Read LEGACY OF RUIN :: THE SPY IN THE SALT

📜 NEW CHAPTER 7 — THE SPY IN THE SALT

Dawn crawled over House Ryu in dirty bands of pale light.
The old salt yard steamed under the first sun, brine pools rippling like molten mirrors. Crows picked at the mud near the broken gates — carrion waiting for scraps.

Inside the courtyard, Jin’s boots crunched over grit as he crossed to the grain shed. Tae trailed behind him, yawning and half-grinning.

“You didn’t sleep again?” Tae asked.

“Couldn’t afford to,” Jin said.

He swung the shed door wide — inside, sacks of barley stacked shoulder-high, lumps of salt packed in rough hemp. Enough food to feed the villagers for a week, maybe two.

If no one stole it.

Jin bent to check the burlap seams. Sure enough — a thin tear at the base, grains of barley dribbling out. Fresh footprints in the mud.

Tae knelt, scowling. “Rats?”

“Rats with hands,” Jin murmured. “Check the ledgers again. If we lose this grain, the banner means nothing.”

Tae rose, brushing straw from his knees. “We can scare them.”

Jin didn’t answer. He turned the dragon ring on his finger, cold iron scraping his knuckle.

We scare them. Or we make an example.

That afternoon, word spread fast.

Soha called the salt yard stewards into the main hall. Gil knelt near the hearth, face pale. Four other men bowed low — salt crust thick in their sleeves, fear thicker in their eyes.

Jin sat above them on the old founder’s chair, chipped dragon head leaning over his shoulder like a ghostly guard.

“You’re stealing food meant for your own,” Jin said. Not loud. Not angry. Just cold.

No one spoke.

Soha stepped forward, brandishing the torn burlap sack.

“One of you opened this,” she said. “In the night. Who?”

Still silence — but Jin watched the flickers in their eyes. Gil’s quivering shoulders. Old Ryu blood ran through these halls like brine through a cracked pool — everyone here was cousin to a cousin, bound by salt and old secrets.

But salt rusts iron, too.

Jin rose. The founder’s chair creaked behind him.

“Speak now,” he said. “Or I bury you all in the salt yard.”

A strangled laugh — Gil, still on his knees. “You wouldn’t—”

Jin stepped down from the dais, slow and soft-footed as a cat. He crouched before Gil, so close he smelled the brine and fear.

“You think Baek will spare you?” Jin said, voice barely a whisper. “He sent you a boy’s head in a sack. What do you think he’ll send next?”

Gil’s eyes watered. Beside him, one of the other men — a thin steward named Joon — cracked. His shoulders buckled. Tears streaked salt dust from his cheeks.

“I took it,” Joon gasped. “It was me — Baek’s man paid me in silver. Said he’d kill my boy if I didn’t—”

Jin’s face didn’t change. No rage. No softness either.

He stood. Looked to Tae. Then to Soha.

Soha’s voice was flint on steel. “What do we do with him?”

That night, the salt yard saw its first hanging in a decade.

The villagers gathered under the battered banner. Children clutched their mothers’ shawls. Old men wept silent tears into their sleeves.

Jin said nothing as they looped the rope around Joon’s neck. Tae pulled the rough hemp tight, hands steady.

The trapdoor dropped. Joon’s feet twitched once, twice — then stilled, swinging in the salt wind.

Some turned their faces away. Some did not.

Soha stepped to Jin’s side as the body swayed in the dusk.

“You think this will hold them?” she asked.

“No,” Jin said. He watched Joon’s boots spin over the muddy yard. “But it reminds them: Baek’s fear is not the only fear they should carry.”

He turned to Tae, who wiped sweat and rain from his brow.

“Double the watches on the grain shed,” Jin said. “Anyone comes for it now — they lose more than silver.”

Tae nodded once.

After the crowd dispersed, Soha found Jin alone at the founder’s shrine.
An old stone alcove half-sunk into the courtyard wall, candles guttering in the wind.

She watched him light a fresh taper, hands steady even as the flame danced.

“You hated doing that,” she said.

“I didn’t do it for me,” Jin said.

Soha knelt beside him, cloak brushing the dirt.

“Then who?”

Jin stared at the little flame. Ancestor, exile, ghost — what would you have done?

He answered without looking at her.

“For the ones who stay hungry,” he said. “And the ones who’d betray them.”

Far off on the salt road, Baek’s rider waited in the trees.

He watched the last torch gutter out behind House Ryu’s walls.

He smiled into the rain — teeth yellow in the moonlight.

Then he wheeled his horse and galloped for the hills.

Next morning, the villagers found the barley stores untouched.

No footprints in the mud. No torn sacks. Just the ragged banner overhead — the dragon crest flapping stiff as iron.

Jin watched from the broken tower, wind cutting through his hair. The salt yard below shimmered under weak sun, men hauling brine, women scraping salt lumps into baskets.

He let the wind sting his eyes dry.

We lost one to the rope, he thought. Better than losing twenty to a knife.

He pressed the dragon ring to his lips, breathed against the cold iron.

Next, we bleed Baek where he doesn’t see.

To be continued.