Prison of Salt and Stars

Deep beneath the silent white expanse of a vast salt desert lies the Salt Vaults-a hidden prison designed for those who know too much. This facility does not hold criminals, but the world's brightest minds. Scientists, historians, and astronomers are buried three miles down, erased from history for uncovering secrets that could destabilize the social order. Sena, a young atmospheric physicist, is escorted down the deepest elevator on Earth after discovering an impossible truth about the sky.
Believing her life is effectively over, she is introduced to a quiet village of ghosts-fellow captive intellectuals who have accepted a comfortable captivity in exchange for their silence. But the quiet is a mask. With the help of Doctor Hideo, an elderly astronomer who has spent fifty years in the dark, and Marcus, a conflicted guard haunted by his brother's mysterious death, Sena begins to uncover the true nature of their confinement.
The prison was not built merely to suppress their knowledge. It was constructed directly above a sleeping, ancient entity-a majestic, dormant seed-ship that possesses a dangerous, world-altering energy. As the entity begins to wake, the fragile salt dome begins to fail. With the facility flooding and the safety gates locked, Sena faces a devastating choice: accept a peaceful death in the dark, or find the courage to trigger the ship's awakening, revealing the true sky to a world that has been blind for seventy years.
Prison of Salt and Stars is an atmospheric science fiction mystery that explores the boundaries of human courage, the weight of suppressed knowledge, and the ultimate struggle between comfortable safety and the terrifying beauty of the truth.