The air in the penthouse office was chilled, scented with ozone and the dizzying height of absolute power. Outside the triple-paned window, the neon grid of Neo-Kyoto looked like a vast, vulnerable circuit board that Elias Vance was preparing to rewire.
Total Fraud Exposed: $1.8 Billion. Recommended Action: Systemic Liquidation.
Elias leaned back in his leather chair. At thirty-five, he was the youngest, most feared figure in global finance, a man whose audit reports were more devastating than any government raid.
A secured, encrypted video link blinked on his main console. The lead director, Silas Kent, spoke, his voice smooth and laced with menace. "Your final report is, shall we say, misinformed. You have drastically undervalued our core assets, Mr. Vance."
Elias's voice was calm and utterly without warmth. "The numbers are not complex, Director Kent. Your operation yields a Negative ROI of 47%. I am initiating the public disclosure protocol at 08:00 hours. GCH will be officially liquidated."
Kent's face flushed crimson. "You foolish, arrogant boy. You think you've won a game of numbers? You're playing with forces you don't comprehend."
Elias shrugged. "If you owned the consequences, Director, you would be negotiating your jail time. Your Asset Valuation has peaked. Prepare for the collapse."
He reached for the button that would send the final, devastating data packet to every financial watchdog in the world.
Victory. The concept was clean, absolute, and highly profitable for his firm.
But the final click never came.
The screen flickered violently. Kent's image on the screen dissolved, replaced by a black void.
"You audited the corporation, Auditor," Kent's distorted voice hissed, now amplified and devoid of human pretense. "But you failed to audit the risk profile of your own ambition."
A hidden panel on the office wall slid open. Elias barely had time to register the impossible danger before a specialized, silent weapon—a corporate executor's tool—discharged a single, definitive round.
Elias felt a sharp, immediate pressure against his chest, followed by a sound that instantly swallowed all thought, all data, and all sensation.
The final cost of failure... is death.
But them something stirred...
A blinding white light.
The white light snapped into a violent maelstrom of images, not his own.
A brief, wretched life. A sickly boy named Rian. The cold stone floor of a minor noble's tower. The constant, crushing weight of scarcity. The despair of a father who called him an idiot. The final, terrifying sight of a System Ledger thrust into his hand by a weeping maid, carrying a debt that would crush a dozen families.
"You must hide, Rian! The Baron will take the deed! He will sell you!"
The memory was raw, emotional, and saturated with the fear of poverty—a fear Elias Vance, the auditor, had never known. The raw emotion of the host body clashed violently with the cold, logical mind of the dying auditor.
The painful, final realization hit Elias as the two identities merged: I am not escaping. I am inheriting a total financial catastrophe.
Then, the world settled into the raw, rough smell of wet ash and ozone.
He opened his eyes to the dim, dusty ceiling of a medieval hovel, and the cold, blue metrics of a strange, alien system.
[The Ascendant Ledger]
Welcome, Auditor Rian Thorne. Current Host Status: Tier 0 (Unawakened).
New Primary Objective: Survival. Critical Debt Liability: 1,500 Gold Marks.
The game was not over. It had simply moved to a new, vastly more complicated jurisdiction.
A/N: The Auditor is down, but not out. He survived the corporate kill-shot, only to inherit a new system and a massive debt. Chapters will be coming in bulk and in regular basis, so, don't forget to add it in your library.