Salt and Ashes

In the lawless Atlantic, a rust-bucket trawler named *Aethelred* cages two hundred men from a dozen nations, trafficked under false promises of legal fishing work. When the captain’s fraud is exposed and the last plea for rescue dies on satellite silence, the enslaved rise. But vengeance, stoked too long at sea, burns more than chains—it consumes the soul of every man who wields it. As the survivors limp toward a shore that may charge them as pirates, one former dockworker must decide whether justice can be rebuilt from ashes, or if the fire was always meant to be the end.