Sylas Vane's last thought, as the server room filled with acrid smoke, was that the quarterly mana-flow audit was going to be late.

  Not: I'm going to die. Not: someone should have fixed the cooling array. Not even: I should have taken the stairs. Just the simple, practical observation that without his completed spreadsheets, the entire Celestial Logistics cultivation supply chain would experience a two-week delay in efficiency reporting.

  He had worked for Celestial Logistics Corporation for fourteen years. Fourteen years of optimizing mana distribution networks, identifying bottlenecks in qi refinement processes, and documenting system inefficiencies that no one else seemed to notice or care about. His performance reviews always said the same thing: "Exceptional attention to detail. Limited interpersonal engagement. Adequate for current position."

  Adequate. The story of his life, really.

  The fire alarm screamed through the sublevel corridors. Sylas walked toward the exit with methodical calm, laptop tucked under his arm containing the precious audit files. The backup servers would preserve everything, of course, but the local copy had his annotations. Three hundred hours of analysis, reduced to elegant formulas that proved the entire eastern distribution network was operating at sixty-three percent efficiency when it could achieve eighty-seven percent with minor reconfigurations.

  No one would implement his recommendations. They never did. But he would file the report anyway, because that was the job. Because systems deserved to be optimized, whether anyone appreciated it or not.

  Someone had miscalibrated the cooling array. Again. The temperature regulating formation that kept the mana-core servers from overheating had been running ten percent below optimal for weeks. Sylas had filed three maintenance requests. They'd all been marked "low priority" and ignored.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Now the cores were melting down, and smoke was filling the ventilation system.

  The exit sign glowed green thirty meters ahead. Sylas walked steadily toward it, breathing shallow to conserve oxygen. His pace was efficient: fast enough to reach safety, slow enough to avoid wasted energy. Everything optimized, even evacuation.

  He made it five steps before the coughing started. Ten steps before his vision began to blur. Fifteen steps before his knees buckled.

  The laptop clattered to the floor. The audit file was password-protected. Someone would find it. Someone would see the recommendations. Probably no one would implement them. But at least the data would be preserved. The inefficiency would be documented. That had to count for something.

  His last conscious observation, as consciousness faded to black, was that the incident report would be categorized as "user error" rather than "maintenance negligence." The cooling array failure would be blamed on improper load distribution instead of deferred preventative maintenance. The numbers would be adjusted to avoid accountability.

  Wrong. The numbers were wrong. Someone needed to correct them.

  Then: nothing.

  Then: something.

  Then: everything.

  Sylas Vane opened his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling, in an unfamiliar body, in an unfamiliar world that somehow, impossibly, ran on the same fundamental principles he'd spent fourteen years optimizing.

  Mana distribution. Qi refinement. Energy efficiency. Cultivation advancement.

  But here, people called it magic.

  And here, incredibly, nobody seemed to be optimizing it properly.

  Sylas felt something he hadn't experienced in years: professional interest.

  The inefficiency was remarkable. Someone should really document this.