A Thousand Meters Beneath The Earth

Occasia. Humanity's Last Chance.

When the surface turned uninhabitable, humanity dug its way into the rock. What it built down there lies in six circles around the Royal Stalactite. In the innermost three, fire burns. In the outer three, there is nothing but the cold light of fungus.

Maeron Vaelor is nineteen, born in the sixth circle, the lowest and the poorest. When a letter bearing the royal seal summons him to the Asterion Academy, no one can say why. People like him do not belong there. The other candidates never let him forget it, not for a single day.

Among the sons and daughters of the upper circles he learns to fight, to obey and above all to keep silent. Until he stands in a hall he has no business entering, and the king's daughter looks at him without asking which circle he comes from. What begins between them could cost them both their lives.

Yet the closer Maeron comes to the palace, the harder it becomes to believe that his calling was an accident. Someone wrote his name on that letter. And that someone seems to have known exactly why.

Occasia saved humanity from the surface. What Maeron finds makes him wonder what the city is truly keeping its people safe from.

And far above him, behind a thousand metres of stone, lies a sky no one has seen for centuries.

***

This is an AI-generated English translation of my novel, „Tausend Meter unter dem Boden". The original German text was written entirely by me.