That morning, when the sun finally pierced through three days of cloud and mist, H'Lanh—a quiet H'Mong woman who lived on the village outskirts—realized something was terribly wrong with her body.
The people of Ngoc Trach had always considered H'Lanh harmless, soft-spoken, and withdrawn. Years ago, she'd suffered a miscarriage and had no children since. She lived alone in a clay hut near the old burial mounds—land people avoided after a past excavation revealed three urns of unknown bones buried there. Some villagers claimed she carried "heavy yin energy." Still, she was gentle, swept graves, offered incense, and always smiled faintly when spoken to.
But that morning, she woke to find her belly swollen—round and taut like a woman five months pregnant.
Yet the night before, it had been flat.
Stumbling out into the yard, she pressed trembling hands against her belly.
It wasn't just firm. It moved.
But not like a normal baby.
It twitched and jerked, as though multiple small creatures were writhing beneath her skin, biting and clawing at one another to reach the surface.
She dropped to her knees, breath shallow. Her fingers trembling, she lifted her shirt. The skin over her stomach had turned an eerie pale-blue, and at its center, a reddish bruise had formed, perfectly circular, like the rim of a bowl.
Inside that bruise, faintly visible under the stretched skin, was the outline of a smiling doll's face.
No. No, no, no.
She scrambled backward, falling hard. Wind rustled the grass. And in that wind, she heard whispering—soft, childlike.
Laughter.
Then a voice, clear as a lullaby:
"Don't leave me, Mama… I'm here now…"
H'Lanh began to vomit—again and again, until streaks of blood came up with the bile. But still, her belly grew larger.
It was as if the thing inside her fed on fear.
That evening, Master Dam arrived.
Still weak after the sealing ritual, he nevertheless insisted on seeing H'Lanh. Upon entering the room, he said nothing for nearly a minute—simply stared at her stomach.
Then he spoke, voice low and steady:
"You are not pregnant.
That thing in your belly… it escaped the seal.
It no longer needs a wooden shell.
It has found a human womb."
H'Lanh's lips quivered. "W-what is inside me?"
"It is Ong. But not just Ong alone.
It is every child's soul buried beneath the banyan tree.
They've joined.
And now… you are their cradle."
"If we don't extract it soon, you will not die.
But you will give birth to something not human."
That night, H'Lanh was kept in Master Dam's home.
He performed a fetal-binding rite using saltwater, deer-tallow oil lamps, and charms inked in menstrual blood.
He surrounded her room with talismans.
But throughout the night, her belly convulsed.
And every time the oil lamp flickered, the skin on her stomach pressed outward—like tiny hands were beating against her from inside.
At midnight, the flame went out.
And H'Lanh began to sing.
Not in her own voice.
But in the voice of a little girl:
"One, two, three new wombs,
Four, five, blood makes room,
Six, seven, cords unspooled,
Eight, nine… the demon's due…"
Master Dam burst into the room, slashing a protective symbol across the doorway with consecrated blood.
Inside—
H'Lanh was laughing.
Her eyes rolled back white.
Her belly rose and fell like it was about to deliver something nameless.
At dawn, the villagers gathered at Master Dam's house.
The main door was sealed shut.
Crimson handprints—small, child-sized—covered the wooden panels.
When they finally broke it open—
The room was empty.
Only a blood-soaked mattress remained, tufts of human hair strewn across it.
And on the wall, a large image of the Ong Mon doll, carved into the wood with fingernails—life-sized.
From behind that wall…
Something was breathing.