The Foundation of Smoke and Steel Paperback

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?