The Roads We Claim

Owen Hale took food and fuel that weren't his. Now he has to give them back. Ridgeway Yard came through the flood with seventeen people, a working bench and a debt: a hundred and seventy days of food and six gallons of diesel taken from Pike's reserve. Owen means to return every bit of it, in person, to the people who went without. Up the west-bank road, at an old rock cut called Black Cut, Pike's powered hoist swings freight above eight people who live below it. The road is public. The machine is not. And the outer frame of the node powering it is under dangerous strain. Back at the yard, a marked strip on an old truck keeps creeping higher — a warning of mounting pressure that no one knows how to relieve. Owen is a Fieldwright: the places he repairs and puts to use become skills he can carry. But his hands are wearing out, his four skill slots are full, and every ability he takes out the gate means leaving another behind. A new workshop, a rented lathe and a skill that seals steel in seconds can't solve a problem that belongs to everyone — not unless the people who live with it choose to close the gate themselves. The Roads We Claim is Book 4 of the Fieldwright series: a post-apocalyptic base-building LitRPG about repair, responsibility and the hard work of holding a community together.