Sweet Salt.

They say salt runs in our blood—though I reckon that's not just a turn of phrase. My father, his father, and his father before that all toiled their days in the bowels of the Great Salt River, white-gummed and sun-scorched, working the flow until their bodies cracked like overcured clay. Our family's been pulling salt from that river since before anyone remembered anything else. Records? Histories? Nah. We got brine and bruises. All I ever knew was salt.

I was six when Pops went down.

Salt poisoning, they said. Body just gave out one morning. Skin gone pale as limestone, mouth dry as a curse. Man had been coughing up salt stones for weeks, I reckon, but kept working through it like all the rest. You don't stop in the salt fields unless you want your family to go hungry. That's just how it is.

But I remember the aftermath even more clearly than his final days.

My dad—Pops' oldest—sucker-punched Uncle Rhen the moment word reached us. Dropped him clean with a fist to the jaw, busted two knuckles in the process. Why? Not grief. Don't be daft. My father didn't mourn. No, he wanted Pops' Mori.

See, when you work long and hard enough at something—whether it's carving marble, killing men, or scraping salt—you leave behind traces. Memory residue. Spirit slough. We call it Mori. Sometimes it leaks out when you die, curls like smoke, purple and slow, and if you're quick or cruel enough, you can inhale it. Steal some of it. Become it.

My father didn't wait for the priest. Didn't wait for the rite. He scrambled for Pops' body like a starving hound on a meatbone, breathing hard, mouth wide, like he could drink in the old man's entire life with one lungful.

But all he got was salt.

That's the curse of our bloodline. The Mori we pass on is just salt and more salt. Generations of obsession condensed into coarse grains and slow decay. My family's gift was a tomb. A beautiful, glittering tomb of pale white death.

We drink saltwater when the cisterns are empty. We cure our meat in it, soak our clothes in it, brush our teeth with it, and bleed it from our pores. Even our dreams taste brackish.

Anyway, once Dad realized he'd gained nothing from Pops' death, he beat me raw out of frustration. I was too slow to help him, too weak to carry the body. But I remember chuckling when we finally shoved the corpse off the cliffs into the eternal nothing . He was starting to stink. And there ain't no dignity in rotting with salt in ya blood.

Later that night, Ma looked at me with those clouded, cracked eyes and muttered something like, "Zehng, you accident, go work. Make yourself useful for once." I guess that was my coming-of-age ceremony.

That's when I first put on the salt suit.

It's no armor. Nothing noble. Just thin, white garments woven from the silk of the pale hause sized spiders that nest on the underside of our island . The only thread tough enough to hold up against the constant bite of airborne sodium. Shirt, pants, cloak, gloves—worn loose so the sweat don't cling. Then the boots—stiff and sealed—and the mask to guard your lungs, mouth, and eyes. You don't want the salt getting in. Not if you like seeing.

So I started working. Same as all the rest. Sunrise to moonrise. Pouring water into evaporation pans, scrubbing crystallized blocks from the shorelines, gathering crust from the sluice walls with dull chisels and prayer. Not for food. Not for comfort. But for the tithe.

See, every family's got to pay the crown. Either in coin or blood. And mine? We always paid. We were smart like that. Too valuable to waste on the battlefield, too scared to fight for anything that didn't glitter.

And so life went on. No school. No siblings. No girl to dream about. Just salt. Salt in my teeth. Salt in my joints. Salt in the marrow of my damn bones. My ma withered to silence, my pops long gone, and Uncle Rhen—who survived the sucker punch—took a liking to treating me like his personal salt mule.

Salt slave, more like.

I worked myself to the bone while he reaped the earnings. Always said he'd been doing this since before I had teeth, so I owed him. Said my back was strong, and his wasn't. Said I was stupid, and he was smart. I didn't argue. I didn't speak much. I just bided my time, counting each sunrise like a prisoner's notch in stone.

And then, when I was fourteen, I killed him.

One good whack with a rusted bucket full of brine to the temple, then dragged him by the ankles to the Salt River. Held his head under till the bubbles stopped. Watched the Mori rise. Purple as nightfall, swirling like fog, smelling faintly of rust and lightning.

And I breathed it in.

It clawed its way down my throat. Burned my lungs like a summer drought, all the water sucked out . My tongue went dry, my eyes wept fire. My heart skipped a beat, the very air tasted like salt.

That's how I got magic.

See the captain explained to me when one builds enough Mori, something changes. You reach a weight. A gravity. You start bleeding through the veil. And if your Mori's strong enough, it pulls on the spirit realm like a hook through flesh.

Mine was all salt. Hundreds of years of salt. Lifetimes of it. Salt pulled from my uncle's bones,that he pulled from my father, and he from his father and so on.

At first I could just summon grains. A pinch here, a flake there. But it grew. Fast. I could form crystals, thick and heavy. I could launch them, shape them, even make a Haus from it. Salt that clear like glass, salt that's thick enough to be used as iron. And every time I used it, I felt more comfortable with the dry mouth,burning eyes and lungs and the salty air .

For four years I trained. Hid it. Learned. Practiced by moonlight,finding new and interesting ways to use the salt. I even managed killing one of those house sized spiders while the rest of the salt-slaves slept. And then, when I was eighteen, the tithe came calling.

But this time, I didn't flinch.

I stepped forward. Told them my name. Showed them my magic.

And they took me.

A big, floating ironclad hovered low over the island. Bigger than anything I'd ever seen. The captain himself came down. Grizzled man with a war-scarred face and golden rings through his ears. He watched me work, nodding, silent.

Then he handed me a ten-pointed star.

Said I was worth ten men. A one-star soldier. Said only a few ever earned one. Magic was rare, he explained, rarer than gold, and mine was potent, terrifying in the right hands.

They gave me coin. Real coin. A uniform. A place aboard the ship. Said I'd be stationed at Sarus Fortress, with four other one-stars. Said my days of scraping salt with broken tools were over.

And as I stood on that airship deck, watching the salt river fade into the clouds, I whispered to myself:

"Fucking finally. I get to leave this dump."

All I had to my name was the salt suit, a few coins, and a body full of magic.

And for the first time in my life, I thought that the air tasted sweet.