Because of the return of magic, invasion from another dimension, and the advent of the System with its literal blue screens of death, the old world ended.  In the barren wastes of a once tropical paradise, villagers find an old-world relic and mistake it for a new world artifact. Then greed follows them home. Zoe Nix and Arx, an Artificial Intelligence, find themselves alone in the world after their village is destroyed. Zoe must deal with the loss of her family and way of life. Arx must reconcile its new role as an enslaved Dungeon Core rather than the controlling intelligence for a solar system spanning industrial and tourism empire. Can they survive, let alone thrive, in a universe where magic, hostel creatures, nefarious people, and self-organizing dark matter reign supreme?