Salt for the Unborn Sun

Orel trades in grief the way other men trade in coin—harvesting it from the living, feeding it to something vast and patient buried beneath the coastal cliffs. The arrangement has kept a dormant god from stirring for decades, and the city above sleeps soundly because of it. But when a bereaved girl demands her dead mother's sorrow returned, Orel faces a reckoning no ritual prepared him for. Refuse, and lose the last thing that makes him human. Comply, and risk waking a hunger older than the sun itself.