The Foundation of Smoke and Steel Volume 1

He left one world behind. The next one won't let him go.

Daniel Zhou knew how to break things.

Back in San Francisco, he was a quiet engineering student with a martial arts obsession, a fractured past, and a talent for analyzing systems. But when a violent act and an ancient artifact tear him from everything he knows, Daniel awakens in a world of nobles, mana, and gods—and in someone else’s body.

Ethan Zhou, the boy whose name he now wears, was supposed to be a political pawn—married into the powerful House Li, exiled from court, forgotten.

But Daniel isn’t here to play a role.

He’s here to build something better.

As the empire’s magical infrastructure begins to fail, and ancient Rifts spill danger into the world, Daniel turns to the only thing he’s ever trusted: logic. With a sword in one hand and a prototype framework in the other, he begins engineering a system that could upend generations of tradition—and expose secrets the noble houses have killed to protect.

But power doesn’t go unanswered.

Between a wife who sees more than she admits, a masked princess who isn’t supposed to exist, and enemies who whisper from behind locked doors, Daniel will have to decide:

Will he play their game?
Or rewrite the rules completely?