Supreme Son-in-law: Reborn With the Apocalypse System

Episode 5: The Smell of Smoke

It started with a scream.

Not the kind of scream you hear in a movie—sharp and dramatic—but the raw kind. The kind that came from something primal. Fear. Pain. Confusion. Jared was just waking up when it pierced the air.

For a second, he forgot where he was.

Then his eyes adjusted to the room: bare walls, creaky fan, a cheap curtain dancing in the wind. The Bai family’s spare room—still the place he called home, even if everyone in it hated that fact.

The scream came again. Closer this time.

Jared got up quickly and grabbed the cloth-wrapped pistol from under the mattress. He didn’t know what he expected, but his gut had been twisting since the system pinged him again just before dawn.

[System Alert: Warning—first signs of breakdown detected.]

Breakdown.

He remembered the word. In his first life, it had started the same way. Cities crumbling from the inside. One crack at a time. People thought it was madness. Then hunger. Then war. But it wasn’t. It was something deeper, older, and planned.

Jared didn’t bother with shoes. He stepped out into the hallway in bare feet, the pistol tucked tight at his side.

Downstairs, chaos had already begun to take shape.

Two maids were shrieking near the window. Mr. Bai, Elena’s father, was on the phone, shouting into it like volume would make it connect faster. And outside—

Smoke.

Thick, dark columns rising up in the distance. Not from one fire. Three. Four. Maybe more. The city skyline, usually smooth and predictable, was blurred behind plumes of ash.

Jared stepped onto the porch. The air tasted burnt.

A crowd had gathered near the gates. People were filming with their phones, shouting about explosions at the petrol depot, at the old market, and on the bridge. One woman fainted. A man was trying to resuscitate her, but he looked like he was about to pass out himself.

“What’s happening?” a voice asked sharply behind him.

Jared turned.

Elena stood barefoot, wrapped in a thin satin robe. No makeup. No cold expression this time. Just confusion.

Jared didn’t answer immediately. He was watching the smoke. Listening to the panic. Measuring the timing. It was exactly the same.

“Tell me,” Elena said again, stepping closer. “Is it a terrorist attack?”

“No.”

“Then what—”

“It’s the beginning,” he said quietly. “Of something bigger.”

She blinked. “You’re being dramatic.”

“No,” Jared said. “I’m being accurate.”

Something in his tone made her pause. She studied his face—really looked at him—and for the first time in a long time, she didn’t seem sure what to say.

“You’re acting like you expected this.”

Jared turned to face her fully.

“I did.”

A pause. Just long enough for something unspoken to settle between them.

Before she could speak again, Mr. Bai’s voice thundered from the house.

“Jared! What the hell are you standing there for? Do something useful for once!”

He was red in the face, waving his dead phone in the air. “Call the police! Call the news! Do something!”

Jared met his eyes, calm. “No one’s coming.”

“What?”

“The police. The army. The government. They’re not coming. Not this time.”

“You think this is some end-of-the-world nonsense?” Mr. Bai scoffed. “You’ve always been unstable, but this—this is delusion.”

Jared took a step forward. “You don’t have to believe me. But if you want to live, start stocking water. Food. Close your gates. And keep your family close.”

Elena’s eyes widened slightly.

“You’re serious,” she said.

Jared nodded once. “Dead serious.”

Mr. Bai sneered, ready to spit another insult, but before he could, a distant explosion echoed in the sky—louder this time. The ground trembled slightly beneath their feet. A ripple of screams followed from the city below.

No one said anything for a moment.

Then Elena whispered, “That didn’t sound like a market fire.”

Jared looked up at the thickening smoke cloud and the flickers of red in the sky.

“It’s not,” he said.

Inside his mind, the system pinged again:

[System Update: Survival Stage unlocked.]

[New Mission: Secure a safe house within 72 hours.]

[Warning: Civil collapse predicted within seven days.]

Jared turned and walked back into the house, past the stunned maids, past Mr. Bai still frozen in denial.

He had work to do.

This time, he wouldn’t die unprepared.