Li Tianyin's marrow burned slow and steady, a flawed flame sealed inside a child's brittle ribs.
Sap fed it. Slag veins hummed under him. The wolf's echo dozed in the crack like a cub tucked in ash. The forge ghost flickered, restless — it wanted more than hidden root scraps. It wanted iron.
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Above him, the Wilting Dao Tree's roots creaked. Saplines thinned. The last drop slid down his wrist, feeding marrow that should have sealed tight but instead spread wider — a bottomless gorge carved into tiny bones.
He should have stayed curled in the hollow root's dark belly — but the pact gnawed at him.
The forge ghost hissed: Find iron.
The wolf's echo growled: Hunt spark.
The flaw whispered: Strike limit.
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He crawled.
Tiny fingers, bark-scabbed and stained with black sap, clawed at slag and root splinters. The hollow chamber spat him up like a half-forged ingot — iron veins above him called through the cracked stone like faint bell tolls.
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He found the slope where the rut spat him out days ago — back toward the surface, back toward the cradle that could not hold him.
Each shove forward left behind flecks of root sap and rust dust. Each breath drew ember heat deeper into the marrow fissure.
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At the mouth of the hollow root, moonlight slithered through the tangled branches above. The Wilting Dao Tree's limbs sagged low enough for the night wind to pluck more bark from its dying hide.
The cradle waited in that thin wash of cold light — a stone hollow split by the weight of old prayers and dead sect oaths.
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Tianyin dragged himself across cracked roots and frozen dirt. He pressed a palm to the cradle's broken lip — once a sacred stone meant to hold a sect heir. Now just a jagged bowl too shallow to contain a flaw that devoured every limit it touched.
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The forge ghost hummed louder now, shivering in his marrow. It sniffed at the cradle's rim — where old iron dust still clung to the stone veins. Centuries ago, forge elders lined the cradle with spirit iron shards — fragments of broken blades, a charm to bless the sect's new sons.
No one had bothered to strip it clean when the sect rotted away.
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Tiny fingers scraped up a pinch of that iron grit. Cold flecks stung his palm, mixing with root sap and ember glow. The wolf's echo snapped awake, nose twitching at the iron scent.
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On Earth, Tianyin once melted rust flakes in an oil drum furnace behind the scrap yard. He'd smashed them with a borrowed hammer, tiny sparks dancing in the dark. He'd called that rust his gold — the dream that someday he'd forge real steel with his own cracked bones.
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Here, the dream tasted stronger.
The flaw drank the iron grit — marrow hissed as flakes melted on his skin like salt in a wound. The ember flame flickered higher behind his ribs, fed by the taste of ore that should have rusted to nothing.
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A single fleck caught in the wolf's fang embedded in his palm. The forge ghost wrapped it in ember light — a coal seed around which flame might cling.
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The cradle cracked under his tiny weight — stone veins splitting wider as if fleeing the flaw they once tried to bless.
A low note hummed from below — the Silent Dao Bell whispering a promise only Tianyin could hear:
> Iron is root.
Flaw is forge.
Hammer must follow.
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Tiny lips cracked. A child's mouth, too young for speech, opened anyway — voice raw, rasped by ember and marrow hiss:
> "Hammer."
A breath. A spark. A vow.
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The cradle that birthed him split down its spine — stone veins shedding iron grit like silver tears into the dirt.
Tianyin's fingers closed around that dust. The pact pulsed: Find iron. Strike it. Claim it.
The forge ghost's ember hissed hotter than any mother's warmth.
The wolf's echo bristled: prey found, hunt begun.
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Above, the Wilting Dao Tree's final bark shred slipped free — drifting down to land on the cracked cradle's edge.
Below, the Root-Fed Child rose on shaky arms — flawed, marrow-cracked, ember-fed, iron-bound.
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The forge demanded its first true hammer.
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End of Chapter 9
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