The Salt Road to Kolluru
A daughter must outrun a river-king's hunger before the tide turns against her soul.
Kavya, orphaned and salt-rimed, discovers an iron bell tied to her mother's legacy in the mud-flats of Godavari. The map she holds shows where the river obeys not gravity, but will. When Taxmaster Vemulapalli claims the bell as part of the king's debt collection, Kavya learns that carrying it shifts the water itself, granting temporary control over floods and droughts in exchange for a memory she cannot name until she is nearly drained.
