He woke to the sound of chewing.
Not soft. Not human. Wet. Ragged. Like bone being ground against pavement.
His eyes snapped open.
Rotting wood above him. A crumbling ceiling. A half-collapsed shack stinking of mildew and piss. He was lying on the floor—cold, starving, and shaking uncontrollably.
What the hell—
Pain surged through his skull like a lightning bolt. Aidan gasped, curling in on himself as a flood of memories tore through him.
But they weren't his memories.
They belonged to someone else.
Another Aidan.
An orphan. Homeless since the collapse. Scavenging for scraps. Beaten to death over a piece of moldy bread in the backstreets of Sector 17. A world gone mad with plague and blood.
It hit him all at once. The fever. The mutation. The Collapse.
Seven days of burning sickness spread across the world. When people recovered, they either came back… wrong—or came back stronger. Some turned into beasts. Others became monsters.
And the rest? They just tried not to die.
Aidan gritted his teeth and forced himself up, still breathing hard. His skin was pale, but no longer bleeding. The cracked ribs from the last memory were healed.
He looked down at his hands.
Thinner. Scarred. Dirty fingernails and rope burns around the wrists. He touched his face—narrower. Hungrier. A stranger's.
This wasn't his body.But it was his life now.
Outside, the chewing stopped.
He peeked through a gap in the wall.
A humanoid figure knelt in the alley, hunched over a corpse, jerking and twitching like a puppet. Its skin was gray and stretched, its limbs longer than they should've been. A sticky trail of black saliva dripped from its maw.
Zombie.
But not like the ones in movies.
This one looked smart. Controlled.
Aidan's heart pounded. He looked around the shack—no weapons. No food. Only a broken chair and a rusted pipe near the door.
He grabbed the pipe.
The system's voice echoed in his head the moment his hand closed around it.
[Crimson Ledger online.][Welcome, Host. Life debt acknowledged.]
"Trade access: Level 1.""Coin balance: 0.""Physical body: Malnourished. Strength: Below standard."
Another pang of pain hit his temple, followed by a flickering red screen:
Status: Aidan Cross
Level: 1Health: 42 / 100Strength: 5Agility: 5Endurance: 4Intelligence: 7Perception: 6Luck: 1Coins: 0Abilities:
Undying Regeneration (Passive)
Crystal Focus (Passive)
Critical Hit Lv.1 (Active, 1% chance)
"System?" he whispered.
"The Crimson Ledger is not a toy, debtor. You're alive on borrowed capital. Kill, earn, pay, rise. Or die again."
"...What do I pay with?"
"BloodCoins. Dropped from mutated entities. Only visible to you. Only you can collect. Trade them for survival. Or die poor and forgotten."
The zombie outside twitched its head.
Aidan held his breath.
No food. No strength. No choice.
He tightened his grip on the pipe and opened the door slowly.
The thing looked up.
Its eyes were sunken. Empty. But it smiled when it saw him.
And charged.
Aidan screamed and swung wildly. The first hit missed. The second cracked against the creature's side—but barely slowed it.
It knocked him down, teeth snapping inches from his throat.
Panic flared—but then something inside him snapped.
[Critical Hit activated.]
He drove the pipe up into the creature's throat.
It shrieked—a high-pitched, inhuman sound—before going limp and sliding off him.
He lay there panting. Covered in its blood. Still shaking.
And then—
[+1 Crystal Fragment][+1 BloodCoin acquired.]
The coin shimmered red, floating in the air like a ghost of flame.
Aidan reached out, and it disappeared into his palm.
"Welcome to the trade, debtor. Try not to die before the market opens."
[+1 Crystal Fragment acquired.][+1 BloodCoin acquired.]
The glowing coin vanished into his hand, absorbed painlessly. But the fragment remained—jagged, pale purple, and pulsing softly like a dying ember. Aidan stared at it, breathing hard.
Before he could touch it—
[Analyzing Crystal Fragment…]"Tier: F (Unstable)Type: Inert BasePurity: 23%Conversion Potential: Low"
"Warning: Raw crystal fragments must be refined or combined to unlock ability imprinting. Attempting to absorb in current state may result in mutation or neural decay."
His fingers froze an inch from the shard.
"Wait—this stuff can kill me if I use it wrong?"
"You're not special. The world is full of corpses who thought they were."
The system's voice was cold. Professional. The kind you'd expect from a loan officer with a gold tooth and a habit of smiling at bankrupt men.
"You want power? You pay for quality. You want miracles? You pay in blood, coin, and coin again. Try gambling with unstable fragments and the market will adjust—permanently."
Aidan carefully pocketed the shard.
Crystal fragments weren't gifts. They were raw stock. Dangerous, volatile, and unfit for use unless processed through the Ledger.
That was the difference.
Others played the game blind.He had a system that could see the fine print.
And now?
He finally had currency.