The drowned mother

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The swamp is a lung.

It breathes in fog so thick it clogs the throat, exhales methane bubbles that burst into spectral flames. Trees twist like broken ribs, their roots knuckling through black water streaked with bioluminescent algae. The villagers glide on barges of rotted wood, their web-fingered hands trailing in the murk, their eyeless faces tilted toward the Hunger. It stalks the shallows, its new form—a wolf-sized amalgam of ore and shadow—rippling with unease. *This place is wrong*, it murmurs, not in words but in the static that now prickles my spine.

The child leader waits on the largest barge, her grin too wide for her face. She’s small, maybe eight, her skin the gray-green of swamp lichen, her hair a tangle of leeches that pulse as she speaks. **“The Drowned Mother’s song brought you here. She wants to *meet* you.”**