Ash and Coin

In the Republic of New Albion, a disgraced tax investigator turned archaeologist unearths an ancient mass grave. When his colleagues begin dying in ritualistic ways, he discovers the excavation is a trap set by a millennia-old secret society that now manipulates the state's AI-driven financial surveillance network. In the style of John le Carré, the true horror is not the supernatural, but the cold architecture of human conspiracy that renders moral certainty obsolete.