No one saw what happened the night the earth's belly burst open.
There was only the cracking of soil, like the brittle snap of an old mother's spine. Then, a patch of farmland split—not like a sinkhole, but like an egg forced to hatch.
What crawled out from beneath wasn't human.
Wasn't demon.
It was something that had once been fetal—and now…
It no longer needed to be born.
It could birth itself.
And birth its own dwelling.
It began with roots.
Hundreds of thousands of clay embryos—no bigger than three-month fetuses—dug downward, not upward.
They planted their nails like saplings into the soil, burrowing deeper, shedding strands of hair that fused into the earth like guiding threads.
Those hairs grew longer.
They interwove.
Forming walls. Columns. Floors.
Layer by layer, down to the thirtieth stratum, they built something no man had ever seen:
A village—The Under-Village.
Not made of bricks.
Not of wood.
But of ash, blood, and memory.
The first structure they built was the House of Lullaby.
A round chamber shaped like a womb, its dome made of the stretched belly-skin of the dead, stitched with dried umbilical cords. In the center hung a cradle—woven from collarbones and human hair—that swayed not with the wind, but with the deep, pulsing breath from within the earth.
Each night, one embryo would crawl into the cradle and rock itself, humming not with its mouth…
But from its stomach.
The others would listen.
Not with ears—
But with their hearts.
Next came the Shrine of Memory.
A temple not to any god—
But to the memories of mothers who were aborted, forced to give birth, or left with hollow wombs.
Its walls bore inscriptions made from dried placenta, constantly shifting forms.
Some nights, it read like a prayer:
"Let me return.
I do not need a body.
I only borrow a womb."
Other nights, a warning:
"If a mother forgets,
Her child will remember."
In the Under-Village, there were no living people.
No corpses, either.
Only those who had been half-born, now living as parasites—feeding the Earth-Mother's rebirth.
They did not eat.
They did not breathe.
They fed on the memories of those above.
Every night, anyone who had ever dreamed of Anna, or whispered Ngoc Trach's name, or heard an ancient lullaby—
Would lose a part of themselves.
Some woke up unable to remember their child's name.
Some tore open the skin on their bellies, screaming, "Something's sprouting inside!"
Others… woke pregnant, never having touched another soul.
At the center of the village, they built the Navel Gate.
A threshold between the upper crust and the ancestral veins buried below.
Forged from fossilized blood vessels, the gate was sealed by Anna's preserved navel, suspended like an unopened eye.
Each time it throbbed, droplets of dark fluid would ooze—thick as ink, not quite liquid.
Those who tasted it would sing lullabies—
In the voice of their great-grandmother.
Above ground, people began to disappear.
No bodies.
Only:
A still-warm bed.
A red circle on the floor the size of a baby's palm.
A single strand of long black hair embedded into the ceiling.
By the second month of the Under-Village's existence, all geological scans of the region failed.
Radar could no longer map the terrain.
Sonar returned only the sound of humming lullabies.
Scientists could not tell:
Was this a cave?
Or an ancient uterus?
As for Anna—no one knew if she lived.
But in neighboring provinces, girls began appearing who looked exactly like Anna at nine years old:
Eyes black as dried ink.
White dresses brushing the floor.
Clay dolls cradled in pale arms.
Bellies rising and falling, as if something inside was breathing.
They had no parents.
No records.
And yet, everyone who saw them recognized something deep in their blood.
They called them:
"Children of the Thirteenth Womb."
And far below, in the lowest layer of the Under-Village—
Beneath dried blood, fossilized umbilical cords, molted hair, and petrified amniotic fluid—
Anna still sat.
No longer a child.
Not yet a corpse.
Not human.
She was the Thirteenth Womb, made flesh.
Inside her, over a million sleeping embryos dreamed.
They did not dream of being born.
They dreamed of building a world for themselves—
A world without people.
A world without mothers.
A world of soil, memory, and root.