Lucas "Santorin" Larsen has signed with NA Challenger Series team Ember, the organization announced Saturday.

In a statement, Ember CEO Jonathan Pam said the team chose to sign the former Team SoloMid jungler partially because Ember's current jungler, Juan "Contractz" Garcia, is to young to be eligible for the 2016 NA LCS Summer Split Promotion Tournament.

Santorin previously played for Huma, a team in EU Challenger. Huma's head coach and analyst recently accused the team's owner, Behdad Jaafarian, of not paying staff and players in a timely fashion. A report by the Daily Dot's Jacob Wolf alleged Jaafarian was looking to sell of Santorin's contract to make up for the team's financial difficulties.

Prior to joining Huma, Santorin played for Team SoloMid in the NA LCS. He helped the team take first place in the 2015 Spring Playoffs and second in the 2015 Summer Playoffs.

Contractz is currently 16 years old, one year below Riot's age restriction for play in the LCS and the promotion tournament. Pam stated that he was initially signed under the assumption that taking first in the Challenger Series would lead to automatic promotion as it had in the past, but Riot's recent rule change prevented that. He said Contractz is not leaving the organization, and that the team is still looking to focus on top NA players.

"Make no mistake — we are still dedicated to developing local talent," he said. "We held numerous tryouts for many of the top free agents in North America, but none of them fit our team as well as Santorin."

According to the statement, Santorin's contract stipulates he will receive $105,000, with an $80,000 base annual salary and $25,000 in bonuses. This makes him the highest-paid member of Ember, with a base salary $15,000 higher than Colin "Solo" Earnest and Greyson "Goldenglue" Gilmer before bonuses.

Santorin's first game with Ember will be on March 8, in a playoffs semifinals series against Team Dragon Knights. The top two teams from the playoffs will qualify for the promotion tournament, where they'll face off against the bottom three teams from the NA LCS for one of three spots in the Summer Split.

Daniel Rosen is a news editor for theScore eSports. You can follow him on Twitter.