Reborn Before the Great Flood: I Built the Last Ark

Chapter 1

With every passing second, Damian Cross found it harder to breathe.

His vision blurred. The strength slowly drained from his battered body, while the endless ocean beneath him pulled the remaining warmth from his blood.

Ten years had passed since the rain began.

It had fallen without stopping until cities vanished, mountains became islands, and the world humanity once ruled disappeared beneath an endless sea. Then the creatures came—monsters that rose from the deepest trenches as mana awakened within the survivors.

Damian had endured all of it.

He had built the Greyhaven Sanctuary Arc, the largest and safest vessel still sailing the drowned world. More than two thousand families lived within its reinforced hulls and connected platforms. To them, Greyhaven was not merely a ship.

It was the last place they could still call home.

And Damian was the man who had kept it alive.

Until this mission.

A day earlier, Greyhaven had received a report claiming that the water was finally receding somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Land had supposedly appeared for the first time in a decade.

Damian had personally led the expedition.

That had been his greatest mistake.

There was no land waiting for them.

Only a Class-SSS Levitenian.

Most of his team died before they could even prepare for battle. They were all Awakened, warriors who had survived countless hunts, but their powers meant little against a sea monster capable of overturning warships with a single strike.

Damian had still killed it.

Now the enormous corpse floated several hundred meters away, staining the waves black with its blood.

Not far from it, Damian clung to a broken plank from their destroyed vessel. His upper body lay across the splintered wood while everything below his waist remained submerged.

Wreckage surrounded him.

Bodies did too.

The combined scent of human and monster blood would soon attract other creatures. Damian knew that better than anyone. Yet his ruined body could no longer carry him back to Greyhaven.

Then he heard it.

The low growl of an approaching motorboat.

Damian forced his heavy eyelids open and raised one trembling hand.

“Wait. Is that Damian?”

His entire body stiffened.

He knew that voice.

The boat moved closer, and the woman standing near its bow finally came into view.

Sarah Moore.

His wife of fourteen years.

But why was she here?

Since the day the Great Flood began, Sarah had never once willingly left the safety of the Arc.

Then Damian saw the man standing behind her.

Adrian Rivers.

Sarah’s first love—and the man she had repeatedly assured Damian he never had to worry about.

One of Adrian’s arms rested casually around Sarah’s waist.

Adrian looked down at Damian and chuckled. “Wow. This man really is hard to kill.”

Damian blinked through the saltwater burning his eyes.

What did he mean?

“Well, look at him,” Sarah said. “He won’t last much longer. If he doesn’t bleed to death, another monster will find him.”

Her voice held no fear.

No concern.

Only impatience.

Damian stared at the woman he had loved for fourteen years. He had devoted his life to Sarah and placed her family above his own. He had risked his life countless times to give them everything they wanted.

How could she look at him like he was already a corpse?

“W-What…”

Sarah laughed softly. “What? Are you wondering how this happened?”

Adrian pulled her closer and kissed her cheek in front of him.

Damian’s fingers dug into the wet wood.

Sarah smiled.

“There was never any land here, Damian.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“The looters found the Levitenian while searching for food,” she continued. “Only one of them survived.”

Damian suddenly remembered the final group of scavengers that had returned to Greyhaven. One injured survivor had delivered the coordinates and sworn he had seen land rising beyond the mist.

“Adrian’s man,” Sarah revealed.

Damian’s blood ran cold.

“You…”

The false report.

The carefully chosen coordinates.

The expedition that Sarah had insisted only Damian could lead.

It had all been a trap.

“Don’t hate us too much,” Sarah said with a shrug. “Fourteen years is already more than enough, don’t you think? Besides, we don’t need you anymore.”

She lifted one hand.

A plain gold ring gleamed on her finger.

Damian’s expression changed.

It was the ring he had lost several weeks ago. Its storage space had nearly run empty by then, and Greyhaven had been struggling to find new supplies, so he had assumed he had simply misplaced it during one of his expeditions.

But it was not an ordinary piece of jewelry.

It was a dimensional ring—an heirloom he had accidentally awakened during the early days of the disaster.

His mother had once begged him never to give it to Sarah.

He had obeyed her only because Sarah had rejected the ring for looking too cheap.

“So this is why you were always so confident,” Sarah said, admiring it. “You had something like this hidden from me. But now, it belongs to us.”

Damian clenched his fists.

Fourteen years.

He had abandoned his parents and his younger sister for this woman. He had crossed monster-infested waters and returned half-dead more times than he could count, all so Sarah and the Moore family could live like royalty.

And this was how she repaid him.

Adrian leaned against the side of the boat.

“Oh, there’s one more thing,” he said. “Denise and Joy aren’t yours. They’re my children.”

The words hurt more than the Levitenian’s claws.

Tears burned Damian’s eyes.

He had raised those children. Protected them. Loved them as his own.

Even his family had been a lie.

Sarah tapped Adrian’s chest impatiently. “Come on. The children are waiting. And the people of Greyhaven need to meet their new leader.”

A wide smile spread across Adrian’s face. “Of course, love. But before we leave, there’s something I need to do.”

He stepped back toward the controls.

The motor roared.

The boat surged forward and slammed into the piece of wreckage supporting Damian.

Damian tried to hold on, but his injured fingers slipped from the wet wood. He fell into the freezing sea, and his broken body sank beneath the waves.

Water rushed into his lungs.

Above him, distorted by the surface, Sarah and Adrian watched him disappear.

They were smiling.

Darkness closed around Damian.

For years, he had chosen Sarah over everyone else. He had given her the love he thought she deserved. Her parents and her worthless brother had prospered because of him, while Damian’s own family suffered.

If only he had listened to his mother.

If only he had chosen the people who had truly loved him.

As the last of the air left his lungs, Damian made one final promise.

Even if I become a ghost, I will come back for all of you.

Then the darkness swallowed him completely.

“Damian! Are you deaf?”

A hand shoved his shoulder.

Damian staggered backward.

Before he could understand what was happening, a palm struck his cheek.

“Move! Let me go!”

Damian froze.

The woman glaring at him was Sarah Moore.

But she looked younger than the last time he had seen her.

“Hello?” Sarah snapped. “Are you going to keep standing there?”

Damian ignored her. His gaze landed on the calendar hanging on the wall behind them.

His breath caught.

August 2026.

He looked around.

The glass entrance. The familiar lobby beyond it. 

The condominium building where he and Sarah had lived before the Great Flood.

It was the same place. 

Damian stared at the date again, his heart pounding violently inside his chest.

Had he returned to the past?

Ten years before the apocalypse?