The Luminary Almanac

Beneath a brass sky, in the clockwork city of Aethelgard, the sun is a forgotten myth.  Life revolves around the Luminary Almanac, a colossal orrery predicting the dance of unseen stars, its gears whirring in perfect synchronicity with the city's intricate network of satellites.  But for cartographer Adric Vost, a flicker in the Almanac's mechanism sparks an unsettling suspicion: what if the sky above is nothing more than a meticulously crafted illusion?
Armed with intricate goggles of his own design and a thirst for truth, Adric's quest leads him to Penra Solvane, a brilliant linguist who deciphers the forgotten language of the clouds with a whirring, clicking translator. Together, they embark on a perilous journey towards the last functioning Astral Observatory, a relic from a bygone era.
Their pursuit of truth ignites a firestorm of conflict.  Zealous Sky Cultists, who venerate the brass satellites as divine, brand them heretics.  Map-thieves, hungry for the Almanac's secrets, stalk their every move.  And lurking in the shadows, the enigmatic Order of the Veil guards a truth more dangerous than any fabrication.
As Adric and Penra delve deeper, they uncover whispers of the Sky-Engine, a colossal subterranean machine capable of manipulating the atmosphere.  Their search takes them through ozone-choked tunnels and forgotten cities carved into the earth, where they enlist the help of Brandy Martin, a skeptical engineer whose pragmatism is challenged by their extraordinary discoveries.
The closer they get to the Sky-Engine, the more perilous their journey becomes.  They uncover a centuries-old conflict between the Order of the Veil and the forgotten Luminaries, the architects of the artificial sky.  And a shocking revelation about Penra's heritage forces her to confront her family’s legacy and choose between preserving the illusion and unveiling a potentially devastating truth.
Can they decipher the Almanac's cryptic messages, locate the Sky-Engine, and navigate the treacherous political landscape before the Sky Cultists, manipulated by the Order of the Veil, unleash a divine apocalypse?  In a world where the sky itself is a lie, the fight for truth could shatter everything.