Read LEGACY OF RUIN :: BLOOD IN THE BRINE

📜 NEW CHAPTER 9 — BLOOD IN THE BRINE

The salt yard steamed under torchlight.
Pickaxes rang in the brine pits. Ragged men shoveled white lumps into baskets, sweat stinging their eyes in the cold wind.

Above them, the battered dragon banner hung limp on the broken pole — a scrap of silk, a promise barely holding.

Jin watched from the old watchtower. Tae stood behind him, arms crossed.

“They’re working double shifts,” Tae said. “Some won’t last the week.”

“They’ll last,” Jin said. “They’ve been waiting to feed their children since before I was born.”

He scanned the yard — looking for the cracks. Always the cracks: men who didn’t sweat enough, eyes that darted too often, shoulders turned away from the banner.

Below, near the brine trench, Gil’s voice rose above the clatter.

“Keep the lumps dry! Baek’s men can afford wasted salt — we can’t!”

Gil swung his staff like a herdsman, snapping at boys who lagged.

Jin allowed himself the smallest nod. Even the spineless can learn fear, he thought.

Then the first scream split the salt yard.

A shovel clanged to stone. A man stumbled back from the trench, arms flailing — then fell face-first into the brine, an iron spike buried in his spine.

For a heartbeat, the yard froze. Then chaos.

Dark shapes surged out from the brine pools — six, seven men in ragged cloaks, knives glinting under torchlight.

Tae’s blade cleared its sheath with a hiss. He bounded down the tower steps two at a time.

Jin followed, boots crunching over salt lumps.

By the time they reached the trench, two more salt men were down.
Gil clutched a torch in one hand and a rock in the other, eyes wide and useless.

One of Baek’s dogs lunged for him — then reeled back as Jin’s fist smashed into his jaw.

The man’s knife skittered across the stones.

Jin didn’t pause — he kicked the man square in the ribs, felt bone crack under his boot.

Another attacker grabbed his cloak — Jin twisted, ducked under the arm, drove his elbow into the man’s throat.

Blood sprayed Jin’s cheek. He tasted iron — salt and blood mixed on his tongue.

Beside him, Tae fought like a feral hound — blade flashing, curses flying.
He drove one attacker into the trench, buried his sword hilt-deep in another’s belly.

“Two more!” Tae roared. “Left side!”

Jin spun — caught a knife swipe across his forearm. Pain flared. He didn’t care.

He drove his knee into the man’s gut, grabbed the knife hand — twisted, snapped the wrist. The attacker howled, dropped to his knees.

Jin grabbed the fallen blade. Cold iron, slick with brine.

He didn’t hesitate. The blade flashed once — the man fell, throat open, salt pooling red at his knees.

Then it was over.

The last of Baek’s dogs limped for the yard gate — only to meet Soha’s spear in the gut. She drove him back three steps, pinned him against the fence post.

Her eyes met Jin’s — fierce, dark, no trace of fear left.

In the aftermath, the salt yard reeked of iron.

Men gathered the bodies, laid them in a row beside the trench.

Gil knelt in the mud, hands shaking as he scrubbed blood off his staff.

Soha wiped her spear on her cloak. Tae stood by Jin’s side, panting, blade dripping.

Jin stared down at the corpse at his feet — the first man he’d killed with his own hand since coming back.

Forty-eight years behind him, eighteen ahead. No regrets.

He knelt, dipped the knife tip in the brine trench — let the salt eat the blood from the blade.

“Baek wants us to drown,” Tae said, voice hoarse. “Tonight, he missed.”

Jin looked at the men and women gathering under the battered banner — eyes wide, cheeks streaked with salt and tears.

“They see us now,” he said.

Soha stepped close, voice like thunder in his ear.

“They fear us now.”

That night, Jin sat alone in the founder’s shrine.
His arm ached, bandaged tight where the blade had kissed him. The iron dragon ring pressed into the wound every time he clenched his fist.

Ancestor, he thought, tracing the old stone dragon carved above the shrine. Exile. Ghost. You spilled blood for love. I spill it for ruin.

He dipped his fingers in the shrine’s oil lamp. Marked the dragon’s stone brow with blood and soot.

Outside, Tae posted double sentries at the salt gate.

Soha dragged the last corpse to the brine trench — threw it in, let the salt eat the bones clean.

Gil sat in the mud by the torchlight, face hidden in his hands.

The battered banner snapped in the cold wind — no longer limp. The salt yard steamed in the moonlight like a wound that wouldn’t close.

To be continued.