Alistar Thorne was experiencing a sensation even the constant threat of existential boredom had failed to deliver: a rising tide of human, organizational satisfaction.
The Guild Annex shed was a miserable wooden cube located behind the main building, usually reserved for storing broken training dummies and expired rations. But today, it was Alistar's office, and he was transforming it. His current D-rank assignment was simple: Catalog and Organize Annex Inventory, Phase I.
He stood back, admiring his work. The new shelf unit, a cheap but structurally sound piece of modular wood, held ropes neatly coiled, shovels arranged by blade width, and minor enchanted lanterns stacked in descending order of luminance. Each item had been logged on a separate, color-coded index card.
"A system," Kael'thas thought, the cynical Lich trapped within the flesh suit of Alistar. "Absolute, beautiful, repeatable order. This is the only way to manage a mortal lifespan: by segmenting its finite energy into manageable, logical blocks. My empire was never this tidy."
He checked his wrist—the bare, mortal skin felt wrong, devoid of the necessary runic seals of power—but his analog watch confirmed he was thirty seconds ahead of schedule for the 'Organized Shelf Certification'. The promised 5% salary bonus was a genuine, terrifying motivation.
High atop the shadowed bluff, in her baroque manor, Vampire Lord Seraphina watched the small Annex shed through a scrying pool of polished blood. Her expression was a mask of cold, analytical dread.
"Look at him, Marcus. The perfection," she hissed, gesturing to the pool. Alistar was adjusting a coil of rope by a mere half-inch. "He is not simply organizing. He is establishing contingency logistics. Ropes first, for binding strategic targets. Shovels next, for rapid excavation or entrenchment. Lanterns—a coordinated signal system."
Marcus, pale and sweating, adjusted his tie. "My Lady, perhaps he just wants a tidy shelf?"
Seraphina's amber eyes flared with scorn. "Tidiness is a symptom of mastery, fool! The Lich prepares his forward supply cache. If we allow him to consolidate this base, his bureaucratic infection of Oakhaven will be irreversible. We must execute the counter-measure now."
She raised a single, elegant hand, black magic coalescing around her fingertips—a forbidden, complex spell designed for covert, surgical destruction. "The objective is to eliminate the strategic assets and force the Lich to overreact. He will expose himself by defending his territory."
The Vampire Lord released the spell. It was a silent, black thread of entropy, calibrated with millennia of dark precision, traveling at the speed of thought toward the Guild Annex shed. Its sole purpose was to cause the structural integrity of the wooden shelving unit to fail in a catastrophic, cascading collapse.
Alistar, twenty feet away, was filing the final index card.
Then, the world ended.
Not with a flash of infernal fire, nor the scream of a cosmic entity, but with a horrifying, grinding crack followed by a devastating crash.
The magical entropy thread had struck its target perfectly. The entire modular shelving unit disintegrated into a chaotic pile oflumber, rope, lanterns, and index cards. Shovels clattered, ropes tangled, and the small, minor lanterns were smashed, their tiny, useless enchantments flickering out.
The building did not shake. The structure was intact. Only the shelves and their contents were destroyed.
Alistar stood frozen. His internal monologue, the cynical, detached voice of the Immortal Emperor, was abruptly replaced by a single, shattering thought: The system is compromised.
He fell to his knees, not in fear of the magical attack, but in raw, animal panic at the sight of the mess. The assassination attempt was irrelevant. The magical residue was beneath contempt. The true catastrophe was the inventory loss.
The color coding! The alphabetical organization! I spent two hours separating the shovels by their primary function! Now they are mixed with the rope! I cannot even begin to trace the damage without Form G-47: Inventory Irregularity Assessment! And G-47 requires pre-approval from the Logistics Department, which is closed on Tuesdays!
The psychological pain was immense. It felt sharper and more terrifying than the moment he had faced down a celestial army. That had been an equation; this was chaos. This was unrecoverable, low-level mess.
He began frantically sifting through the rubble, ignoring the scent of ozone left by Seraphina's spell. He found a snapped shovel handle. That meant Form D-91: Tool Damage Report. He found a tangled mass of rope. That meant logging it as Class C-2: Unsalvageable Bulk Material, which would require a transfer form and likely a signature from the Guild Master himself.
His mind, once capable of tracking the movement of ten thousand souls simultaneously, was now consumed by one question: Did the damage nullify his 'Organized Shelf Certification' progress?
He heard a faint, high-pitched ringing in his ear, the vestigial trace of the Vampire Lord's powerful spell. He ignored it. It was background noise. The true, soul-shattering threat was the need to locate the small, printed Guild Annex Safety Manual to check the acceptable percentage threshold for unplanned structural failure.
Alistar, sweat dripping onto the crushed index cards, kept muttering a mantra to himself: "Salvageable, Class C-2, transfer form, G-47 pre-approval…"
He was utterly defeated by a pile of broken wood and the overwhelming horror of paperwork.