TheArchitekt

One minute, Kaelan was just a guy on a bus trying to survive a long drive. The next, he’s standing in a place that feels too bright, too perfect, and way too organized. While everyone else is distracted by the "miracle," Kaelan is the only one noticing the cracks in the floor. He's the only one seeing the way their hosts are looking at them, not as people, but as inventory. The group is being divided. The lucky ones are being promised the world. Kaelan is about to find out what happens to the ones who get left behind. In a world that only wants the best, being average isn't just a bummer. It's a death sentence.

Thrown into a world of magic, monsters, and merciless hierarchy, Kaelan was never meant to be a hero—until he broke the rules. Nineteen-year-old Kaelan is just another face in the crowd—quiet, observant, and wholly unremarkable. That is, until he and a dozen others are torn from Earth and thrust into Aethel, a realm in desperate need of champions to stand against the Demon Lord. In the sacred Cathedral of Lumina, the newly summoned are glorified and gifted powerful "Hero Class" Traits—except for Kaelan. While others bask in their S-Rank destinies, Kaelan is handed a cruel joke: the F-Rank Trait Fleeting Steps, a so-called “Minor Agility Boost.” Dismissed by priests, stripped of his freedom, and branded Crown Property, Kaelan is condemned alongside the other F-Ranks to a life of toil and torment. But Kaelan refuses to break. Quietly defiant, he begins testing the limits of his worthless Trait—only to discover it's not so worthless after all. In a daring escape, he uncovers a critical flaw in the world’s magical System: Fleeting Steps has no cooldown. And its effects stack. Endlessly. What begins as a bid for survival spirals into something much more dangerous. With every activation, Kaelan grows faster—faster than thought, faster than light, faster than the gods ever intended. Now on the run in a deadly world, he’s no longer the weakest summoned hero. He's a glitch in the System. A fugitive. And maybe… the world’s last hope.

His brother vanished searching for a myth. To find him, Alex Ryder must fall out of reality. He clipped through the world and landed in the Backrooms, an endless prison of damp carpets and buzzing lights. Now, following a trail of clues left by his lost brother, Alex must navigate thousands of impossible levels, outsmart things that hunt in the dark, and uncover the terrifying secret at the heart of this cosmic error. In the Backrooms, the only thing more dangerous than the monsters is the truth.