Hannah faces an impossible choice. Her eight-year-old son Thomas is sick with a lung condition made worse by the almost toxic air of Coghaven, but salvation lies in her late husband’s final gift – a mysterious map leading to the Iron Mountains, where he claimed to have hidden enough power crystals to buy them a new life.
With nothing but James’s last letter and a mechanical mouse named Sebastian to guide them, mother and son embark on a desperate journey across the Wastes.
Hannah must navigate the space between trust and terror, between holding on and letting go. What begins as a quest for survival transforms into something more – a story of healing freely given, of kindness without price, and the unexpected grace of strangers who become family.
In this richly imagined novella, hope takes wing in the most unexpected ways, reminding us that sometimes life’s sweetest rewards are found not in the destination, but in the simple act of moving forward, one step at a time.