Nolan awoke face-first on something that felt suspiciously like glass. Not cold, not warm—just... blank. That was the only word for it. Blank.

  He groaned and pushed himself up, blinking into the impossible. The space around him stretched forever, filled with glowing sheets of parchment drifting lazily through the air. Runes shimmered on their surfaces, reshaping themselves mid-flight. Somewhere far off, a clock ticked like a heartbeat, rhythmic and endless.

  "Where am I?" he asked aloud, mostly to test if his voice still worked.

  "Dead," came the reply, clipped and clinical. "Temporarily. Don’t panic—you're getting recycled."

  He turned.

  A woman stood there. Or floated. Or hovered. It was hard to tell in a place with no ground. Her robe looked like it had been stitched from contracts and burned-out runes. Glowing ink shifted across her sleeves like frustrated footnotes. She wore silver-rimmed glasses and looked exactly like the kind of person who would manage a cosmic bureaucracy.

  "You’re the Akashic Records," Nolan guessed.

  She raised an eyebrow. "Hm. Faster than most. Yes. Though technically, I am the Records’ embodied interface. Think of me as the system admin of everything you’re about to mess up."

  He blinked. "I died. And now I’m your employee?"

  "Contractor," she corrected, thumbing through a floating file. "You're being hired for a job. Very part-time. Very flexible. Minimal supervision."

  Nolan crossed his arms. "And why me? I'm not special. I worked in data analysis and hated deadlines."

  She looked up from her glowing scroll. "Exactly. You’re average, stable, unlikely to go off-script or attempt divine conquest. You don't want to save the world—and that’s what we need."

  "Okay," Nolan said slowly. "And the job is...?"

  She snapped her fingers. A small card floated between them, glowing faintly.

  "Cause problems."

  "What kind of problems?"

  "Minor ones. Local disruptions. Economic hiccups. Political pressure points. The world is stagnant. Civilization is built around dungeons and cards, but it's not evolving. We need a catalyst."

  He frowned. "So, terrorism."

  "Micro-strategic destabilization," she corrected. "You’re not destroying anything. You're nudging. Stirring the pot. Creating a little friction so the machine doesn't rust shut."

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  He sighed. "Sounds like a lot of work."

  She grinned, or at least the divine bureaucratic version of a grin. "You get time off. Real time off. You can sleep in a cave for weeks. No alarms. No performance reviews. You only need to act when it matters."

  Nolan mulled it over. "Alright. But what about divine support? Any gods backing this?"

  The Akashic Records rolled her eyes. "The goddess who made this world is a spoiled daughter of a mid-tier deity. She tore up the Book of Chaos during world-building and threw in magic cards like stickers on a lunchbox. Don’t pray to her. She's still whining to her worshippers about how your world didn’t have enough snack flavors."

  He tried not to laugh. Failed.

  "And you? What’s your stake in this?"

  She looked him dead in the eye. "I want to be left alone. The more this world runs smoothly, the fewer emergency patches I have to file. Help me make it stable, and I won't have to see your face again."

  Fair enough.

  She waved her hand. A new card floated before him, showing an image of a child—barely eleven, gaunt, skin sunken, lips cracked.

  "This is your vessel."

  "He looks like he forgot to drink water for a week."

  "He was sacrificed by House Caldran," she said. "A minor noble family under a marquess. They needed to delay a dungeon surge but didn’t have a catfolk sacrifice ready, so they threw in a disowned son instead."

  Nolan winced. "So I'm inheriting the role of a discarded corpse."

  "A politically disposable one with access to a forge-tier dungeon. Full of fire-crafting relics. You’ll be fine."

  He raised an eyebrow. "And my Talent?"

  She nodded. "Full Body Control. Precise movement, perfect posture, flawless muscle regulation. You can punch exactly how you want to punch. Breathe how you want to breathe."

  Nolan flexed his fingers. He already felt it—the calm, calculated motion of each joint, the balanced rhythm of his chest.

  "No fireballs?"

  "Not unless you throw them manually."

  He smirked. "Perfect."

  She pointed. A large rune formed beneath his feet, spinning slowly.

  "You can’t stay here. Souls unravel in transition space. I’ll meet you in the dungeon. We’ll go over the interface and starting cards."

  He gave a mock salute. "Don’t get too excited."

  "Don’t die. It’s annoying to replace you."

  The descent wasn’t dramatic. It was... layered.

  Runes circled him. Memories drifted by—not his. Snippets of other worlds. Monsters and flames. Ink and bone. He fell through systems, code, instructions. The bones of a world built on unstable rules.

  And then he stopped.

  He gasped.

  Air. Warm. Dry.

  Nolan opened his eyes. The ceiling was jagged stone veined with dull amber light. Faint heat radiated from above, but the ground beneath him was cool. He lay on a cracked altar surrounded by ash-dusted tools—relics of old sacrifices.

  He sat up slowly. Everything ached. His throat burned with thirst.

  His body was light. Too light. He checked his hands: small, pale, fingers sunken at the knuckles. He was in the child’s body now.

  His legs trembled, but with a breath, he centered himself. One step. Then another.

  To his right, a trickle of condensation pooled in a shallow bowl—dripping from a steam fissure above.

  He moved toward it. Every movement felt intentional. Clean.

  He knelt, drank, wiped his mouth. The water tasted like stone and steam.

  He looked around. The chamber was sparse: a blackened forge bench, melted card molds, and fire-tempered debris scattered across the walls.

  Small creatures chittered in the shadows. They watched but didn’t approach.

  A whisper echoed in his mind.

  "Congratulations," the Akashic Records said dryly. "You're now a politically disposable corpse with fire-forging potential. Don’t die. It’s annoying to replace you."

  Nolan wiped his mouth, stood straighter, and stared into the flickering veins of light overhead.

  "Let’s give the world its paper cuts."