The Great Journey (The Deadline Saga Book 1)

Deadlines burn bright.The Arbiter heralds judgment.Countdowns signal death.Pierce the Veil.Everyone lives beneath a burning deadline. A clock of fire hangs over every head, counting toward the years, the days, and, for some, the final hours before they turn to ash.Juno Laval has spent his life at Helion Orphanage trying not to look too closely at the number above his own head.

He tries not to look at the Veil either, a wall of living fog wrapped around the feet of the Arbiter. The towering stone giant waits at the edge of the world, where Juno’s brother vanished.But when the city’s countdowns begin to change and death starts coming faster, Juno is chosen for the Great Journey: a desperate mission to reach the Arbiter, pierce the Veil, and stop the deadlines before humanity is wiped out.Sent beyond the walls with Orphan 8, a squad of gifted young fighters as reckless as they are deadly, Juno must cross cursed biomes, battle monstrous Corruptions, and gather enough power to survive the Wilds.

But survival means trusting allies he barely knows and questioning everything he thought he knew about the world. And with every step toward the Veil, one hope burns brighter than the rest: that beyond the fog, his lost brother may still be alive.The Great Journey is Book One of The Deadline Saga, a YA epic dark fantasy adventure about mortality, loyalty, and the cost of chasing the truth, with coming-of-age stakes and slow-burn romantic tension.