Volume I The The Drowned World and the Lifeline

The water rose. So did the stakes. # For forty-three days Anja’s life was a litany—measure the tide, count the rations, flash a mirror into the grey hoping someone answers. # When a sealed blue barrel appears, it brings medicine and a map to the Lifeline Cooperative. It also unwraps a truth far worse than hunger: the red tide is not a sickness of the ocean but an instrument—deployed with intent from a rusted refinery. # #

Now Anja is pulled from survival’s quiet grind into a high-risk, two-front operation. Sabotage could destroy the refinery’s food and save thousands—but the cost might be the seed bank that secures a future. The Cooperative’s leaders debate whether to strike or to flee with the intel; meanwhile, raiders circle, a traitor walks among them, and the lifelines that once meant salvation become tinder for war. # #

This is a novel of quick, dangerous choices: a daring raid through metal catacombs, a moral calculus that asks what you sacrifice to keep people alive, and the fierce, small acts of humanity that refuse to drown even when the horizon has gone. # #