Collateral

Kael Ardyn learned the hard way that knowing when to walk away is a skill nobody teaches you until it's too late.

He didn't walk away. He poured everything he had into a dying company until there was nothing left to pour — and then the floor of his own apartment stopped existing.

Now he's bound to a System called the Ledger, in a world that fractured three hundred years ago when an empire built on that same System collapsed. Power here isn't free. Every gain has to be backed by something real — land held, people bound by contract, structures built and defended — or it decays until it's gone.

Kael has exactly one slot open. One contract. One chance to build something that actually lasts this time.

Somewhere out there, the bloodlines who used to own the Ledger exclusively have just noticed it's bonded to an outsider instead of one of their own.

They have three hundred years of grievance, and they don't intend to wait much longer to collect it.