Henry Grant had always believed that buildings were safer than people. Buildings followed rules. They obeyed physics. They didn't lie, cheat, or suddenly decide to ruin your life on a Tuesday afternoon.
So when the Grant Tower, his magnum opus, his crowning achievement of fifteen years in architecture, decided to collapse on top of him during the opening ceremony, Henry felt personally betrayed.
The irony wasn't lost on him. An architect killed by his own building. The headlines would have a field day with that one.
He remembered the sound first. A deep groan from somewhere above, like the earth itself was sighing. Then screaming. People running.
The mayor's face going pale as the champagne glass slipped from his fingers. Henry had looked up just in time to see a support beam swinging down toward him like the hand of an angry god.
Then nothing. Or at least, there should have been nothing. Death was supposed to be the end, wasn't it? A nice quiet void where you didn't have to worry about structural integrity or building codes anymore.
Instead, Henry woke up face down in mud. Cold, wet, absolutely disgusting mud that smelled like a medieval cesspit had married a rotting cabbage and raised a family.
He groaned and pushed himself up, spitting out what he desperately hoped was just dirt. His whole body ached like he'd been put through a cement mixer, but at least everything seemed to be attached and functional.
The first thing he noticed was that he wasn't wearing his suit anymore. Instead, he had on some kind of rough woolen tunic that itched like crazy and pants that looked like they'd been sewn by someone who had only heard about pants in theory.
The second thing he noticed was that his hands looked wrong. Younger. Smoother. These weren't the hands of a forty-two-year-old man who'd spent too many years gripping drafting pencils and stress-eating donuts.
"What the hell?" His voice came out different too. Younger, clearer, without the raspy edge he'd developed from too many late nights arguing with contractors.
Henry looked around and immediately wished he hadn't. He was in a village that looked like it had been built by someone who had failed every single architecture class ever invented.
The houses, if you could even call them that, were little more than crooked shacks made of rotting wood and mud. They leaned at angles that made his professional soul scream in horror. Some of them didn't even have proper roofs, just moldy thatch that probably leaked every time someone sneezed nearby.
The streets weren't paved. There were no streets, actually, just muddy paths between buildings that seemed to have been placed completely at random. No urban planning. No zoning laws. No building codes whatsoever. It was an architect's nightmare brought to life.
People were staring at him. Dirty, tired-looking people in clothes that belonged in a historical reenactment, except these looked genuinely worn and patched a hundred times over.
A woman carrying a bucket gave him a suspicious look before hurrying away. A kid with a face covered in grime pointed at him and said something in a language Henry didn't understand.
"Okay," Henry said to himself, trying very hard not to panic. "This is fine."
"This is totally fine. I'm either dead and this is hell, or I'm in a coma and this is the worst fever dream in history, or I've somehow ended up in a Renaissance fair that takes method acting way too seriously."
None of those options were particularly comforting. He stumbled forward, his legs shaky, and nearly tripped over a pothole that was more like a small crater.
The village was even worse up close. Every building looked like it was one strong wind away from total collapse. The foundations, what little he could see of them, were practically non-existent. These structures were just sitting on bare dirt, slowly sinking into the ground like they were trying to return to nature.
It hurt to look at. It physically hurt. Henry was about to sit down and have a proper existential crisis when something happened that made the whole "waking up in a medieval village" thing seem almost normal by comparison.
A voice spoke inside his head. Not his internal monologue, but something else entirely. It was crisp, clear, and distinctly artificial, like a GPS navigation system had gained sentience and decided to live in his brain.
[Building System Activated]
[Scanning new host...]
[Scan complete. Welcome, Architect of the New World.]
Henry froze. "What?"
[You have been selected as the Bearer of the Building System. Your mission is to construct, develop, and elevate civilization through superior architecture and infrastructure.]
"I'm sorry, what?" Henry looked around wildly, but nobody else seemed to hear anything. The villagers just went about their business, stepping around him like he was a particularly large puddle.
[Current Location: Village of Ashvale. Population: 347. Infrastructure Rating: F-. Danger Level: High. Recommendation: Start building immediately or everyone here will probably die within the month.]
"Everyone will what?"
[Die. These buildings are terrible. I am frankly amazed this village still exists.]
Henry opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Of all the things he'd expected from death or comas or whatever this was, snarky system messages were not on the list.
"Are you telling me I'm supposed to save this place by building stuff?"
[Correct. You have been given a second chance to do what you do best. Try not to die this time. I hear it's very permanent in this world.]
Henry looked at the crumbling village around him, at the impossible task being dropped in his lap, and felt something he hadn't felt since the early days of his career. A challenge that makes him at least get a little excited after wherever happens.
"Alright then," he said quietly, a grin starting to form despite everything.
"Let's build something that won't fall down and kill me. That's a low bar, but apparently I need to start somewhere."
[Quest Updated: Build your first structure. Current Blueprint Available: Simple Wooden House.]
[Good luck, Architect. You're going to need it.]