The blinking cursor on line 4,812 of legacy_code_do_not_touch.js was mocking Daniel. It had been mocking him for the past thirty-six hours, fueled by a toxic sludge that the office claimed was coffee and the kind of soul-deep despair that only a looming deadline, orchestrated by an idiot, could produce.
"We'll just use AI to synergize the workflow!" Chad, the Project Manager with a jawline sharper than his intellect, had declared a month ago. "It'll be disruptive!"
He was right. It had been incredibly disruptive. The "AI-driven platform," which was just a tangled mess of microservices Chad's team had bolted together, hadn't deleted the customer data. It had done something worse: it had corrupted it, subtly and deeply, like a cancer.
After a twelve-hour emergency rollback from fragmented backups, Daniel was now tasked with fixing the bug that caused it. He wasn't on Chad's team; he was the senior dev everyone threw problems at when things inevitably exploded. The actual Team Lead for the Innovations team was, of course, at home enjoying a "sudden and severe sick leave."
Daniel was left to debug code that looked like a bowl of spaghetti had a seizure, trying to prevent the freshly restored database from being turned to gibberish all over again. while the client screamed bloody murder and Chad updated his LinkedIn profile with the keyword "AI Strategist."
A Slack notification pinged. It was his boss, Mr. Henderson.
Henderson: Any ETA, Dan? The client is getting… vocal.
Daniel: Still untangling the AI's 'synergy.' Maybe 8 more hours if I don't sleep.
Henderson: Great! Keep up the rockstar performance! Remember, the client comes first.
Daniel stared at the word "rockstar." Rockstars trashed hotel rooms and partied all night. He was debugging code that looked like a bowl of spaghetti had a seizure, and his only party favor was a creeping carpal tunnel syndrome.
He finally staggered out of the server room at 9 AM, just in time for the daily stand-up meeting. His eyes felt like sandpaper, and he smelled like microwaved despair.
The conference room was a sterile white box of judgment. Chad was pointing at a whiteboard with a green line that was supposed to represent "Progress" but was currently pointing straight at the floor.
"…so as you can see, the initial AI integration phase encountered some unexpected headwinds," Chad was saying, a master of saying nothing with too many words. "But we're leveraging our core competencies to pivot towards a more robust solution."
"The 'headwind' was that your platform corrupted three years of transaction history," Daniel croaked. The room went silent.
Mr. Henderson smiled a smile so tight it could have cracked a walnut. "Daniel, we need solutions, not problems. Let's stay positive."
"The solution is to not let someone who thinks 'algorithm' is a new type of dance fad design our core architecture," Daniel shot back. The filter between his brain and his mouth had disintegrated somewhere around hour thirty.
Chad puffed out his chest. "My design was perfectly sound. The legacy code was just incompatible with forward-thinking innovation."
"The legacy code was working fine until you bolted a woodchipper to it!"
"Daniel, your tone is becoming emotional," Mr. Henderson said, his voice dripping with condescending calm. "I know you're tired. But you are an asset to this company, and we need you to be a team player."
That was when Brenda from HR, who had been sitting silently in the corner like a beige vulture, decided to contribute. "Daniel," she said, her voice a soft weapon of corporate wellness. "I'm sensing a lot of negative energy from you. Have you tried our new mindfulness app? Or maybe you should sign up for the corporate yoga session this Friday. It's great for managing stress."
That was it. The snap.
It wasn't a loud, dramatic crack, but a quiet, clean severance of the last thread holding his sanity together.
Daniel looked from Brenda's placid face, to Chad's smug one, to Henderson's fake-concerned one. He saw his future: an endless parade of meaningless buzzwords, manufactured crises, and suggestions to "manage stress" that was being actively pumped into his veins by the company itself.
"Fuck you," he said.
The silence that followed was exquisite. It was a dense, heavy, art-gallery-level silence. Chad's mouth hung open. Brenda's eyes widened.
Daniel stood up. His chair screeched against the floor.
"Fuck your synergy," he said, pointing at Chad.
"Fuck your rockstar performance," he said, pointing at Henderson.
"And fuck your yoga," he finished, his gaze landing on Brenda. "I quit."
He turned and walked out. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the new junior dev, a kid named Kevin, give him a tiny, terrified thumbs-up from under the table. A flicker of solidarity in a sea of cowards.
Henderson stormed after him. "Daniel, you can't just walk out! You have a mandatory three-month notice period! It's in your contract!"
Daniel arrived at his desk, grabbed the power cord for his laptop, and yanked it from the wall with a satisfying thwump. He coiled it neatly and slammed it onto Henderson's chest.
"There's your notice," he said. "Consider this my exit interview."
The walk home was a blur. Rain began to fall, plastering his thin work shirt to his skin, but he didn't care. He was free. He was also unemployed, terrified, and running on fumes, but mostly free. He looked up at the churning grey sky, a stupid, giddy laugh bubbling in his chest.
"That whole project is going to burn to the ground without me," he muttered to the wind.
The sky answered with a deafening crack of thunder. It wasn't the distant, rumbling kind. It was sharp, right on top of him, and the world flashed a blinding, sickening violet. The ground disappeared. His stomach lurched as if he'd been kicked off a skyscraper. The smell of rain was replaced by sulfur and ozone.
Then, blackness.
When Daniel's eyes fluttered open, the sterile white of the office was gone. He was lying on cold, black obsidian, so polished he could see his own pale, horrified face staring back. The ceiling was hundreds of feet above, carved into the roof of a colossal cavern and held up by pillars of twisted iron and screaming, petrified souls. A faint, menacing chant echoed from somewhere in the distance.
He scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Before him was a throne. It was an intimidating masterpiece of gothic architecture, forged from black metal, jagged bones, and what looked suspiciously like solidified nightmares.
And sitting on it, half-slumped in a gigantic leather beanbag chair, was a figure.
He was tall and vaguely humanoid, with skin the color of ash and two small, elegant horns curling from his temples. He wore silken robes embroidered with sigils that made Daniel's eyes water, but his posture was that of a teenager forced to visit his grandparents. He was holding a shimmering, black crystal the size of a dinner plate, lazily flicking his thumb across its surface. A series of tiny, screaming souls seemed to be scrolling past.
The figure looked up, his crimson eyes filled not with ancient malice, but with profound boredom. He yawned, revealing a set of perfectly white, pointed teeth.
"Took you long enough," the being said, his voice smooth but utterly devoid of energy. "The summoning spell said 'one who has known true, soul-crushing despair.' I was expecting a poet or a philosopher. Got an IT guy instead. Figures."
Daniel could only stammer. "Wh-who are you? Where am I?"
The Dark Lord Xylos tossed his crystal aside. It clattered onto a pile of gold coins and jewel-encrusted goblets.
"Xylos. Dark Lord, Master of the Seventh Circle, Scourge of the Sunlit Lands, et cetera, et cetera," he recited, waving a dismissive hand. "My father was the real go-getter. I mostly inherited. And this," he gestured vaguely at the horrifying cavern, "is the Fortress of Eternal Night. Home."
He leaned forward, a flicker of interest in his eyes for the first time. "I watched your… resignation. The part with the yoga was particularly brutal. Pure, undiluted psychological warfare. I was impressed."
"I… I don't understand."
Xylos stood up, stretching like a cat. "It's simple. My last HR manager was eaten by the orcs. Something about a dispute over dental coverage. My demonic legions are a chaotic mess of union disputes, inter-species rivalries, and payroll nightmares. They're constantly fighting each other instead of the forces of good. It's a logistical nightmare, and frankly, I can't be bothered."
He circled Daniel, inspecting him like a piece of equipment.
"But you," Xylos said, a slow, greedy smile spreading across his face. "You've survived modern corporate politics. You understand pointless meetings, impossible deadlines, and how to crush a soul with a well-timed platitude. You don't just handle chaos; you thrive in it. (iykyk) You are the most qualified candidate I've ever seen."
He snapped his fingers. A scroll of crackling, leathery skin appeared in his hand, tied with a ribbon of dried blood.
"Congratulations, Daniel," the Dark Lord said, unrolling the contract. It glowed with a faint, evil light. "You're hired."
Daniel stared at the infernal document, then back at the lazy, trust-fund demon king. His mind reeled. He had just escaped one soul-sucking hell, only to be headhunted by another. A literal one.
Xylos pointed to a line at the bottom, waiting to be signed.
"Welcome to the team," he said with a smirk. "You're the new Head of HR."