Synopsis

Derrigan, twenty‑six, is quietly principled: he records favors and kindnesses in a private ledger and treats each entry as a vow. By night he uses the raid name Oliphym to close supernatural gates that open into dangerous salvage dungeons, where promises can literally become currency. When a new gate blooms beside his block and begins feeding on unpaid pledges, Derrigan's small, deliberate life fractures. He rescues and raises several nonhuman‑form wards as a found family, and his protective code — the one thing that will push him past conflict avoidance — hardens around their safety. Midway through the campaign he notices uncanny echoes between his life and a fantasy novel he reads: places, phrases, and figures from the book start appearing in reality. That discovery reframes every choice as either a scripted fate to resist or a pattern to exploit. As other worlds and races begin to merge with the city, political tides swell; a legendary, ostracized would‑be emperor from the book moves from rumor to reality only after contact, and Derrigan must decide whether to covertly aid this rising figure once they finally meet. The Ledger and the Gate becomes a long, slow burn of dungeon action, moral reckoning, and ensemble romance that tests what independence costs when reality itself seems written — and whether shared vows might be the only currency strong enough to close the gates