Chapter 1
During the SATs, someone in the exam room went completely mad, screaming about a freezing apocalypse and ghouls eating everyone in the world. Everyone laughed at him, but I was the only one frozen in shock.
Because the pendant on my chest, which could warn me of danger, was emitting an unprecedented, blazing alarm...
Chapter 1
"No! The freezing apocalypse! Ghouls everywhere! They're eating people!"
A terrifying scream shattered the silence of the SAT exam room.
Jason Black, who sat in the row ahead of me, suddenly sprang up from his desk as if he had just been jolted awake from a horrifying nightmare.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he frantically clawed at his own throat, sweeping his test papers and 2B pencils onto the floor.
"Mr. Black! Please be quiet!" The proctor frowned and walked over, his tone full of bureaucratic impatience.
The surrounding students merely glanced up coldly before lowering their heads to continue filling in the grid-in blanks on their answer sheets.
In this ruthlessly competitive high school, there were always a few unlucky bastards who suffered mental breakdowns during the SAT every year due to the immense pressure.
No one paid any attention to Jason's crazy rambling—except me.
My hand holding the pencil froze in mid-air. I sat paralyzed in my seat, entirely immobilized as if struck by a spell, my face gradually turning pale.
It wasn't because of Jason's wails, but because the black stone pendant I wore against my chest was currently erupting with an unprecedented, terrifying heat that felt like it was going to roast my flesh alive!
"Hiss..." I imperceptibly gasped.
This black stone, which I had accidentally stumbled upon in an antique shop, was my absolute greatest secret in this rotten world.
Not only did it contain a seemingly borderless, infinitely still spatial dimension that could instantly store or release any inanimate object at my will, but it could also emit a scorching warning right before danger struck.
Over the past three years, it had saved me countless times—from stray bullets fired by neighborhood gangs, to out-of-control trucks speeding through intersections...
But it had never emitted such a violent, branding-iron-like heat as it did today.
This level of burning sensation meant only one thing: If I didn't leave here within an hour, I was going to die.
"What's wrong, Arthur?" Chad, the school bully sitting diagonally in front of me, turned his head and gave me a disdainful look, a malicious sneer tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Scared silly already? If you can't even handle this little commotion, your sickly sister waiting outside—who can't even afford an inhaler—will probably kick the bucket before you hand in your paper."
Chad was the star quarterback of the school's football team. He was well-built and always bullied me alongside his cheerleader girlfriend, Chloe.
His words acted like a switch, snapping my mind instantly back to reality.
My sister, Lily!
All the illusory concepts in my head about an "Ivy League ticket," "enduring humiliation," and "social rules" were instantly incinerated to ashes by the heat heralding death. Right now, Lily was the only being I cared about!
I absolutely could not waste my time on a dead man like Chad.
Without firing back, I didn't even cast Chad a second glance.
I simply got up swiftly, tossed that useless 2B pencil casually onto the desk, and walked straight toward the exam room door.
"Where do you think you're going? The exam isn't over yet!" The proctor turned and snapped sharply.
I didn't pause for a fraction of a second. Marching to the closed double wooden doors of the exam room, I raised my right foot and, with desperate resolve, kicked the lock to pieces.
Bang!
"Holy shit! Has Arthur lost his mind!?" Chad exclaimed in shock.
Under the stunned gazes of everyone in the room, I disappeared around the corner of the corridor without hesitation, like a freezing gust of wind.
Leaving them with nothing but scattered wood splinters on the floor.
At the end of the academic building's corridor, I spotted Lily right away.
Her frail body was curled up on a bench, her hands tightly gripping her severely worn asthma inhaler. She was shivering slightly due to the unusually cold temperature in the hallway.
August in Texas was supposed to be a sweltering heatwave, but the air had now plummeted to around ten degrees Celsius, exuding an eerie, deathly chill.
"Brother?" Seeing me come out early, a flash of surprise crossed Lily's pale face. "Did you finish the test?"
"The pendant is warning me. If we don't run, we'll die!" I pulled her up and tightly wrapped my jacket around her shoulders. "Lily, we have to leave the school right now!"
As my last living relative in the world, she was well aware of the pendant's secret. Upon hearing about the warning, her pupils shrank, but she sensibly didn't say another word, merely gripping the hem of my shirt tightly and following me out.
We walked briskly out of the school gates.
The streets hadn't yet fallen into complete chaos, but pedestrians were stopping in their tracks, pointing at the gloomy sky and murmuring amongst themselves.
The temperature dropped a few more degrees, and a thin film of ice had actually begun to form on the surface of the puddles on the road.
Just as we were about to cross the intersection, an anomaly occurred.
Bang—Screech—
A van waiting at a red light at the intersection suddenly began to shake violently.
The cabin door was shoved open, and a man covered in blood tumbled clumsily onto the asphalt.
"Help... Help me!" The man crawled backward in sheer terror.
Immediately after, a highly twisted figure lunged out of the cabin.
It was a driver wearing work clothes, but his eyes had completely rolled back, dark red slime hung from the corners of his mouth, and a terrifying, guttural "he-he" sound—like a beast preparing for a hunt—rattled in his throat.
Without any warning, looking like a catapulting giant spider, he viciously tackled the man crying for help. Opening his irrational jaws, he bit savagely right into the victim's carotid artery!
Blood instantly sprayed out like a high-pressure water hose, splattering onto the windshield of a nearby sedan.
"Ahhhhhh—" Several nearby pedestrians erupted in terrified screams.
Bang! Bang!
Two crisp gunshots abruptly cut off the screaming.
A patrolling Texas State Trooper at the street corner had drawn his service weapon and emptied his magazine without hesitation.
Two .45 caliber bullets accurately pierced the crazed driver's chest and shoulder.
"Freeze! Keep your hands where I can see them!" The cop roared harshly, gripping his gun with both hands.
The shot driver violently twitched on the ground a couple of times, his black blood rapidly coagulating on the freezing pavement.
The crowds hiding nearby gasped, looking at the fallen man with a mix of horror and relief.
Except for me.
I stared fixedly at the driver lying in the pool of blood. Thinking of the "freezing ghouls" Jason had screamed about, my gut told me it wouldn't be this simple.
Sure enough, under everyone's absolute disbelief, the "dead man"—who had taken two bullets and had his heart pierced—actually lifted his head slowly on all fours, adopting a posture that completely violated the laws of skeletal mechanics.
He was not dead.
The trooper's face went deathly pale in an instant, trembling as he readied himself to pull the trigger again.
I didn't stick around to watch. I pulled Lily to my side and turned to run toward another block.
The black stone on my chest was still boiling hot, constantly reminding me that this was merely the appetizer of the apocalypse.
There were less than forty-five minutes before the true freezing hell and the ghoul horde descended.
This was the final preparation period before the end of the world.
I patted my completely empty pockets, a highly precise looting route already formulated in my mind—the specialized asthma medication at a high-end private clinic, and the extreme outdoor gear shop on the west side of town.
The pendant's silent spatial storage ability was more than enough for me to pull off a conceptual-level heist with zero cost and zero traces.
"Hold on tight to me, Lily." I took a deep breath of the increasingly biting chill in the air. The last trace of high-schooler cowardice in my eyes was thoroughly replaced by a bone-deep coldness. "The apocalypse is really here."
