Writing

Beneath the Cloudline

A Young Adult Sci-Fi Saga by Patrick LaJuett

Coming Soon!

***

They never told him he fell from the sky.

Jax was raised on the ground—among storytellers, riggers, and rebels. He swings from scaffold lines, cleans tower glass, and hums the hymns of the Rooted. Then a girl from the clouds sees him through the window. Everything changes.

Elira was born above the mist, engineered for obedience, groomed for power. The boy in the glass sparks something her tutors never prepared her for: doubt.

When the truth about Jax's stolen past surfaces, it threatens the towers above and the scaffold cities below. The two must choose: protect the system that erased them—or rebuild it from the roots up.

But truth is only the beginning.

***

Act One: The Divided Sky

A stolen heir. A broken treaty. A city held together by lies.

When Jax discovers he's the missing Lirael son—kidnapped as an infant to prevent war—he's thrust into a world of council chambers and engineered bloodlines. But the towers don't want a Rooted boy with calloused hands. And the scaffold cities don't trust a heir who abandoned them for privilege.

Elira risks everything to stand beside him. Together, they broker an impossible peace: the Accord. Rooted and Skyblood. Ground and cloud. Unity through choice, not blood.

It doesn't last.

***

Act Two: The Eleventh Spire

The past doesn't stay buried. It grows.

Cael, Jax's half-brother, unleashes the Bloom—a bio-engineered vine designed to reclaim the wasteland. But the Bloom doesn't stop at restoration. It chokes infrastructure. Consumes scaffolds. Threatens to pull the towers down.

As Halidom fractures under ecological collapse, Jax and Elira must navigate sabotage, conspiracy, and the cost of mercy. Exile isn't justice. Forgiveness isn't weakness. And sometimes the only way forward is to let the guilty carry the weight of repair.

The Accord holds. Barely.

***

Act Three: Skywoven

The city stands. But something is waking beneath it.

When ancient amplifiers fail, and bio-engineered beetles rise from the seabed, Jax discovers that Halidom's survival depends on a network older than the towers—and allies no one knew existed.

The Skywoven have been listening from the sky. The Seedbinders hold forbidden knowledge in exile. And Cael, broken and deaf from his crimes, becomes the only one who can maintain what he once tried to destroy.

Revolution isn't one victory. It's choosing to tend what's fragile. To listen when silence comes. To build systems that remember—even when people forget.

The work never ends. And that's enough.

Beneath the Cloudline is a trilogy about:

• Class divides and chosen family

• Maintenance as heroism

• Systems as prisons or liberators

• Forgiveness through action, not absolution

For readers who loved:

The Hunger Games, Red Rising, Children of Blood and Bone

But want stories that ask:

What if revolution isn't about tearing down—but tending what holds?