Read LEGACY OF RUIN :: THE FIRST STRIKE

📜 NEW CHAPTER 8 — THE FIRST STRIKE

Two nights after the hanging, the salt road lay silent under a sickle moon.
The brine pools shimmered dull and black between the hills. Old wheel ruts glistened with rainwater. A few stray dogs nosed through the ditch where Baek’s men used to stand guard.

Tonight, they didn’t.

Jin waited in the darkness behind the collapsed watch post. Tae crouched beside him, breath misting in the cold.

“You trust this merchant?” Tae asked.

Jin didn’t look at him. He watched the distant lantern bobbing down the salt road — a single yellow eye in the dark.

“I trust his greed,” Jin said.

The merchant’s cart rattled into view — two oxen pulling a low flatbed stacked with hemp-wrapped barrels.
A single driver hunched on the bench — old, wiry, sharp-eyed. A dagger tucked in his sash, though he made no move for it when he saw Jin.

“Lord Ryu,” he rasped, voice like gravel under boot. “Didn’t think I’d see your bloodline standing again.”

“You’re not seeing my bloodline,” Jin said. “You’re seeing silver.”

He flicked a coin through the dark. The old man caught it one-handed, turned it in his palm to catch the moonlight.

“Good silver,” the merchant said. “Baek’s men will come for my oxen if they sniff this.”

“Then they’ll find nothing but bones,” Jin said.

They loaded the barrels in silence.

Salt, grain, dried fish — all hoarded scraps Jin had squeezed from the last loyal stewards. Enough to buy a single whisper in the city — or enough to lose everything if Baek’s spies smelled it.

As the oxen snorted and shifted, Tae stepped close.

“This old crow can’t protect you if it goes bad,” Tae muttered.

“He won’t have to,” Jin said.

He pulled a folded scrap from inside his cloak — an old debt ledger, yellowed and brittle. Names inked in crooked lines. Sums that hadn’t been repaid since Jin’s grandfather’s time.

He handed it to the merchant.

The old man weighed it in his bony fingers. “This buys silence?”

“It buys you leverage,” Jin said. “Half the grain lords in Haseong owe my house a taste. Baek’s men run salt, but they choke on grain tariffs. You push this debt in their faces, you eat the interest. You leak it — I hang you next to my steward.”

The merchant’s grin cracked his cheeks wide. He tucked the ledger into his sash beside the dagger.

“House Baek won’t like this.”

“Good,” Jin said. “Let them starve on secrets.”

The ox cart creaked away down the salt road.
Jin watched the lantern vanish behind the brine pools — a single firefly snuffed by the hills.

Tae spat into the weeds. “You’re gambling our last barrels on a snake’s promise.”

“I’m gambling on hunger,” Jin said. “Baek feeds too many dogs. If they sniff weakness, they bite him first.”

He turned away, pulling his cloak tighter against the night chill.

“Get the salt men ready. Tomorrow, we mine twice the brine. We salt the road so thick it chokes Baek’s throats.”

Tae’s grin flashed sharp in the moonlight.

“Now that’s the Jin Ryu I signed on for.”

Back at the ruined hall, Soha waited by the founder’s chair.
She rose as Jin entered, dripping salt wind and dirt.

“You sold the grain,” she said.

“I traded it,” Jin said.

“For silver?”

“For silence.”

Soha’s eyes darkened — but she didn’t argue. Instead, she reached for his sleeve, brushing off the brine flecks.

“Baek won’t let this stand.”

Jin caught her wrist. Held it just long enough to feel the pulse flicker under her skin.

“That’s the idea,” he said.

Next morning, House Baek’s salt captain found a slip of parchment nailed to his storehouse door.

One line, scrawled in black:

“The debt you thought buried is salted anew.”

He ripped it down with a curse — but by then, three other copies had reached the grain lords in Haseong. And the old merchant’s ox cart had already vanished behind the river bend.

By nightfall, the salt road ran again.
Men with bare feet and bent backs. Old carts rumbling through half-broken gates. Salt lumps piled under wet tarps. Laughter in the village for the first time in years — rough, nervous, but alive.

Jin stood by the gate until the sun dipped behind the brine hills.

Tae leaned against the fence post, chewing a twig.

“You think Baek’s sleeping well tonight?”

“I hope he doesn’t,” Jin said.

He looked down at his ring — the iron dragon catching the dusk light.

The founder was an exile, he thought. I’ll be the ghost they can’t bury.

To be continued.