Johnny Foster was three days from homeless and one bad morning from giving up.
Then he bid sixty dollars on the wrong pallet.
It should have been junk. Instead, Pallet 13 held a dead knight’s legacy: a sword that glows, rings that will not come off, bags that hold more than they should, coins from a mint no country on Earth ever stamped, and one legendary artifact that wakes something called the System and marks Johnny as a Traveler.
He does not go alone.
When the transfer takes him, it takes his whole registered party: Miki, the brilliant, dangerous professional companion who was hired to keep him alive and has her own reasons for steering him; Diana, who catalogs miracles like a scientist and befriends anything with a pulse; Tessa, who reads every contract twice and spots the trap three pages early; and Derek, seven feet of gentle bard who has waited his whole life for a world that would let him sing at it.
Ardor is everything the games promised and none of what they prepared him for. Stats are real. Classes kill. Gods hand out quests for their own amusement. Death comes with rules, a budget, and a waiting room. $0.99 on Kindle.
