by rddlr
In a world fractured into seven independent continent-nations, global stability is maintained by a delicate monopoly of resources and the rigid governance of the UnoCon, where "Iron Triads" rule through logic, execution, and emotion. Caspian "Cas" Vane is a physically imposing yet financially destitute Warden from the industrial continent of Antiquis, a man possessing elite-level capabilities who chose the grit of the mines over the corruption of high office. However, his life of nonchalant service is upended when he is "Sifted" and abruptly appointed as the High Minister of the Aegis, a promotion engineered by the powerhouse nation of Aethelgard under the assumption that his "middle-class" naivety would make him a perfect puppet. Alongside his eccentric and fiercely loyal childhood friend, Jax, Cas enters a world of gilded traps and shadow-politics, only to discover that the global "Axiom" of peace is a lie masking the Pangea Protocol—a conspiracy to dismantle continental independence and merge the world into a single, hive-mind empire. Now, the man who was dismissed as an uncalculated variable must use his "unbought" integrity and industrial resourcefulness to dismantle a digital tyranny before the world he spent his life protecting is "recalculated" out of existence.
