The reverberations faded, leaving only the shuddering groan of Osham’s massive timbers and the sour tang of marsh gas. Vashni didn’t wait for Oriya to elaborate on further structural failures. He spun, his boots splashing in the fresh scum, and plunged into the labyrinthine alleys below. His shack, a precarious lean-to of salvaged planks and mildewed canvas, offered no comfort, but it held his gear: a coil of braided hemp, a water-stained oilskin pouch of dried fish, and his father’s old mud-hook, its iron scarred with decades of dredge-work. He stuffed them into a rough-spun sack, his movements economical, devoid of the usual languid apathy. He didn't care about Bhaimin’s curse, or Oriya’s dire warnings. The only truth Vashni acknowledged was the mud, and the mud was rising. Oriya’s words about innocent beggars had pricked a raw nerve, a flicker of something beyond his carefully cultivated disinterest, but it was quickly subsumed by the primal urge to survive. Let the rich turn to stone, let Osham crumble. He would be gone. The usual pathways to the river docks were choked with a frantic, desperate crowd. Traders, their skin slick with grease, shouted futile orders at dockworkers who were themselves jostling for space on the few remaining skiffs. But it wasn’t just the panic of flight that caused the bottleneck. Bailiffs in the Magistrate’s distinctive ochre tunics formed a cordon around the main gangplanks. Their polished speartips glinted, reflecting the sickly yellow lamplight. Vashni tried a side channel, a narrow sluice used by fishing skiffs. He slipped between two collapsing shacks, the rotten wood groaning under his weight, and peered through a gap in the planks. More watchmen. Their faces were grim, their stances rigid. One of them, a man with a heavy, pockmarked face and a cracked helmet, watched the churning river with an unnerving intensity. “No one leaves,” he grunted to a younger soldier, his voice raspy. “Orders from the Patriarch. Not a soul.” Vashni’s stomach tightened. This was about trapping every living soul in place. He retreated, his mind racing. The river was the only way out. Pushing through the cordon was impossible. Swimming through the flesh-eating mud was suicide. His eyes scanned the crumbling landscape, searching for an alternative. He found none. Instead, the glint of a lantern caught his eye, swinging wildly as a patrol approached his hiding spot. He ducked deeper into the shadows, pressing against the damp wood, but it was too late. A coarse hand seized his shoulder, yanking him back into the open. The pockmarked guard from before loomed over him, his spear-point inches from Vashni’s throat. “Thought you could slip away, mud-rat?” the guard sneered, his breath reeking of fermented river-root. Another guard bound Vashni’s wrists with a rough rope, pulling it tight enough to bite into his flesh. He offered no resistance. It was useless. They dragged him, not towards the dungeons or the Magistrate’s barracks, but upwards. Higher and higher, past the mid-level merchant homes, past the homes of minor officials, until the air grew thinner and the screams of the lower terraces were muted, distant echoes. The high ring, the Crown of Osham, loomed above them, a cluster of ornate, heavily carved estates built on the most massive, ancient pilings. Bhaimin’s manor, the grandest of them all, dominated the crest, its wide, leaded glass dark against the fog. Two more sentries stood at the doors, skin grey as pumice. They opened the heavy, bronze-studded doors, revealing a cavernous hall. The air inside reeked of camphor and powdered lime. They shoved Vashni forward, the rope chafing, until he stumbled onto the slick, polished floor. Before him, seated on a high-backed chair carved from what looked like petrified swamp-cypress, was Bhaimin. The Patriarch was a grotesque spectacle. His once-smooth, aristocratic features were now a fractured landscape. His skin, a mottled grey, was crisscrossed with hairline cracks, like dry porcelain about to shatter. His eyes, though still sharp, seemed to recede into deep, stony sockets. He moved with a stiff, unnatural rigidity, every breath a shallow, audible rasp. His right hand, resting on a heavy, leather-bound volume, appeared less like flesh and more like a gnarled root, rigid and unyielding. “Vashni,” Bhaimin wheezed, his voice brittle, like gravel grinding against stone. “The last untouched grain of sand in a calcifying beach. Come closer.” The guards pushed Vashni forward. He smelled the peculiar, mineral scent of Bhaimin’s transformation, a scent he’d only ever detected on the beggar who’d plunged into the mud. It was the smell of rock taking hold of flesh. “You refused my charity,” Bhaimin said, a hint of something that might have been admiration, or perhaps just cold calculation, in his voice. “You are a fool, but a fortunate fool. You are clean. Unburdened by this… accounting.” He gestured with his calcified hand toward the heavy volume—Oriya’s record of the trade, mapping the spread coil by coil. “My physicians, my priests, my… associates,” Bhaimin continued, his gaze sweeping over the silent, terrified figures lining the walls – clerks, lesser merchants, even Oriya, now disheveled and pressed against a wall with eyes locked on Vashni. “All have taken. All are afflicted. You… you alone are pure.” Bhaimin shoved the register aside. Beneath it lay a stack of thick parchment scrolls, tied with silk ribbons. A quill pen, its feather stained with dark ink, rested atop them. “These are the deeds, Vashni. The deeds to my entire estate. My warehouses, my trade routes, my dredging barges, my properties in the Sunken Terraces, even this hall. All of it. All mine. All yours.” Vashni stared, his mind struggling to process the words. Wealth. Unimaginable wealth, being offered to him, a mud-dredger. It was a sick joke. “The law of Osham is clear,” Bhaimin continued, a dry rasp rasping from his stony throat. “Property can be transferred. Ownership can shift. The curse, Vashni, adheres to the owner. To the holder of the wealth.” A thin, dry laugh escaped his lips. “I have paid the price for my folly. But I am not ready to plunge into the deep yet. Not when there is a way… a clean vessel to bear this burden for me.” He pushed the quill towards Vashni with his rigid fingers. “Sign it, Vashni. Accept the inheritance. Become the wealthiest man in Osham. Become… its new master.” Vashni understood then. The terrifying implications of Bhaimin’s desperation. He wasn’t offering salvation; he was offering a death sentence, a transfer of the ultimate burden. To sign meant to embrace the curse, to become the calcified anchor that would drag Osham down. He was to be crowned the wealthiest, and deadliest, man in Osham. His gaze swept the opulent room, seeking an opening. The windows. Massive, leaded panes, overlooking the black expanse of the swamp. He took a single, deliberate step back. The guards, anticipating resistance, surged forward. But Vashni moved faster. He launched himself sideways, not at the guards, but at the nearest window. The pane blew outward with a sharp crack, shards scattering into the dark as he plunged through the frame. The world spun – the shock of the cold, humid air, the dizzying height, the distant, murky gleam of the toxic shallows below. He tucked his body, instinct taking over, and hit the foul water with a bone-jarring impact. The stench of decay and stagnant mud filled his nostrils as he sank, the cold embracing him like a shroud. He fought his way to the surface, sputtering, his skin already itching from the acidic water. Above, on the highest level, the fragmented window frame stood stark against the moon-hazed sky, carrying the enraged, brittle shriek of Patriarch Bhaimin. He had traded one wooden cage for black water. If the bailiffs dragged him back, the quill would be forced into his fingers. He would be forcibly crowned the wealthiest, and deadest, man in Osham.

The Forced Inheritance