THE SALT ROAD THAT FED THE DRAGON

The miracle of trade has a hidden cost. The Salt Road is feeding a dragon.

And the only thing more dangerous than the truth is losing custody of it.

The Salt Road That Fed the Dragon is an old-world Gothic dark fantasy of salt, iron, witness law, hidden debt, dangerous roads, and dragon-shadowed trade.

Along the ancient Salt Road, prosperity is built on contracts, cargo, records, and custom. But when a diplomatic delegation disappears, names begin vanishing from public witness, and returned people come back wrong, Edrin Ashvale and his companions are sent toward a magnificent lake-city where truth itself has become dangerous cargo.

They carry fragile proof: sealed records, marked objects, testimony, and evidence powerful merchants would rather bury.

To keep that proof alive, they must survive hostile roads, forgotten underways, civic hearings, ancient customs, and systems of law where a single word can become a trap. In the lake-city, a person can be counted, renamed, returned-or erased by procedure before anyone admits a crime has occurred.

But corruption is only the surface.

Something ancient moves beneath the trade.

It feeds through salt.
Through iron.
Through water.
Through debt.
Through obedience.

It does not need to rule openly.

It only needs people to keep profiting from what they refuse to see.

The Federation called it trade.
The dragon called it debt.

For readers who love Gothic fantasy, dragons, ancient cities, dangerous journeys, moral mystery, old bargains, and worlds where law can be as frightening as magic.

The Salt Road That Fed the Dragon begins The Black Salt Cycle, a dark fantasy subseries within The High Pass Chronicles.

No road held by one hand.