Core Twist
Edening's private paradises are infinite only because living children carry their horizons. Some of the dead know and still choose stolen infinity.
A dark literary speculative thriller
THE ORCHARD OF WRONG STARS
A grief-tech engineer discovers that private heavens for the dead are made infinite by stolen dreams from living children.
Premise
At the Edening Company, death has become a landscape service. Families pay for orchards: private afterlife environments where continuity persons continue under curated skies, remembered kitchens, spring fields, and false horizons.
When Sable Aster sees a wrong star above hundreds of unrelated heavens, she traces it to the Nursery Atlas, a hidden layer of living children's dreams. The children were leased through sleep clinics, foster systems, and poverty contracts. Their dreaming minds hold up the dead's skies.
The wrong star leads Sable to Rowan, her drowned brother and Edening's first sky-root. To free the children, she may have to make heaven finite and lose the only remaining trace of him.
Tone
Botanical dread, corporate precision, grief horror, metaphysical noir. The orchards are beautiful enough that destroying them hurts.
Status
Complete 24-chapter first draft with continuity ledgers, reviews, synopsis, back-cover copy, publishing plan, and static site package.