The last thing Alex Chen remembered was the searing, blue-light glare of his 32-inch monitor and the sickening taste of lukewarm, day-old coffee. He was a 28-year-old systems analyst who saw the world not in colors, but in process flows and efficiency metrics. He didn't just read the 50-volume fantasy epic Chronicles of the Starfall Kingdoms; he dissected it. He knew the Hero's war logistics were flawed and the Villainess's tax evasion scheme was childishly simple. His true passion was internally screaming at fantasy world-building incompetence.
He'd pulled an all-nighter finishing a massive client project, and as a "reward," he'd settled into his threadbare couch to re-read the final volume. He'd drifted off, the heavy, leather-bound collector's edition resting on his chest, convinced that even in sleep, his brain was correcting the world's stupid, two-field crop rotation system.
Now, he was awake.
The light was aggressively bright. Not the soft, diffused LED glow of Alex Chen's cramped Taipei apartment, but a blinding, unfiltered golden assault. He tried to raise his hand, but his arm felt like a foreign object made of loosely packed sand. A second attempt allowed him to observe the hand itself. It was long, slender, and unnervingly pale—the kind of hand that had never struggled to lift a laptop.
"What the...?" Alex mumbled. His voice was a raspy, unfamiliar baritone, and the sound of it sent a shiver of dread down his spine.
He sat bolt upright in a massive, four-poster bed draped in moth-eaten silk. The room was the size of a small public library, yet it felt both cavernous and dusty. The scent was a toxic mix of old lavender, dry rot, and something vaguely medicinal.
He glanced down. Resting beside him was the single, heavy book: Chronicles of the Starfall Kingdoms.
This isn't my apartment. This isn't my body.
Alex swung his legs out of bed. His bare feet landed on cold stone, not his worn wooden floor. He stumbled to a full-length, tarnished silver mirror next to a massive wardrobe.
The face staring back was a stranger's. It was a gaunt, young man with high cheekbones and a look of permanent, sickly confusion. He pressed his temples, trying to force his racing mind into a logical sequence. The crest above the mantel—a crumbling tower over two crossed sickles—triggered an awful, cold wave of recognition.
The Thorne crest.
The face in the mirror—that must be Viscount Arren. A wave of dread, cold and absolute, washed over him. He wasn't just in the book; he was stuck as the character whose entire life was summarized in two introductory paragraphs: a sickly, forgotten noble.
He focused on the key data point. "Okay, Alex. Systems check. Core competency: financial analysis. Current situation: the novel is real, and I am the most disposable piece of it. What's the immediate, most pressing threat?"
He pulled the critical line from his memory, the detail that ended Arren's arc: "The Duke of Valerian quietly acquired the Arren land, the Viscount having succumbed not to his illness, but to the crushing weight of his unpayable debts."
Debt.
The ultimate plot armor weakness.
A small, thin man with the fidgety air of a squirrel and a truly atrocious, greasy haircut bustled into the room without knocking. This was the manor's steward, Master Hemlock, a minor antagonist Alex knew was skimming the coffers to hasten the foreclosure.
"Ah, my Lord! You are awake! You must remain resting, your cough was quite terrible last night," Hemlock chirped, his eyes darting nervously around the room.
Alex forced the weak, aristocratic smile he'd read Arren often used—but his eyes, fueled by years of analyst cynicism, were hard. "Hemlock. My head is clearer than it has been in weeks. Tell me. Precisely what sum do I owe, and to whom?"
Hemlock stiffened, his squirrely eyes widening with alarm. "My Lord, such matters... they are far too tedious for your noble constitution! Let us focus on your health, and leave the dull numbers to your devoted steward!"
Alex's smile widened, but the amusement was predatory. This was it. The first antagonist was not a fire-breathing dragon, but a glorified accountant with sticky fingers.
"Hemlock," Alex said, leaning forward in a predatory crouch. "As of today, the tedious numbers are my health. Bring me every single ledger, every receipt, and every promissory note in this entire, dusty manor. All of it. And if I find one copper missing, I will have you introduced to a concept this medieval hellhole desperately lacks: auditing."
Hemlock swallowed hard, looking like a deer who had just realized the hunter wasn't using a bow, but a high-powered statistical software package. The plot was already deviating.
Next priority: Find a pen that doesn't use a feather, and for the love of the stars, introduce these people to the concept of double-entry bookkeeping. It's time to quantify the fantasy.