BEFORE THE WORLD FROZE, I BUILT MY OWN KINGDOM

(Note: This story takes place on a parallel-universe planet. Its world, nations, cultures, timelines and locations have no connection to reality. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.)

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Pain. Unbearable, soul-shredding pain.

Ethan Cole's body was swallowed by roaring flames. Every inch of his skin felt carved open by a thousand blades. The heat tore at him from the inside out, and his flesh hissed and dripped like meat on a spit.

He screamed, his eyes burning with hatred and rage. But in that sea of fire, his voice came out thin and broken.

The fat melting from his body only fed the blaze, making it roar higher.

As the darkness crept in, one memory flashed through his mind: the day he first joined the Ember Haven settlement.

Back then, Ember Haven had almost nothing. It was only a handful of survivors with empty hands and a stubborn hope.

He still remembered the words their leader had spoken to them. "Work hard, and there will be bread! As long as our Ember still burns, Aurelia will always belong to mankind!"

Over time, through everyone's sweat and sacrifice, Ember Haven grew. Its stores filled and its walls rose. But its hunger grew faster, a bottomless pit that nothing could fill.

Ethan's life never got better. It got worse. He hauled supplies from far beyond the walls through killing cold, and he was never given enough to fill his stomach.

For three long years he endured it. He was not killed by enemies and not taken by the freezing wastes. But he never tasted a single "sweet" day either.

Hunger, cold and endless labor wrecked his body. At only twenty-eight, he was riddled with sickness. So the settlement's rulers declared him "too old and too weak" and chose to "optimize" him out.

On their orders, the Resource Management Office threw him alive into the furnace to be burned as fuel.

His life had been both tragic and laughable.

At last, his strength gave out. The world went black, and his thoughts dissolved like smoke.

Yet just when Ethan believed it was truly over, a strange force stirred.

His mind was dragged into a spinning vortex, and a blinding light swallowed him whole.

When the light faded, Ethan's eyes flew open. He gasped for air, his body drenched in cold sweat.

He took in his surroundings. He was lying in a strange, quiet room, with warm sunlight slipping through the curtains and spilling gold across the floor.

He stared, stunned. He ran his hands over his body. The searing agony was gone, replaced by a lightness he had never felt before.

His heart pounded. It took a long time for him to calm down.

Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

A bright, sharp sound jolted him from his daze.

He slowly sat up and reached for the phone on the nightstand. It felt familiar and strange at the same time.

He switched off the alarm and read the screen. November 5th, 2023. 8:35 AM.

"This... can't be..." Ethan's voice shook. He had seen this moment in dreams more than once.

But the touch of the cold screen against his fingers was real. This was no illusion. He was not dreaming.

If not for the three years of inhuman memories and the agony he had just endured, he might have believed the apocalypse was only a nightmare from last night.

But he knew better. Every moment of it had been real.

He had been reborn.

He didn't know why such a miracle had happened. But three years in the apocalypse had hardened him, and he accepted the truth quickly.

In his past life, the world had ended on July 5th, 2025.

After checking again and again, he confirmed the date. That left twenty months until the end.

He didn't know whether the disaster would arrive on schedule. But if fate had given him a second chance, he would never sit still and wait to die.

Those who had never lived in a world frozen below minus sixty degrees could not imagine that despair. They couldn't picture a society twisted beyond recognition, where human lives were worth less than dirt, where people would murder each other for a single bite of food, and where no law or mercy remained.

Ethan refused to live that nightmare again. Even if the chance was one in ten thousand, he would be ready.

He drew a long breath and steadied his thoughts. A plan was already taking shape.

He knew what survival required. First, a safe shelter. Then mountains of supplies.

A warm, secure refuge. Enough food. Medicine and survival gear. And weapons, with no limit on firepower.

Because when the apocalypse came, all order would collapse, and people would do anything to live. No matter how much you stored, if you couldn't defend it, you would only be a lamb waiting for the wolves.

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Without enough firepower, even a shelter strong enough to survive a nuclear blast could be torn apart by the crazed wolves of the apocalypse.

But all of that took money. A great deal of it. And there were still twenty months before the end, in a world that still ran on law and order.

Ethan Cole was nobody. He had grown up in an orphanage, and he was now a low-level worker barely two years out of college. No money, no connections, no power. Building a doomsday fortress was a fantasy.

"Hmm..." He sank into deep thought.

Then it hit him like a flash of lightning. "The lottery!"

On December 2nd, 2023, a lottery would pay out a jackpot of two hundred and twenty million dollars. Nearly five years had passed in his old life since then, yet he still remembered the winning numbers perfectly.

He remembered the winner, too. The man had been so reckless that he spent a hundred thousand dollars buying the same set of numbers over and over. And that set had hit the jackpot.

Back then, Ethan had looked down on him for a long time. What a foolish, unprofessional way to gamble.

But now? Wasn't this exactly the chance he needed to build his first fortune?

His spirits soared. Not wanting to risk forgetting a single digit, he decided to write the numbers down in a notebook right away.

He glanced up and spotted one lying on a desk across the room. He was just about to climb out of bed to fetch it when the notebook suddenly shot through the air, straight at his face.

Ethan threw his arms up to shield his head.

But the impact never came. The notebook simply vanished.

Before he could wonder where it had gone, his mind was yanked away. The next moment, he was floating in a vast, blinding white space.

Ethan froze, completely stunned.

What on earth was happening?

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