docstarfxre
Beneath the ocean's surface, the Velikari have spent centuries divided by depth and blood. The radiant Reeffolk thrive in coral cities beneath the sunlit tides, while the Abyssals haunt the lightless Trenches below, feared as monsters born from violence and the dark. Between them lies an ancient hatred sharp enough to split the sea itself.
Azeth'ren was raised among the Abyssals, taught that attachment is weakness and tenderness gets creatures killed. But after fleeing his brutal father and the suffocating blackwater of the Trenches, he crosses into forbidden reef territory with nothing left to lose except himself.
Then he meets Cyrae.
Bright, reckless, endlessly curious Cyrae should fear him. Instead, he follows Azeth'ren through storms, ruins, and the deepest parts of the sea with infuriating persistence, peeling apart the walls Azeth'ren spent his whole life building. And the closer Cyrae gets, the more Azeth'ren's body betrays him, glowing with the emotions Abyssals are taught to bury.
But something ancient is waking beneath the ocean floor. Gods long drowned are beginning to stir. The border between realms is collapsing. And if Azeth'ren cannot face the thing growing inside him, his rage, his grief, his terrifying capacity to love, the sea itself may drag them both under.
Salt-Kissed: When the Ocean Wept Gods is a gothic underwater fantasy about inherited violence, monstrous tenderness, and what happens when someone teaches a creature built for survival how to be loved.