Recovery Ward

In Saint Veyne, nothing truly disappears. It gets buried, sealed, auctioned, or dragged into the flooded undercity for someone desperate enough to retrieve it. Rook Vale used to be a war-mage. Now he works legal salvage contracts as part of a licensed magitech recovery crew, diving into condemned districts to pull cursed relics, ward-tech, and holy machinery out of places the city would rather forget. It pays well enough to keep breathing. It also shortens the odds every time he casts. When a cathedral-core surfaces beneath a drowned district, the job should have been simple: get in, secure the relic, get out before the zone collapses. Instead, three other claimants move on the target at once — a rival recovery crew, a church-corporation desperate to bury the truth, and a black-market broker who wants to sell the core in pieces. Now Rook has one night, one failing crew, and just enough borrowed magic left to finish the job. If he succeeds, he gets paid.If he fails, Saint Veyne loses another district.And if he learns what cathedral-cores were really built to do, the city may decide it wants him buried with the relic.