Every section below discusses the ending. If you haven't finished the novel yet, read it first, then come back. Nothing here will make sense out of order, and some of it will ruin the ending on purpose.
Archive 01 · GeographyEarth, 2150
Sixty-three years after the AMOC shut down, the map is smaller than it used to be. Three places on it matter more than the rest: the walled city of Salón, the Basin of Silence that Kaia has to cross, and the Knowledge Coast where the old world's science went underwater.
The real research behind the AMOC shutdown, with the evidence and the uncertainty the novel simplifies, is on the science page.
Archive 02 · Political geographyThe factions of the Salt
Salón didn't survive by being kind. It survived by writing down exactly what water buys and what it doesn't. Every other group in the drowned world made a different bet.
Archive 03 · Personnel filesThe people, closer
The novel gives you Kaia, Marek and Dhara through what they do under pressure. Here is what the internal files say about why.
Kaia — Unit 4
Class IV Purifier. Diagnoses failing machinery by ear. The file calls her coping mechanism "rigid, functional arithmetic," which is a clinical way of saying she survives by staying useful.
Marek — The Wolf
Navigates the Basin by taste and memory, not instruments. Every scar on the file has a story attached, and none of them are about the desert being unfair. It never promised to be.
Dhara — DH-7
Built to be a key, not a person. A countdown burns in her vision that nobody can switch off. She answers every warning about it the same way.
Archive 04 · BiologyWhat the water did to the people who stayed
Not everyone kept a human body through sixty-three years of salt. The Exiles didn't. The novel treats that as biology, not metaphor.
The real kidney physiology this extrapolates from is on the science page, including the honest gap between the ~2,000 mOsm/kg in the novel and the ~1,400 mOsm/kg human limit in the literature.
Archive 05 · Recovered footageTwo clips that never made a feed
Most of the video for this world has already been public for weeks. These two haven't, until now.
The Living Key
The strongest hook in the whole teaser batch, by the production notes' own admission. It never went to Facebook or anywhere else. This page is the first place it plays.
Recovered handheld, vertical
Shot vertical, like it was filmed on something small enough to hide in a pocket. Also never released before today.
Science Now →
The AMOC explainer that outperformed every character teaser combined. If you want the pitch that hooks new readers, this is the one that's working.
Archive 06 · What readers sayAbout the story itself
The Salt Archive is new enough that nobody has reviewed it yet. Here is what readers have said about the novel it expands, straight from Goodreads, unedited.
"A smart, grounded dystopian novel that feels surprisingly believable. The world-building is excellent, the science adds credibility without becoming overwhelming, and the story keeps you engaged from beginning to end. If you enjoy thoughtful climate fiction with realistic characters and moral complexity, this is well worth reading."
— Samuel, GoodreadsThe novel ends. The archive doesn't.
The Salt Archive collects the HGA report, the survivors' chronicles, and material that never made it into the novel, including the full map and the character files this page only samples.
Editorial note: the map, faction and character files above are original worldbuilding material by Francisco Infante, some produced with AI image and diagram tools, consistent with the AI-art disclosure on the rest of this site. The reader review is genuine and unedited, reproduced from its public Goodreads listing.