The Engineer of Westmarch

Marcus Aldridge is a software architect at the top of his game, until he wakes up in a dungeon, inhabiting the body of Cedric Thornhaven, a disgraced nobleman sentenced to hang for high treason. The shackles on his wrists aren’t just iron, they’re circuit boards carved in runic code, siphoning his mana like a parasitic feedback loop.

Marcus doesn’t pray for salvation. He reverse-engineers his escape.

Arriving in Westmarch, the crumbling estate he now legally owns, Marcus discovers a town bleeding to death. The Royal Academy of Magic has embedded tithe-wards into every stone and grain exchange, extracting ambient mana from the land and its people at a sixty-eight percent rate. The locals aren’t just poor; they’re drained. Magic, in this world, is a monopoly enforced by decree, and breaking that monopoly means challenging the Crown itself.

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