite marks on her skin.
Her husband burst through the door with cameras, his vicious family, and her ten-year-old stepson, publicly framing her as a cheating whore.
The horrifying truth soon surfaced: her husband had drugged her himself, selling her body to his Wall Street boss to secure a senior partnership.
Estrella fought back with hidden security footage, blackmailing him into submission after discovering she was pregnant with his boss's child.
But fate dealt a cruel blow. She was diagnosed with aggressive, terminal breast cancer.
She refused to abort the baby to keep her leverage, but the cancer spread too fast.
She died alone in a cold hospital room, her vengeance unfinished, while her husband and his cruel family celebrated.
They thought they had successfully buried her and her secrets forever, escaping unpunished for destroying her life.
But when she gasped for air and opened her eyes again, she wasn't in a cold grave.
She was in a sterile hospital bed, looking at the perfectly manicured hands of Brooklyn Thompson—the notorious, empty-headed socialite everyone despised.
Estrella's soul had survived the abyss.
"You're going to pay for every drop of blood."
She clenched her new fists, the fire of her vengeance burning brighter than ever.