The ember brand flickered in Li Tianyin's cracked marrow — a ghostly sigil drifting like molten iron across bone that should have been too soft to hold it.
Each heartbeat pulsed warmth through the flaw, but warmth alone could not keep the pact alive.
A forge that does not feed dies cold.
A beast echo that starves goes mad.
A flawed child that does not devour… breaks.
---
Above him, the Wilting Dao Tree's roots sank deeper into the hidden forge chamber.
They trembled like old veins pressed for the last drops of sap.
Centuries ago, this tree drank spirit ores and iron mist. Its branches once bore Dao leaves for sect disciples to harvest when forging spirit weapons.
But the sect died. The leaves withered. The roots rotted around broken veins of cold slag and rusted tools.
---
Yet where all else decayed, the flaw waited — a hungry crack ready to devour what others forgot.
---
Tiny fingers brushed the root's bark.
The ember pact pulsed, sniffing at the sour sap weeping from a root split by time.
The wolf's echo whined, tasting beast marrow trapped in the tree's veins.
The forge ghost's ember crackled — it remembered the Dao leaves that once fed flame and hammer.
---
Tianyin's breath shivered.
His skin flushed cold, then hot — marrow screaming for fuel.
His belly cramped — a child's fragile flesh rebelling against a pact meant for a full-grown cultivator.
Yet the flaw opened wider — an empty throat behind every cracked bone.
---
One soft rasp of his hand split the root's thin bark.
Sour sap dribbled onto his palm — thick, black-green, tinged with iron scent.
It should have poisoned him.
Should have sealed his lungs shut.
Should have turned the ember brand to ash.
Instead, the flaw drank.
Sap dripped along his wrist, soaking into skin.
The ember flame hissed approval. The wolf's echo snapped at the sap's hidden beast traces — old guardian hound marrow half-forgotten by the tree's stubborn bark.
---
The pact shivered.
Marrow fissure widened — not breaking bone but stretching it like iron softened under hammer blows.
The forge ghost's ember wove the sap into slag veins below him — root and ore bound in a whispering chant:
Flaw devours limit.
Flaw devours death.
Flaw devours tree.
Tree devours sky.
Sky devours nothing.
Flaw devours sky.
---
Above, the Wilting Dao Tree's last leaf blackened at the edges. Its bark cracked like old scrolls burning in wind. Roots pulsed once — as if bowing to the child it failed to nourish when it still had flowers to give.
---
Below, Li Tianyin's lips parted. No words yet — just a sigh too old for newborn lungs.
Root sap bled into marrow.
Ore veins hummed under slag.
The ember brand hissed, forging sap and flaw into a single breath.
---
He would not need milk.
He would not need a mother's teat or an elder's spoon.
He fed on root and slag, sap and echo, ember and flaw.
---
Root-fed.
Marrow-cracked.
Flaw-born.
---
A hidden forge flickered awake in that hollow chamber.
A pact fed enough to last one more breath.
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End of Chapter 8
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