The Sovereign Protocol

Viktor Kross is a courier in a city that has stopped moving. Prague is freezing, the borders are closed, and the power grid is failing. For Viktor, survival means pedaling a battered e-bike through the slush, delivering black-market scraps to the people the state has forgotten. He is invisible. He is powerless. But when a government crackdown traps the woman he loves behind a wall of riot shields and nerve gas, Viktor realizes that being a ghost isn't enough. Then the package arrives. It sits on his doorstep with no return address: a heavy wooden box containing a rusted dagger, a sheaf of ancient vellum, and a syringe filled with black ichor. The Aethelgard Codex isn't a book of spells. It is a biological weapon, a mutagenic key that unlocks potential at the cost of humanity. It demands a sacrifice. It demands pain. To save her, Viktor must stop running. He must open the box, pay the price, and become the thing that hunts the wolves.