Cardborne

When the world ends, it doesn’t go out with a bang — it reshapes. An unexplained apocalypse fractures reality, and in the ashes of civilization, a new rule emerges: your power is your Pokémon card. The rarer the card, the stronger you are. The most coveted of all are the Perfect Ten — real-world Pokémon cards so rare they were once kept in vaults and museums. Now, they decide who lives… and who rules. She was nobody. Just another survivor scavenging New York’s skeleton. Until she finds the rarest card on Earth — a card so powerful it could crown her empress or make her a target of every faction clawing for control. So she hides it. Instead of flaunting power, she builds slowly. Quietly. Saving people, creating alliances, earning loyalty without ever revealing the monster tucked inside her coat. But the world is watching. And when Perfect cards start waking — summoning familiars, warping reality, and choosing their wielders — the game changes. Now, she’s not just surviving. She’s building an empire. From the shattered streets of Manhattan to the ruins of Queens, she carves out territory, forms a Council of the Perfect Ten, and installs herself at the top — not because of the card she holds, but because of what she’s willing to do. There are no second lives. No respawns. This isn’t a game. This is Cardborne.