Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - James Bryron Love

Dorothy Gale didn't arrive on Veridia-7 by choice.

She arrived because it was the only place left to run.

A prison transport failure, a stolen opportunity, and a desperate landing leave her stranded on a quarantined planet that most navigators refuse to even map. Veridia-7 sits on the edge of the sector, wrapped in rumors, abandoned surveys, and a silence that has lasted longer than most governments.

At first, survival is simple math: stay alive long enough to find a way off the planet.

But Veridia-7 is not empty.

The forests glow with their own quiet light. The ecosystem behaves with a kind of patience that feels disturbingly deliberate. And cutting through miles of alien wilderness is a road of strange yellow stone that no one can explain and nothing seems able to destroy.

The deeper Dorothy goes, the more the planet pushes back.

A ruler in a distant tower claims authority over the world. A woman with influence far beyond politics begins maneuvering for control of what Dorothy has become. Old records surface. Secrets that were supposed to stay buried begin spreading far beyond the planet's orbit.

Somewhere in the middle of it all is Dorothy herself - a fugitive, a survivor, and the last person anyone expected to disrupt the balance of power on Veridia-7.

She isn't trying to save the world.

She isn't trying to change it.

She's trying to get off the planet alive.

But every step down the yellow road pulls her deeper into a conflict that has been building for decades - and into truths about herself that powerful people worked very hard to hide.

Some roads promise a way home.

This one never did.