Kestrelgate has one season to answer the Crown's muster or be struck from the Rolls forever. Halden Cray has one season to learn the deadline is the least of the fortress's problems.
He rode north for a fortnight, to sign for a dead brother's log and maul and go home again. Instead the last standing Watch on a forgotten border enlists him by accident, the ancient Rollstone tasting his blood on a re-cut name and naming him its first Castellan candidate in thirty-one years. Now the strike-off notice on the gatehouse door has his name on it too.
The Six Answers are simple to list and brutal to earn in one season: a warranted keeper, a roll of the living sworn, a gate held daily, a beacon lit, a winter's stores proven, and walls that stand. Fail any of them by Midsummer Muster, and a charter company with impeccable paperwork and real sympathy buys the whole valley to keep as a beautiful, empty monument. The fortress cannot be bought, hired, or shortcut into being saved. It has to be stood, gate by gate, rite by rite, by people willing to say a name out loud and mean it.
The closer Midsummer gets, the more Halden learns why the border has been rotting for three decades in the first place. The peace that ended the war down south never actually reached this valley. Out past the walls, old soldiers still hold posts nobody relieved them from. The Crown's clock and the war's clock are not the same clock, and only one of them can be beaten with a hammer and a deadline.
He rode north for a fortnight, to sign for a dead brother's log and maul and go home again. Instead the last standing Watch on a forgotten border enlists him by accident, the ancient Rollstone tasting his blood on a re-cut name and naming him its first Castellan candidate in thirty-one years. Now the strike-off notice on the gatehouse door has his name on it too.
The Six Answers are simple to list and brutal to earn in one season: a warranted keeper, a roll of the living sworn, a gate held daily, a beacon lit, a winter's stores proven, and walls that stand. Fail any of them by Midsummer Muster, and a charter company with impeccable paperwork and real sympathy buys the whole valley to keep as a beautiful, empty monument. The fortress cannot be bought, hired, or shortcut into being saved. It has to be stood, gate by gate, rite by rite, by people willing to say a name out loud and mean it.
The closer Midsummer gets, the more Halden learns why the border has been rotting for three decades in the first place. The peace that ended the war down south never actually reached this valley. Out past the walls, old soldiers still hold posts nobody relieved them from. The Crown's clock and the war's clock are not the same clock, and only one of them can be beaten with a hammer and a deadline.
- Restoration progression LitRPG with a hard deadline and real consequences
A post-epic fantasy setting: the war is over, but nobody told the frontier
A fifty-three-year-old tradesman protagonist, competence over chosen-one
A found-family garrison of cooks, smiths, old soldiers, and one very patient drake
Zero romance, zero combat, a sarcastic System that never once lies to you
Genre: GameLit
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