The Arithmetic of Decay (House Valdor Chronicles Book 1)

Kaelen Valdor shouldn't be alive. The fever that killed the last Baron should have been the end — but for an Archmage's consciousness thrust into a dying noble's body, it's only the beginning. Awakening in a crumbling estate with a town on the brink of starvation, Kaelen discovers that raw magical power won't save Oakhaven. The aqueducts are failing, the fields are poisoned with mana-rot, and rival House Vane circles like vultures waiting for the final collapse. In a world where ancient catastrophe has left the land itself corrupted, survival demands more than spells — it requires engineering genius, architectural innovation, and the cold mathematics of infrastructure. But the body he inhabits is not his. Every spell he casts accelerates its decay. Every working he forces through borrowed flesh costs him time he cannot afford. Kaelen must rebuild his barony before the body gives out — and before the Bleed, a reality-warping wasteland that devours everything it touches, reaches Oakhaven's walls. As his innovations draw dangerous attention from the Crown, the Church, and powers that remember the Archmages' fall, he faces a question with no clean answer: Can one man's blueprint save a world that's forgotten how to build? For readers who want to see how the world is built — not just saved.