Ether Atlas - The Hidden Grid
F17/100Web serial by Lucas Arden
In 1974, a stranger handed Gary Gygax the rules of D&D. Fifty years later, the world found out why. The System is here. Millions are dead, ancient monuments hum with energy, and human biology has become a character sheet. Arthur Ashworth is a structural engineer who reads monsters like damaged buildings. Donna Callas is a security consultant who fights like she was trained for this. Steve Parr is an archaeologist who just realized his entire career was fieldwork for the apocalypse. Their guide is an alien construct with strong opinions about human architecture and absolutely no intention of telling them anything useful. They were a D&D party every Thursday. Now the dungeons are real, the monsters are real, the stats are real, and the ancient ruins they raid were built by something that has been watching humanity for thirty-five thousand years.