The Poison Patriarch looked exactly like you would expect a man who spent his life eating toxins to look: he smelled like a basement damp with rotting mushrooms and had eyes the color of a bruised lung. He was currently pointing a gnarled, sickly-green finger at my chest, his expression one of indignant, murderous fury. Behind him, a dozen sect disciples looked on with varying degrees of sycophantic malice, waiting for the signal to jump me.
"If you are going to poison me, could you at least make sure it doesn't smell like a middle-management meeting?" I asked, leaning back against the splintered tavern table. I had been in this world for far too long, and I was already tired of the aesthetic choices of the local villainy.
The Patriarch paused. The room went silent. A few dozen grunts in sect-robes stopped clutching their swords and started looking at each other, clearly waiting for their boss to do something murderous.
"You dare?" the Patriarch hissed, his voice sounding like gravel in a blender. "I am the lord of the Five Veins Sect. I have cultivated the venom of ten thousand snakes. My touch is death. My breath is a miasma that dissolves the very soul! You are but an ant beneath the heel of a god!"
"Yeah, and I have a B-minus in Business Administration from Glasgow, and yet here we are, Caelan MacGregor, sitting in the middle of a dump, waiting for a sandwich. You are not a lord. You are a guy who needs an HR intervention and a serious bath. Do you have any idea how much corrosive gas you're venting in a confined space? It’s a health code violation. I’m pretty sure the tavern owner is going to have to fumigate this entire sector because your ego decided to manifest as literal slime."
He lunged, his hand wreathed in a swirling, toxic purple aura.
Now, pause for a second. Rewind. Back up.
None of this—the venom-breath, the cheap sect-robes, the sheer absurdity of being threatened by a man who looked like he'd been left out in the sun too long—should have been happening. I was supposed to be in a flat in London, complaining about the post office queue, not debating the management skills of a cartoon villain.
"Hey, author!" I shouted, holding up a hand to pause the fight. "Do a flashback sequence. This pacing is atrocious. We can't just jump into the action without showing the utter, soul-crushing boredom that led me to this moment."
Let us go back to the beginning. Let us go back to the office.
I was standing in the office of my temp agency, nursing a lukewarm coffee and a resentment for my boss that burned brighter than any sun. Mr. Henderson was a man who measured his self-worth in Excel spreadsheets and the number of times he could make an intern cry before their lunch break. His office smelled like stale Polo cologne and regret, with motivational posters on the wall that read things like "SYNERGY" and "THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX" — slogans chosen by people who had never had an original thought in their lives. His desk was pristine, not because he was organized, but because he never actually did any work. That was for people like me.
"You're just a background character, Caelan," Mr. Henderson said, leaning back in his leather chair with the kind of condescending pity that makes you want to commit a felony. He steepled his fingers, a gesture he'd definitely practiced in the mirror. "You don't drive the plot. You just show up for the meetings, do the data entry, and leave. Don't try to be something you're not. You're the kind of person who exists to hold the door open for the people who actually matter."
Something snapped. It wasn't a loud snap, but a quiet, satisfying click of a gear shifting in my brain. It was the sound of five years of suppressed rage finally finding its release valve. Five years of fetching his coffee. Five years of listening to him take credit for my spreadsheets. Five years of being told I was "lucky to have a job" while he drove a car that cost more than my annual salary. I didn't think. I didn't calculate the consequences of physical assault in a professional environment. I just moved.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The lukewarm coffee hit his face in a glorious, caffeinated arc, soaking his expensive silk tie and dripping down his pristine, judgmental nose. Before he could even choke on the insult, I was over the desk. I didn't give him a chance to be the protagonist of this encounter. I dragged him out of the chair, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was driving the plot. It was messy, it was unrefined, and it was arguably the most satisfying fifteen seconds of my miserable existence.
He was screaming about lawsuits and human resources, but I was already out the door. I didn't look back. I didn't pack my bag. I didn't even finish my coffee. I just ran.
I hit the London drizzle like a man possessed. I was running, really running, heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a destination. I just had the exhilarating, terrified high of finally doing something — anything — that wasn't beige. The streets blurred past me. Office workers in grey suits turned to stare. A woman walking her dog pulled the leash tight as I barrelled past. I didn't care. I felt alive, properly alive, for the first time since I left school. I was a human-shaped storm, and I was going to go... where? It didn't matter. The rain was cold on my face and my lungs were burning and I couldn't stop grinning like an absolute madman.
I reached the intersection. The light was red, but I didn't care. I was busy trying to outrun the sudden, crushing reality of what I’d just done. I was fumbling for my phone, trying to finish the latest chapter of Grand Cultivator’s Rise to the Immortal Peak because the world had already gone to hell, so why not? If I was going to be a fugitive, I might as well enjoy the fiction. The main character had just discovered an ancient inheritance in a cave and was about to unlock his third meridian. I’d been following the story for four hundred chapters and the guy still hadn’t learned basic accounting. It was escapism at its finest — a world where problems were solved with swords and face-slapping instead of spreadsheets and quarterly reviews.
"If I had half the power this guy had," I muttered, thumbing the screen as I stepped off the curb, "I'd make this city move an inch to the left just to get some breathing room."
The universe, it turns out, has a very twisted sense of irony.
A delivery van for "Reliable Plumbing Services"—a company that clearly hasn't performed a reliable plumbing service in decades—was barreling through the red light. The driver was eating a sandwich, his eyes glued to the dashboard. He didn't see the light. He didn't see the crosswalk. He definitely didn't see me.
The sound was the first thing. A screech of rubber that sounded like a banshee catching its tail. Then, the blinding, all-consuming glare of halogen headlights.
There was no slow-motion. No life flashing before my eyes. Just the sudden, violent realization that my next chapter was going to be a lot different than I expected. The last thought I had, before the metal met my ribs, was a bitter, cynical hope that the next life at least had better plumbing.
The impact was a dull, sickening thud. The world spun, then tore. The sky wasn't gray anymore; it was a kaleidoscope of fractured light and burning, static-filled static. I was flying.
[System Initializing... ERROR: Sector 4-B missing. Retrying... ERROR: Sector 9-C corrupted. Patching with generic asset... Welcome, Caelan MacGregor.]
The last thing I heard isn't the van driver screaming or the sound of the ambulance. It was the sound of a Windows 95 startup chime, distorted and dying.
Then, the darkness—and the promise of a very, very long, very, very broken paperwork assignment. I could feel the bureaucratic gears of a thousand useless deities grinding to life, and I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was going to hate it here.
The last thought I had before the void swallowed me whole wasn't about my family. Or my unfinished business. Or the meaning of existence.
It was: I wonder if they at least have good coffee.
[SYSTEM: WELCOME, CAELAN MACGREGOR. YOU HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED TO SECTOR 9-C. YOUR ORIENTATION PACKET IS... CORRUPTED. PLEASE STAND BY.]
Great. Even the afterlife had IT issues. Somewhere in the distance, I could swear I heard a dial-up tone. Then the void swallowed me, and I stopped hearing anything at all.