“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” — John Milton, Paradise Lost

  In life, Glenn Garcia was a nobody, a face in the crowd, another soul clocking in and out of existence. Death, ironically, was his origin story.

  After a fatal accident, Glenn awakened in the underworld’s most unlikely place: an office. Offered a job as a Reaper by the god Anubis, he found that the great machinery of eternity ran not on magic or faith, but on paperwork, memos, and inter-departmental feuds.

  During his time as a Reaper, Glenn uncovered the truth behind his own origins.

  His estranged sister Mora, one of the fabled Sisters of Death, had set events in motion that led him to discover who he truly was: a child of Death itself.

  What began as a personal investigation into his parents’ death became something far greater. Glenn learned the sacred balance of life and death, the quiet dignity of guiding souls, and the unbearable cost of compassion.

  He made friends among the dead, learned to laugh in the face of oblivion, and even felt love for the first time, only to watch it all taken by those who sought to weaponize the bureaucracy of the afterlife.

  Now, grief has hardened into resolve.

  Glenn has vowed to climb the corporate ladder of eternity, to rise through the ranks, confront the corruption festering in the system, and make certain no innocent soul suffers needlessly again in the afterlife.

  If the first book was about learning to accept death, this one is about learning to survive suffering.

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  Welcome to Lower Management, the region mortals commonly refer to as Hell.

  Nearly every culture on Earth imagined such a place.

  There are countless places where those souls go to suffer recorded in human myth. From the fiery Gehenna and the frozen Niflheim to Mictlan, Yomi, Guinee, Irkalla, Tartarus, and dozens more.

  Each has different architecture and rules, yet all share a single conviction: suffering is necessary.

  Why? Well, I don’t have the answer to that.

  But suffering feels human. Not divine.

  It gives shape to guilt, to longing, to the weight of choices.

  People have always believed pain must mean something. Is it the only way we humans know we are capable of love and healing?

  Sometimes, though, suffering is simply self-inflicted, a punishment we invent to convince ourselves that life has balance.

  Glenn still reels from the loss of his friends.

  He has learned that death is final only for the body; suffering belongs to those left behind.

  And in the great corporate maze beneath creation, suffering has become weaponized to keep those from achieving greatness.

  Lower Management doesn’t want to see your full potential. They do not want you to succeed and they will use your suffering to keep you down.

  He thinks he’s ready for his promotion.

  He believes he understands pain.

  But as the gates of Lower Management open, Glenn Garcia is about to discover that Hell is not a place of fire.

  It’s another gear in the cog of an organization.

  And he’s its newest victim.