The Bone Warden of Aldenmoor

Marco never wanted to be a hero. He just wanted somewhere to stay.

When a starving necromancer stumbles into the dying village of Aldenmoor, he offers the only thing he has: bones that don't tire, corpses that don't complain, and a grim talent most people would rather burn him for. The village elder gives him three days to prove his worth. He gets one chance to not be driven out — or worse.

What follows isn't a rise to godhood. It's slower, stranger, and harder than that. Skeletons plow fields before they guard gates. A dead mercenary becomes the town's first loyal sentinel. Trade roads get built one night-shift of tireless labor at a time. And as Aldenmoor grows from a forgotten hamlet into a town worth taxing, worth fearing, and eventually worth fighting for, Marco discovers that raising the dead is the easy part. Keeping the living from turning on you — or each other — is the real challenge.

He is not a savior. He is not a monster. He is something the old stories never planned for: a necromancer who just wants to build something that lasts.

But power draws attention. A rival necromancer with no patience for half-measures. A lord who can't decide whether Marco is an asset or a liability. A church that watches every grave a little too closely. And something old and hungry, buried in the woods long before Aldenmoor ever existed, that the new road runs a little too close to.

Gritty, grounded, and unflinching about the cost of every level gained, *The Bone Warden of Aldenmoor* follows one young necromancer's slow climb to real power — and the town that rises, brick by brick and bone by bone, right alongside him.