Battle-Witch's Warrior Thrall (post-apocalyptic cultivators and rifts, and a slow-building reverse harem)

Ex-soldier IT guy Jayce runs into a coworker from marketing Anat who is a former fencer and lifetime occult enthusiast on the way home from an ordinary day at work. But this evening, the whole world changes as the laws of quantum physics shift.

Zero-point energy can be manipulated through conscious will as magic, mana, or qi. But the greater energy in every bit of empty space washes out the voltage differences that computers and other electronics need to function. And it denies fast chemical reactions like explosions the steep energy gradients they need to progress rapidly. Suddenly, most technology from computers to guns no longer functions, and the millions of people who've implanted neural augmentation malfunction and become uncontrollably violent.

Worse, magic destabilizes the veil between realms, opening the world to invasive beings from numerous hells. Rifts between worlds open randomly, allowing diabolic creatures to hunt earth life and eventually consume the world. But within the hells are enclaves from another world that is in the process of being consumed, and potential allies.

I've wanted to see what it looks like for people to build a magic system mostly from scratch. Similarly, how did the sects in other stories form? And in the future of the story there may be time travel to an ancient age of magic and some highly alternative history stuff. Some of my major influences are Geralt and Yennifer of The Witcher especially as represented in The Last Wish, and the dynamic between Naomi and Amos in The Expanse. Anat is the MC, while Jayce is the POV character.

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]