The Female Heir Who Ended Patriarchy

Synopsis

For generations, my family had passed down a single secret art, a forbidden ritual that turned female fetuses into male ones. The ritual could change a child before birth, with a success rate as high as 99%. And I was the only exception. Before my father died, he stared into my eyes and said, "So it wasn't the ritual that failed, but..." He never understood why the ancestral ritual that had always worked stopped working on his own child. After all, the dark art guaranteed a male child once a pregnant woman drank the potion. Since my great grandfather's time, my family had built staggering wealth on this ritual. Even though every boy created this way died before turning 30, nobles and officials still paid any price for a son. The family rules allowed no more than 36 transformations a year. But my father was blinded by greed. As long as the money came, he never refused anyone. In the most extreme year, he performed 360 transformations. Then I was born. For the first time, the ritual my father took such pride in failed. He stared at me swaddled, trembling. He couldn't understand it. The same potion had always worked. Why not on his own child? He spent his days digging through our ancestral records, never finding an answer. When I was eight years old, he died in despair. At the end, he looked into my eyes and whispered, "So it wasn't the ritual that failed..." Later, I learned the truth. And it was far more terrifying than any dark art.