Just a note - I also just tried it with a completely new world. I copied everything to a blank folder and:
Started brand new world in 1.13-pre5
Did not even log into it, did /save-all and /stop
started the 1.13-pre6 server.jar in the same directory.
It gives the same errors, "couldn't load chunk," etc. Command I used (if it helps) is: java -Xms1G -Xmx1G -jar <serverjar here>
The world will now load in 1.13 pre7.