At dawn, the wind changed direction.
It swept down from the mountain, dragging a biting cold that seeped through every crack and bone in the village of Ngoc Trach. The sky hung thick with ink-dark clouds, pressing low like a burial shroud above the rooftops. The roosters were silent. The children didn't run out to play. Even the dogs cowered beneath the stilts of the houses, whining without cause.
There was no death that morning, yet the air smelled faintly of blood.
In a small wooden house on the edge of the forest, Old Man Tu — the eldest in the village — sat cross-legged in silence, fingers slowly turning a string of cracked prayer beads. His gaze, milky and distant, seemed to stare through the walls and into the past. Across from him sat a man in a deep indigo robe, a worn ritual whisk at his side and a cloth bag resting by his feet. This was Master Dam, a Taoist exorcist from Phu Tho, summoned by the village elder after too many unnatural happenings had plagued their people.
Between them lay a weathered book. The cover was rotting, its pages mottled with stains — some ink, some oil, some… something darker. The title, barely legible in faded Nom script, read: "The Tale of the Fire Child."
Master Dam opened it slowly, as if unsealing something that ought to have remained buried. His breath slowed. The scent of mildew, ashes, and ancient incense rose from the pages.
Old Man Tu finally spoke, his voice gravelly, brittle like a dry well:
"No one remembers what Ong Mon once was… but I do. My grandfather told me, and his grandfather told him.
Ong wasn't a doll. It was once a child.
A child… buried alive."
A wind howled outside, rattling the door like something clawed to come in. The altar incense gave off a thin thread of smoke that curled toward the ceiling.
Master Dam turned the page, reading the faded words aloud in a low, even tone:
"In the seventh month of the Year of the Goat, the village built a new shrine.
Widow Mon, pregnant with no husband, was accused of carrying a demon seed.
The villagers, fearing her womb bore a forest spirit, cast her into the offering pit…"
Images formed in his mind — a disheveled woman, tied by the wrists, a bloodstained cloth stuffed in her mouth. Her belly heavy with child. A crowd of villagers surrounding her, chanting curses, casting stones. Then, a hole dug at the foot of the banyan tree. The pit they called "the forest's mouth." They pushed her in and buried her alive.
And then… they left her there.
But she didn't die.
Three days later, a storm struck. The roof of the shrine tore open. Some children wandered up the path to play. That's when they saw it — a pale hand rising from the dirt, nails long and curling, fingers twitching.
From that year on, every seventh lunar month, a child from the village went missing.
Sometimes a toddler vanished from his cot. Sometimes a teenage girl disappeared walking home. Other times, there was just blood — in streaks across a wall, soaked into the ground, or splattered in handprints no bigger than a plum.
No one ever found the bodies.
In fear, the villagers stopped resisting. They started making offerings. They carved a doll from sacred jackfruit wood, shaped like a child, dressed in red, and placed it at the shrine beneath the ancient banyan. They named it Ong Mon, which means "Mon's Child."
From that moment on, they no longer feared it — they prayed to it.
First they offered blood. Then chickens. Then dogs. And eventually… they began to ask for favors. Women unable to bear children came to pray. And when they did, they conceived.
One wanted a boy — she got him.
One asked for strength — her son could lift a rock at age six.
Slowly, Ong Mon became a village god.
Not a demon. Not a spirit. A savior.
But the price never went away.
Every gift came with a cost. A promise.
A blood vow.
And if broken… the debt would be taken back in flesh.
Sixteen years ago, Granny Hoan had done the same.
She'd gone to the shrine in the rain, sliced her palm, and dripped blood onto the doll's clasped hands. She prayed for a child, and she got Dung. But she never returned to repay. Never brought the boy to the shrine on his sixteenth birthday. Never offered a drop of thanks.
Now the boy had changed.
Master Dam closed the book and placed both hands on its cover. His brow furrowed. Something in the air had shifted. The temperature dropped again. It felt like a breath was being held… and not by anyone living.
"Dung is no longer fully human," he said at last.
"What's inside him… is the last remnant of the Fire Child.
Something far older than ghosts.
Something that was never meant to live."
He reached into his cloth bag and pulled out a small bronze mirror — old, inscribed with protective sigils. When he held it up toward the door, toward the empty space where light should have reflected…
It showed not the room, not the window — but a smiling face.
A face with no eyes, no nose.
Only a mouth — a grin sliced across the entire head, dripping with black blood — perched on Dung's shoulder, as if it had been riding him… from birth.
That night, another child vanished.
Little Tu, the son of Mr. Phan.
In the morning, villagers found a pair of damp slippers at the foot of the shrine. And beneath the Ong Mon doll — a wide pool of blood.
But the doll had changed.
It was taller now. Its hair longer, covering part of its face.
Its eyes were brown — almost human.
And stitched onto the red robe, in dark thread, were the words:
"Tu — accepted."
The next day, Granny Hoan was found dead.
She had set herself on fire inside her wooden house.
They recovered a half-burned letter from the ashes. Only one sentence remained:
"It is no longer Dung…"
But Dung still walked.
A week later, he was seen on the hill behind the shrine.
Barefoot.
Holding the ceremonial blade.
Behind him followed three pale children, their faces blank, their eyes void.
And in his hands… the Ong Mon doll.
No — it was no longer a doll.
It was the size of a real child. Its hair grew long and tangled. Its mouth stretched impossibly wide.
And it was smiling.