The False Ark

Humanity was sold a miracle. What they got was a harvest. After the final bells of the Board Exams rang, Kai thought his life was finally beginning. Instead, the world descended into madness.  An angelic entity appeared over the world's most sacred city, and every government on the planet offered the same salvation: passage beyond the southern ice to a refuge called Necrosia. Billions rushed for the frozen south. Kai went too — but he noticed things no one was supposed to notice. The serial number stamped on the entity's wing. The cold, rehearsed stillness of every world leader gathered at the summoning site. The  fact that 250 luxury mega-liners had been quietly retrofitted for mass transport eight months before any crisis began. The Arks weren't ships. They were refineries. Deep beyond the Ice Wall, humanity's life force — a raw energy called Aether — was being harvested for those powerful enough to wield it. Kai's soul hit a resonance with the extraction machine. His body didn't survive the output. But he did. Reborn in a foreign world with nothing but his memories, a shattered soul, and an Aether capacity no physician in this new world can explain, Kai has one objective: grow strong enough to build a bridge back across the void. The Arks were never meant to save anyone.