Rune and Rebar

Garrett Cole is a structural ironworker. Thirty-four years old, union card, fifteen years of overhead welding. When the sky cracked and the System handed him a class, it gave him something called Runic Vanguard and the ability to carve magic into metal. His daughter is forty miles east. That's his whole plan. Between him and her: a collapsed city, monsters leaking out of dungeon rifts, a settlement that needs a crafter badly enough to trap him, and a Break timer that doesn't care about any of his personal problems. No prophecy. No cheat power. Just a man who builds things, a forge he keeps setting up in whatever building still has a roof, and the understanding that if he makes good enough weapons, he might actually make it. System apocalypse LitRPG. Slow burn, hard payoff, real crafting progression.