Mana Empire

Mana is not magic. Mana is money, and bodies are where it comes from.

Renn Kellen walks into Dray with everything he owns in one bag and three months of rent in a single cheap cell. His mother filled it. His whole family filled it, month on month, sitting on a bench at the village collection house with their sleeves up, giving up their mana so the youngest could go to the city and make something of himself.

He has one open door. An internship at Vantage Tower. It pays nothing.

At the top of the city, mana buys what money should not be able to buy. A man steps off a high floor and comes down to the street on a soft gold burn at his heels, adjusts his cuff, and walks on without looking at the ground he was flying over. In a warm room upstairs the pure stuff runs into an old man's arm and takes the years back off him, one session at a time.

At the bottom of the city, it comes out of you by the hour. The collection houses are open late, because poverty keeps late hours. You sit on a bolted bench with your sleeve up and a cuff on your arm, and it does not hurt, and that is the worst of it. You stand up slower than you sat down. You go home grey. Nobody looks at anybody in that room. It is the one dignity left to hand out, and they hand it to each other for free.

And the city has a second economy that runs after dark. Men work the streets at night with a crude drain rig in a pack on somebody's back. They pick out the ones walking alone who look poor and easy, herd them into somewhere with no lamps, and take everything a body has. In the morning the guard finds someone grey and emptied with no mark on them and files another report.

It is all the same substance. It only ever moves in one direction.

Renn has three months, one door, and a habit he cannot break of counting what everything costs.

Mana Empire is a long-form dystopian fantasy series. Progression through corporate ranks, intrigue and politics. Combat progression through practical training, understanding and technique. A ruthless world where mana is life or death, wealth and poverty.

Six books planned. Book One complete.