The Engineer of Westmarch (The Reforged Realms Series Book 1)

Marcus Aldridge is a software architect at the top of his game — until he wakes up in a dungeon, inhabiting the body of Cedric Thornhaven, a disgraced nobleman sentenced to hang for high treason. The shackles on his wrists aren't just iron — they're circuit boards carved in runic code, siphoning his mana like a parasitic feedback loop.Marcus doesn't pray for salvation. He reverse-engineers his escape.Arriving in Westmarch — the crumbling estate he now legally owns — Marcus discovers a town bleeding to death. The Royal Academy of Magic has embedded tithe-wards into every stone and grain exchange, extracting ambient mana from the land and its people at a sixty-eight percent rate. The locals aren't just poor; they're drained. Magic, in this world, is a monopoly enforced by decree, and breaking that monopoly means challenging the Crown itself.But Marcus isn't a mage. He's an engineer. Where Academy-trained mages see sacred rites, Marcus sees recursive loops and bottlenecks. Where they see gatekept power, he sees a broken system begging to be patched.Armed with ledgers, copper wire, charcoal schematics, and one point of mana, Marcus begins his revolution from the ground up. He teaches a scullery boy that magic is conductivity, not bloodline. He builds a system that gives commoners access to what the Academy spent generations hoarding.The Academy will come for him. The Crown has already signed his death warrant. And the system he's building — one that teaches commoners the code of the universe — is the most dangerous heresy in the realm.For fans of progression fantasy, kingdom building, and protagonists who outthink rather than outfight.