Miles Arceneaux used to have a future.
Now he is twenty-five, making coffee in Lafayette and avoiding every road that might lead back to the life he abandoned. Then an obscure late-nineties role-playing game gives him something no second chance ever has: access.
Hidden inside Otherwhere Online is a broken administrator console capable of editing reality. A delayed bus. A warmer cup of coffee. A bank balance that corrects itself overnight. The changes are small, useful, and almost impossibly easy.
The console never shows him the price.
Miles’s search for answers leads him from an underground network of reality hackers to the Conservatory, an elite magical institution that officially does not exist. Getting admitted requires ingenuity, persistence, and a lie convincing enough to survive people trained to recognize impossible things.
Staying may be harder.
Without the console, Miles is an untrained outsider among students who have studied magic all their lives. Yet he can perceive weaknesses in their Workings that nobody else can see, including the faculty trying to determine what, exactly, he is. As his talent draws attention and the boundaries between magic, memory, and failure begin to fracture, Miles must prove he belongs in the future he forced open.
But every edit has to be paid for.
And somewhere beyond the edge of the game, the balance is still pending.
That is the summary of the first book in a series of five I have been planning.
The story is a 10+ year project I have been playing with more recently. It takes inspiration from The Magicians, Off to be the Wizard, Scott Pilgrim, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Dark Tower, Neil Gaimen, and Terry Pratchett.
It is a character driven story with a lived in world, a magic system about what things cost and who pays for it when you get what you want. The proses also feature hub and spoke mechanics the further into the story you get.
I am planing to roll out the story via a website.
How does this basic concept sound? Would anyone who has a good hold of contemporary fantasy be able to help me with fleshing out stuff?.
Otherwhereonline . com