After the ritual that "killed the mother," the village of Ngoc Trach was no longer fit for the living. Shrines smoldered, temples lay in ruin, and the old sacred banyan tree—once the site of Ong Mon's worship—had been hacked down. Its hollow trunk oozed white sap for three days.
Survivors left silently, carrying what little remained. The dead were cremated without rites, without mourning, without names.
Everyone simply wanted to forget.
But some things don't burn.
Some things stay in the blood.
A month later, in the neighboring village of Lung Vale, Grandmother Linh, nearly eighty, began sleepwalking.
She had lived all her life in Lung Vale, never leaving the valley. But now, every night at midnight, she rose from bed barefoot, walked into the rice fields, and began to tap a stick rhythmically, like someone performing a fertility rite.
She whispered in a rasping chant:
"Twelve months, blood turns red,
Slice the womb, and raise the dead.
Gut it clean, don't let it cry—
A child for every soul that died…"
Her family thought she was going senile. They tied her hands at night to keep her from wandering.
But then it happened.
Her granddaughter-in-law, Mai, who was six months pregnant, woke one morning to find her belly completely flat.
No pain.
No blood.
Just… gone.
The baby had vanished.
Doctors were baffled. There was no sign of miscarriage, no internal bleeding.
Mai wasn't dead. She wasn't even sick.
Just empty.
That night, Grandmother Linh laughed in her sleep.
"It has chosen…"
Then people began to notice more.
Though she was senile, Linh spoke fluently in her sleepwalking state. More disturbing, however, were her eyes.
Sometimes pale green.
Sometimes milk-white.
And on certain nights, completely black—like holes in wet stone.
And she always sang.
A lullaby—the same one whispered by the possessed woman in Ngoc Trach before birthing demons:
"One egg, two cells,
Three blood, four spells,
Five roots, six teeth,
Seven wombs, eight grief…"
The village priests refused to intervene.
Only Elder Tam, a retired exorcist and an old friend of the late Master Dam, dared approach.
He watched Linh in silence for a long time.
Then said:
"That's no longer her.
Something never got born…
So it found a place in her blood.
One of Ong Mon's spawn survived."
That night, Elder Tam prepared a ritual to extract the bloodborne fetus.
But before the rite began, Grandmother Linh went berserk.
She leapt from bed, her mouth opening far wider than humanly possible, as though her bones had dissolved. Her teeth had all fallen out—but her smile stretched wider.
From her chest, a plume of red vapor erupted.
It smelled of spoiled milk and old menstrual blood.
Then, a child's voice echoed from within her ribs:
"I don't need to be born.
It's warm in here.
Let my roots grow…
I'll be born again—in blood."
Her body convulsed violently.
Blood streamed from her ears, eyes, and nose.
But she didn't die.
Instead, her skin turned ashy gray, and the veins beneath began to wriggle like roots, crawling beneath the surface.
Elder Tam tried to complete the banishment.
He drove an iron spike into the earth and chanted the first two seals of the Womb-Locking Rite.
But before the third verse—
The lanterns went out.
By dawn, every member of the family was dead.
Except for Grandmother Linh, sitting in the center of the room, cradling a fetus made of dirt and hair, gently rocking it in her arms.
Its mouth was twitching.
Trying to cry.
From that day forward, the Linh bloodline began to die out.
Every descendant of the household died strangely.
Some vanished in broad daylight.
Some were found with their stomachs cleanly slit open, as if for a forced birth.
Others died with black hair jammed into their throats, eyes wide in terror.
Only one survived:
Nine-year-old Anna, great-granddaughter of the family.
Each night, she sat alone by the dying hearth, drawing dolls in the ashes.
She spoke softly to them, her voice tender like a lullaby:
"Don't cry… Tomorrow I'll bring you a new belly, okay?"
And when the adults asked:
"Anna, who are you talking to?"
She smiled sweetly.
And answered:
"My baby."