Mokhwa felt the tremors in the timber beneath her feet. The cacophony of dying men, amplified by the humid air of the armoury, was a siren for the doomed. She didn’t wait for the echoes to fade, but moved with swift purpose, her feet finding purchase on the slick, mud-streaked planks. She had delivered her harvest. Now, the main vessel. She traversed the labyrinth of Ghol-Doro’s upper tiers, the dying bellows fading behind her, replaced by the rising keen of the monsoon winds and the rhythmic thrum of acidic rain against the wooden structures. Smoke from emergency signal fires choked the air, mingling with the stench of fear and decay. Panic had begun to curdle the air itself. The elevated platforms, once symbols of privilege, now felt like cages, swaying precariously above the churning, corrosive river. She needed to reach Jagat-Ban, to push him toward his prime contribution. As she stepped onto the Skein-Spine Bridge, a long, sagging span of braided river-reeds and aged timber connecting the central housing tiers to the Ban family’s private living aerie, a figure emerged from the shifting fog. Jagat-Ban. His silhouette was grotesque, distended, far more swollen than before. His fine tunic was stretched taut across his abdomen, which pulsed with an unnerving, internal rhythm. The fabric strained, threatening to tear with every spasm of the unseen parasite coiled beneath his ribs. He held a rusted bone-knife, its serrated edge glinting dully in the dim, grey light. “You,” he rasped, his voice raw, stripped of its usual haughty resonance. His eyes, fever-bright and bloodshot, were fixed on her with an incandescent hatred. “You did this. To Ghal, to the hunters. This isn’t medicine. It’s… it’s birthing.” The bridge swayed beneath their feet, a perilous dance above the churning grey-green depths. Mokhwa stood her ground, her face a mask of calm, calculated neutrality. The air tasted of bile and iron. “I am merely guiding the inevitable, Heir Jagat,” she replied, keeping her voice flat as river silt. “Your consumption of the Mire-Stork’s core set this path in motion. I am ensuring your breath continues. And that of this entire settlement.” Jagat-Ban took a stumbling step forward, the bone-knife raised, its point wavering in his trembling hand. “My breath? My gut feels like it’s being torn from the inside! You’re feeding it! I saw the trails from Ghal’s chamber. The blood, yes, but the way the planks were cleaned, too perfectly. You’re emptying them out. You’re making them nest-sacks.” He coughed, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a gasp, clutching his bulging middle. “You think you can trick me, a Ban? I’ll carve you open. I’ll throw you to the acidic tides. Let the spirits feast on *your* flesh, not mine.” Mokhwa watched him without flinching. Rain greased his hair; grey paste dripped from his nostrils as his knuckles cramped against the carved rib-handle. He was falling apart beneath his distended skin. Down in the sump, Nin was already hacking black phlegm into his pallet. She could afford no pity here. “Throw me to the tides, young master,” she said, stepping into the damp draft whistling through the ropes. “And who will guide your own… delivery? Do you imagine that spirit will heed your weeping? It demands its brood. And yours is the largest, the most potent. It will be the crowning birth.” His eyes narrowed, a flicker of apprehension battling with his rage. “What are you saying?” “The Mire-Stork’s offspring are born of life, but sustained by consumption,” Mokhwa explained, stepping closer, her voice weaving a hypnotic thread. “The lesser hatchings—Ghal’s, the hunters’—they were merely preparatory. Nourishment for the apex. For *your* fledgling. It requires a final, supreme nutrient source. The grandest tribute.” She paused, letting the implication hang in the mist-laden air. Jagat-Ban’s gaze darted around, his mind racing, piecing together the grim truth. The dying shrieks from the armoury still echoed faintly in his memory. He knew what she meant. He knew what happened when the incubators were emptied. “The more you resist, the more it consumes from *you*,” Mokhwa continued, leaning closer against the creaking guide ropes. “Give it a grander vessel, a richer body, and your burden eases. It will feast, and you… you will live. You will walk away.” Jagat-Ban’s hand, still clutching the knife, dropped slightly. His loyalty, once a shield of entitlement, crumbled into dust. Life. Just to keep his own lungs drawing air. His father, Olor-Ban, was a pale ghost compared to the talons scraping the inside of his belly. “A trade?” he whispered, his voice thin, reedy. Mokhwa nodded, her expression grim. “The original offense. The greatest sin. The source of the stolen marrow. His blood runs deepest in this curse, Heir Jagat. His flesh will be the grandest meal. The final appeasement so you may endure.” His eyes, still wide with terror, now held a glint of desperate calculation. The knot behind his navel heaved upward, punching a harsh squawk from his throat. Patricide was a foul notion, yet the clawing beneath his ribs was here, wet and immediate. He had never put another man's skin before his own. “My… my father?” he choked out, the words catching. “You want… you want me to…?” “Only you can lead him to the pen, Heir Jagat,” Mokhwa urged, steadying him by one trembling elbow. “Only you can ensure the apex fledgling, the last one, emerges without tearing you apart from the core. It is the only way.” Jagat-Ban stared at her, then down at his impossibly swollen belly. The pulsing beneath the tunic was violent now, a frantic, rhythmic thrashing. A guttural roar escaped him, a sound of agony and monstrous determination. “Yes!” he shrieked, his voice cracking, a frantic yelp. “Yes! Get him! Bring him! Let it eat him instead!” At that precise moment, a sound like wet canvas tearing filled the air. His tunic, stretched beyond its limits, split vertically down the center. But it was not just fabric tearing. The flesh of his abdomen, taut and engorged, also gave way. A jagged, crimson fissure ripped open across his belly, not spilling blood, but revealing a glimpse of something vast and feathered, twisting and writhing beneath his hollowed ribs. Jagat-Ban shrieked, a sound less human and more akin to the cry of a gutted ox, as his labor began. He crumpled to his knees on the sagging planks, clawing at his split abdomen, choking on bitter bile as the feathers squirmed.

The Heir's Paranoia