Grain of Salt

A few days before Ken reached the Tower

Karin sat on Ken's empty bed, holding one of his medical notebooks. The pages were covered in his careful handwriting, documenting treatments and observations that had saved dozens of lives.

"He's been gone too long," she said quietly.

Kaguya looked up from the clinic's records. "The Guild thinks he's still in their holding cell. They don't know he escaped."

"But we know." Karin closed the notebook. "And we know he's walking into something he might not survive."

"The clinic feels wrong without him," Kaguya said. "Patients keep coming to the door, asking when the healer will return. I've been turning them away."

"Not long ago, this place was just where we lived. Now it's home. Ken made it home."

Kaguya set down her pen. "I've been thinking about what you said. About how he changes everything around him. The way he cooks dinner like it matters. The way he explains medical procedures like we're colleagues instead of assistants."

"The way he looks at us like we're family."

"We are family. The three of us and Grace." Kaguya stood up. "Which is why we're not losing him to whatever's out there."

Karin smiled grimly. "You have a plan."

"I always have a plan." Kaguya pulled out her travel pack. "Grace has been visiting him through the window bars. I attached a tracking thread to her leg, invisible light construct. She'll lead us to him."

"The Guild will notice we're gone."

"Will they? Two independent operators with no official duties, no families asking questions." Kaguya shouldered her pack. "By the time anyone realizes we're missing, we'll be back with Ken."

"And if we're not?"

"Then at least we won't lose him alone."

They left the clinic that night, following Grace's flight path beyond the dome. The corrupted wilderness stretched ahead of them, filled with dangers they'd never faced without Ken's protection.

But they walked forward anyway, because some things were worth any risk.

◇◇◇◇

The Sephis soldiers came out of nowhere.

Humanoid shapes armored in crystal and bone, moving with coordinated intelligence that spoke of central command. They surrounded Karin and Kaguya in a corrupted clearing, weapons raised.

"Where is the one who bears the goddess mark?" their leader demanded, its voice like grinding stone.

"Go to hell," Karin replied, flames dancing around her gauntlets.

The creatures attacked as one.

Present

Flames roared around her gauntlets as she launched herself at our captor. "You made the mistake of threatening my family!"

The creature twisted away from Karin's attack, laughing maniacally. "Such fire! Such beautiful rage! But you're weakened, little flame. Three days in my prison have drained you."

Karin's flames sputtered, confirming the creature's words. But she pressed forward anyway, creating barriers of fire that forced it to dodge.

Kaguya rose unsteadily, the Sun Quill materializing in her hand. Light threads spread from the weapon, creating a network that mapped the platform's dimensions. "Karin, drive it toward the eastern edge. Ken, can you create a crystal barrier behind it?"

I moved without thinking, the memory keeper guiding my actions. Crystal formations erupted from the platform, cutting off the creature's escape routes while Karin's flames herded it into position.

"Teamwork!" the creature shrieked. "How delightfully coordinated! But you're fighting something that's had three years to perfect its techniques!"

It launched itself skyward, wings spreading wide. From above, it rained down projectiles of crystallized shadow that shattered against my barriers and scorched the ground around Karin's feet.

"Kaguya, can you ground it?" I called.

"Working on it." Her light threads reconfigured, becoming nets that reached for the creature's wings. "Grace, I need harmonic disruption!"

Grace's song rose above the sounds of battle, her voice targeting the frequency that held the creature's form together. Where her melody touched its wings, the shadow began to dissolve.

"Clever bird," the creature snarled, diving toward Grace. "Let's silence that voice permanently."

I intercepted with a spear of hardlight, forcing it to veer away. Karin followed up with a lance of concentrated flame that singed its trailing wing.

We fell into a rhythm. Kaguya's threads controlled the battlefield, creating channels and barriers that limited the creature's movement. Karin's flames provided offensive pressure, forcing it to constantly dodge and weave. My crystal formations and light constructs sealed escape routes and provided defensive support.

For the first time since the battle began, the creature looked genuinely worried.

"This is impossible," it muttered, deflecting another of Karin's attacks. "You're supposed to be exhausted, demoralized, broken by despair."

"We're family," Karin said, flames blazing brighter. "We don't break."

"Family." The creature's voice turned venomous. "Such a precious bond. Let me show you how easily it shatters."

Its form shifted, becoming less stable but more dangerous. Wings became whips that lashed out in all directions. Claws extended into spears that could pierce crystal barriers. Its voice split into harmonics that interfered with Grace's song.

We adapted, but barely. The creature's desperation made it unpredictable, its attacks wild but devastatingly powerful. A blow that should have been deflected by Kaguya's light shield punched through, sending her skidding across the platform.

"Kaguya!" Karin turned toward her sister, and the creature seized the opening.

It went completely berserk, laughing hysterically as its form dissolved into pure malevolent energy. "If I can't have you as servants, I'll settle for corpses!"

The creature reformed as a mass of writhing tentacles, each one dripping with corruption that ate through crystal and light alike. It struck at all of us simultaneously, overwhelming our defenses through sheer volume of attacks.

I watched my light constructs dissolve under the assault, panic rising in my chest. We were losing. The creature's madness made it too unpredictable, too powerful.

Then I remembered something. A detail from our fight with Blackwater's contaminated grain, something I'd noticed during the purification process. The corruption had reacted violently to one specific compound.

"You know what your problem is, creature?" I called out, dodging a tentacle that could have taken my head off. "You think corruption makes you invincible. But I've learned something since coming here."

"What babbling is this?" it hissed, pressing its attack.

I grinned, crystalline patterns under my skin shifting as I prepared something new. "You have a weakness. Something I use every day to cook for my family."

The creature paused, confused by my sudden confidence.

"IT'S SALT!"

I slammed my hands against the platform, focusing on the molecular structure I wanted. Since humanity retreated behind the domes, salt had always been sparse, rationed, precious. But my new mastery let me visualize the exact mineral composition I needed. Pure sodium chloride erupted from the crystal formations in gleaming white sprays. The salt crystals spread like a web across the battlefield, each grain glowing with purifying light.

The creature's scream shook the entire tower. Where salt touched its corrupted flesh, the darkness began to burn away like acid. Its tentacles recoiled, writhing in agony as the simple compound ate through its defenses.

"Impossible!" it shrieked. "Salt is nothing! A common mineral!"

"Common, yeah. Harmless to normal people." I formed more salt crystals, hurling them like weapons. "Deadly to things that shouldn't exist."

The creature's form began to destabilize, corruption boiling away from its core. But it wasn't finished yet.

"That's not all!" I shouted. "Kaguya! Weave the salt grains with light! Everything you've got!"

Kaguya's Sun Quill blazed to life, threads of radiance connecting every salt crystal on the platform. The network pulsed with combined power, salt and light working together to create a purification field that the creature couldn't escape.

The effect was devastating. The creature's agonized screams filled the air as its very existence was challenged by forces it couldn't counter. Its form twisted and writhed, trying to find some configuration that could resist the salt-light matrix.

"You think you've won?" it gasped, its voice becoming more human as corruption burned away. "You think this ends anything? The sleeping god stirs, healer. Your salt trick won't work on something that ancient."

It raised one trembling tentacle toward the platform's edge. "Let me show you what awaits in the depths."

The creature's final act was to curse me with its dying breath, pouring the last of its corrupted essence into words that felt like acid against my soul.

Then it collapsed, reduced to ash and empty crystal fragments.

But its warning echoed in the sudden silence, and I felt the truth of its words in the way the tower's structure shifted beneath us.

Something vast was stirring in the depths below.

Something that wouldn't be stopped by salt.