Evan Marshall never imagined his life would spin in such a strange direction. He was a model arms maker a craftsman who worked in a quiet Denver workshop surrounded by tiny metal parts glue bottles sanding tools and half finished displays. His world was measured in millimeters and tiny adjustments. Every project relied on his steady hands and quiet focus. Most people saw models as toys but he saw logic inside every curve and every screw. He lived in precision and small scale engineering and he enjoyed it because it always made sense.

One late night he sat at his bench working on a miniature railgun model. The thing was only twelve inches long but its interior was packed with delicate coils and layers. Evan checked the alignment adjusted a tiny copper plate and smiled to himself. Good fit nice slide this is clean work.

Then the lights flickered. At first he thought it was the old building. It happened every winter when the heater kicked in. But the bulbs flickered again this time with a strange pulse as if something was breathing inside the wiring. Evan looked up confused. A vibration traveled up through the floor and into his chair. His tools rattled on the table.

The air twisted. Not thick fog not smoke not heat haze. More like the air itself folded lines pushing through each other. Before Evan could stand a sharp ringing struck inside his head like someone tapping a bowl near his ear. His vision stretched into a strange spiral. The workshop dissolved.

He reached out for the table but his hand fell through empty space. The lights the shelves the tiny railgun pieces everything vanished at once. Evan dropped into a tunnel of color with no sense of direction. He felt weightless then heavier then weightless again. His breath was pulled from him and returned all at once.

The fall ended with a thud. Dirt hit his palms. Grass brushed his arms. The smell of cold air and pine hit him before he even dared to open his eyes.

When he finally looked up he was in a forest that did not belong anywhere near Colorado. Trees rose too tall branches curved in unnatural ways and blue lights flickered between the trunks like floating bugs.

“What the hell” he whispered. His voice sounded too loud in the still air.

He got up brushed dirt off his jeans and checked his pockets. His multitool was still there so was a tiny microfile no bigger than a toothbrush. At least his hands knew the comfort of familiar tools.

Far off something echoed. A shout. Then another. Evan turned toward the sound. Yellow sparks flashed between the distant trees. Not sparks from a fire but sparks that moved in lines like streaks of glowing air.

Curious and cautious he walked toward it.

He reached a clearing where several armored men were struggling with a huge creature that looked like a bear shaped out of stone. Each soldier carried a massive metal tube glowing with unstable blue light. They fired blasts of raw energy but every shot missed by several feet. The recoil threw their aim wild sending them stumbling backward.

Evan froze. The weapons were crude oversized unbalanced and built with no precision. He could see the flaws from across the clearing. The mana lines were uneven. The grip was bulky. The ignition chamber pulsed irregularly. Whoever made these weapons had no concept of micro structure or flow control.

One soldier tripped and fell as the rock beast lunged. Evan did not think. He acted. He grabbed a dropped weapon rolled to the side barely avoiding a swipe of stone claws and braced the weapon under his arm.

The design was absurdly bad but he could feel the internal channels. The mana core was overloaded the firing path misaligned. So Evan shifted his hand slightly adjusted his stance and fired in a stable line.

The blast struck the creature’s left joint with sharp accuracy shattering stone. The beast roared and collapsed. The soldiers stared.

“Who are you” one of them asked breathless.

Evan lowered the weapon. “Someone who understands why your stuff keeps missing.”

The men exchanged looks. One of them bowed half in confusion half in gratitude.

“Please come with us. Our commander will want to see you. That shot should not have been possible with this thing. Not without magic control training.”

Evan blinked. “Magic control what”

They insisted but he was already thinking. If this world used weapons like this and if he really was stuck here then he had just found the only advantage he could rely on. He understood structure and flow. He understood balance.

And these people clearly did not.

He followed them deeper into the forest toward a fortress. Inside his mind gears turned. He had no clue where he was but he knew this for sure.

If this world ran on magic instead of circuits then he was about to rebuild all of it. One tiny improvement at a time.