Jagat-Ban’s eyes, glazed with fever, probed Mokhwa’s face. The black-red smudge on the floorboards, the shimmering plume trapped inside it, seemed to pulse with an accusation. Mokhwa met his gaze, her own expression a blank slate of mild concern. She bent, feigning a careful examination of the floor. “A spill, perhaps, from the kitchens?” she murmured, her voice flat. “The apprentices are careless.” She nudged the feather with the tip of her boot, burying it deeper into the drying stain, then straightened. “You should be resting, Jagat-Ban. The ailment drains you.” Jagat-Ban didn’t move, his eyes still fixed on her, then dropping to the spot on the floor. His lips parted, a dry, raspy sound escaping, but no words formed. A phantom beak seemed to writhe beneath the taut skin of his throat. He clutched his stomach again, a low groan escaping him, and swayed. Mokhwa watched him, her hand hovering, a performer of concern. When he finally turned and stumbled away, his shoulders hunched, she allowed herself a slow, silent exhalation. The brief encounter had cost her precious time. She needed to move, to accelerate the spirit’s dark harvest. Only one thought quickened her pulse: Nin. She made her way to the kitchen, a bustling, humid cavern beneath the main dining hall, where the air hung heavy with the smell of fermented fish and simmering broth. A young scullery maid, Kori, a girl from the lower tiers with eyes like bruised river stones, caught Mokhwa’s attention from across the room. Kori’s gaze was desperate, a flicker of frantic hand signals passing between them, disguised as fetching a ladle. *Nin. Bad. Deep cough. Mud.* The silent message, practiced since childhood, was grim. Kori mimed a choking fit, her small body shaking with feigned effort, then pointed downwards, towards the mire. The water was rising. Panic, cold and sharp, pierced Mokhwa’s carefully constructed apathy. The mother-spirit was impatient. The village was drowning, and Nin was succumbing. Mokhwa nodded almost imperceptibly, dismissing Kori with a sharp, whispered order for more hot water. She turned, her mind already racing, calculating. Olor-Ban’s hunters. The men who had plunged their barbed spears into the Nang-Tuk’s golden flesh, who had dragged its enormous body from the mud, still boasted of their prowess in the drinking halls. They would be next. She found Olor-Ban himself in the communal dining hall, surrounded by his remaining guards and advisors, their faces pale with unease. The rising waters, the sudden collapse of Jagat-Ban’s cousin, and now the heir’s own visible decline, had rattled the patriarch’s tyrannical calm. He was shouting at a trembling cook, accusing him of poisoning the food. Mokhwa approached, her stride confident, the undertaker’s air of detached competence a cloak around her. “Patriarch Olor-Ban,” she announced, her voice carrying clearly above the din. “The foul humours persist. The air itself grows thick with the Mire-Stork’s displeasure. We must cleanse the source of the stain, lest it consume us all.” Olor-Ban rounded on her, his eyes bloodshot. “And what precisely do you suggest, mud-diver? Your poultices have done nothing but worsen Jagat-Ban’s condition!” “My poultices accelerate the purging,” Mokhwa corrected, her tone unruffled. “But the blight is potent. It clings to those who brought the greatest sacrilege upon this house. The spearmen who felled the Nang-Tuk. Their hands are stained with its lifeblood. They must be purified, or their contamination will seep into all others.” She paused, letting the implication settle. “I know of an ancient ritual, passed down through generations of mire-divers. A true warding against vengeful deities. It requires their immediate participation. In the weapon-vault, where the instruments of their transgression are kept.” Olor-Ban hesitated, suspicion warring with desperation. The concept of spiritual contamination resonated deeply with the village’s folk beliefs. He glared at the cluster of burly men at the far end of the hall, their faces sullen, their boasts now hollow. “The spearmen,” he growled, pointing a finger. “All of them. Send them to the weapon-vault. Now.” Before the hour turned, eight of Olor-Ban’s most celebrated stalkers—brawny men with scarred hands and swaggering postures—stood assembled in the vault. The room, usually clanging with the sharpening of iron and the oiling of crossbows, sat tomb-still save for the rhythmic drip of water from a leaky ceiling beam. Their weapons, the very tools that had brought down the colossal Nang-Tuk, were stacked neatly against the wall, casting long, menacing shadows in the dim light. Mokhwa stood before them, a crude stone bowl filled with a thick, greenish-brown concoction steaming gently in her hands. The air smelled of bitter herbs and the acrid tang of the deep mud. “This,” Mokhwa declared, her voice low and resonant, “is the Binding Brew. Distilled from the deepest mire, it draws out the toxins that fester through the body. You, who tasted the stork’s flesh, who drew its life, carry the heaviest burden. Only this can cleanse you, severing the brood-mother's hold.” The men eyed the brew with distaste. One, a man named Khul, whose chest bore a faded tattoo of a diving harpoon, scoffed. “Mire-witch’s potions. We are warriors, not babes to be spoon-fed mud.” Mokhwa’s gaze was unyielding. “The choice is yours, warrior. Let the rot fester, and watch your kin fall like spoiled fruit, or drink, and sever its parasitic root.” She looked past them, towards the door, where two of Olor-Ban’s most loyal guards stood, their faces grim. The implied threat was clear. They were trapped. One by one, grumbling, the stalkers stepped forward. Mokhwa poured a measure of the thick, viscous liquid into eight small, rough-hewn cups. The paralytic mud-tea was designed to take effect swiftly, to seize their muscles and lock them in place before the full horror of the transformation began. As each man swallowed, a flicker of revulsion crossed their faces, followed by a slight tremor. Mokhwa watched, impassive. Khul was the first to show the true effects. He stumbled, his hand flying to his throat, his eyes wide with sudden panic. A guttural sound, like stones grinding, issued from him. His limbs stiffened, locking in an unnatural pose, his mighty frame frozen. Then, a low, wet *crack* emanated from his sternum. His eyes bulged. A faint, amber glow began to pulse beneath the skin of his chest, growing stronger, like a lamp lit behind stretched vellum. One by one, the others began to seize. A veteran named Ghal, a man whose boastful tales of the slaughter still echoed in the mess hall, dropped his cup. His body arched backwards, a soundless scream distorting his mouth as his spine seemed to compress, then elongate. His flesh, stretched taut, began to ripple, not with muscle, but with something alien. Beneath the skin of his forearms, sharp, obsidian-dark protrusions began to push outwards, splitting the skin with gruesome ease. Mokhwa observed, a clinical distance in her eyes. The paralysis held. The internal struggle was contained, for now, under their ribs. Khul’s chest began to distend rapidly, the skin stretching transparent, revealing the intricate lattice of his ribcage warping and expanding, each bone elongating and flattening into a grotesque, feathered fan. A spectral, gilded down bloomed from his pores, clinging to his skin like a newborn’s fuzz. His mouth opened in a choked gasp, and the internal struggle for breath became visible as his throat pulsed, a living, writhing nest. Then came the sound. Not a scream, not yet, but a series of choked, gurgling whimpers, raw and desperate, as their vocal cords seized and stretched into new forms. Sharp, golden talons, not of bone but of hardened light, burst through the tips of Ghal’s fingers, tearing at the rough fabric of his tunic. His face contorted, his eyes rolling back as the structure of his skull began to reshape, the bone pushing outward into a sharp, pointed beak. The sound of tearing flesh, wet and sickening, filled the vault. The other men, their bodies locked, their stares wide with incomprehension and pure terror, began to follow suit. A synchronized, wet cracking sound spread through the room as their chests ripped open, not with blood, but with the shimmering, feathery forms of new life. Spectral beaks, impossibly sharp, poked through the gaps in their reconfigured ribs, twitching, seeking air. Their synchronized gurgling screams, now a horrifying chorus of agony and transformation, pulsed outwards, echoing down the narrow rope bridges and across the suspended walkways of Ghol-Doro, a chilling announcement that the curse was no longer a hidden blight, but an unstoppable, ravenous plague.

A Chorus of Nests