Reborn Cave Queen of the End Times novel Chapter 1

"Look! What's that?" Someone shouted, and everyone looked up at the same time.

A blazing fireball was falling from the sky, racing straight toward Autumn Montclair.

She was thin, tanned, and so numb that she could no longer make any expression.

Shock. Fear. Panic. Despair. Those were the reactions people had at the beginning of the apocalypse.

But she had survived for 15 years. Long ago, she had forgotten how to feel.

"Run! The fire is coming!" The crowd scattered in every direction.

Everyone ran like headless chickens, searching for somewhere safe to hide.

But where was there left to hide?

For the past 15 years, droughts, floods, deep freeze, deadly heat waves, sandstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, acid rain, and insect swarms had taken turns destroying the world. The planet had become a wasteland.

Once, the world had held billions of people. Now, fewer than 2,000 survivors remained.

And just when those last 2,000 people thought they had finally found the final safe place on Earth, another disaster struck and erased the last piece of paradise.

As the falling fireball rushed toward her, emotion finally returned to Autumn's eyes.

But there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Tears filled her eyes. She opened her arms and chose to welcome the world-ending meteor.

Boom!

"Tap, tap, tap. Testing, testing. Hello? Hello?" Someone was tapping on a microphone.

The loudspeaker's sharp voice jolted the struggling girl awake.

Autumn's eyes flew open. She lay there, stunned for a long time. Then she suddenly jumped out of bed. She touched her face. Her arms. Her body. A second later, she ran into the bathroom.

She stared at the girl in the mirror. Young. Healthy. Full-cheeked. Not the starving, dying woman she remembered. She turned and bent over the toilet, gagging.

A moment ago, she had been a burned corpse.

The next moment, she was reborn.

She could still smell the stench of burning flesh lingering in her nostrils.

"Residents of Everjoy Residences, please come to the community office and sign the redevelopment papers. The first person to sign will receive an extra ten percent compensation, plus one bag of rice and one bag of flour. Offer ends today!"

The loudspeaker outside kept repeating the announcement. It urged the residents to come and collect their payments.

Wait.

Redevelopment?

What year is this?

Autumn hurried back into her room. She reached under her pillow and fumbled for her phone.

After fifteen years, she had forgotten her phone password. Luckily, it still had a fingerprint unlock.

The moment she saw the date on the screen, she was thunderstruck. March 1, 2056.

She had returned three months before the apocalypse.

On June 1st—a day usually filled with children's laughter and celebration—the apocalypse would officially begin.

And with it would come fifteen years of hell.

Was she really going to go through all of that again?

Just as despair threatened to swallow her, her fingers brushed against the phone charm hanging from her phone.

It was old and worn, with only a single wooden bead on it.

She froze.

The phone charm?

The storage space!

How could I forget something so important?

Who would have guessed that this cheap phone charm, worth barely a dollar, hid an entire storage space inside?

Unfortunately, in her previous life, she had discovered it by accident during the tenth year of the apocalypse.

By then, nearly every supply she found had either rotted, broken, or turned into useless junk. Even with the storage space, she had collected very little that could help her survive.

Yet that tiny storage space had still kept her alive five years longer than most people. She had come so close to making it to the end.

So close.

But this life would be different. This time, she would make full use of the storage space.

Her rusty brain suddenly clicked. Redevelopment?

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