The ember-hammer seed nestled behind Li Tianyin's ribs — a tiny clot of iron grit, bark ash, wolf echo, and forge ghost flame.
It pulsed with his heartbeat, a spark blinking in marrow dark.
Each flicker hissed against his cracked bones, testing flesh too soft to hold ore meant for forge stone.
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Outside the cracked cradle, the Wilting Dao Tree's last leaf snapped free in the night wind. It spun down in silence — landing on the child's shoulder like a seal that had failed to protect him.
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He felt the seed's weight in every breath — too heavy for a newborn chest, too hot for untempered marrow.
But the pact did not care for what Heaven deemed too much.
It wanted iron. It wanted strike. It wanted shape.
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The forge ghost hissed through the flaw: Strike it.
But he had no hammer.
So he must forge one.
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On Earth, he'd broken rusted pipes on stone blocks, shaping rebar into a makeshift hammer head. His brittle bones snapped under the weight — yet every break taught him where iron yields, where iron stands.
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Here, no scrap yard waited. Only flesh and cracked bone.
So his ribs must be the anvil.
His marrow must swing the hammer.
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The ember flame within flared — a hush and a roar in one breath.
The wolf's echo gnawed at the iron grit, compressing it tight.
The forge ghost's ember sparked hotter, pressing the raw ore deeper into the fissure.
Pain folded him inward — ribs buckling under heat.
He should have blacked out — but the flaw drank pain like fuel.
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Tiny heart pounding, he drew his first forging breath.
A breath that was not air alone — but ember.
His chest heaved. Bones cracked — not enough to kill him, just enough to ring like iron under a hammer's kiss.
The ember-hammer seed pulsed.
Each crack struck it deeper into shape.
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The Silent Dao Bell below, buried in roots and slag, shivered at the echo.
A faint ring slipped up the hollow forge's shaft — a note only flawed marrow could catch.
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He gasped — breath rattling like a forge bellow.
The pact pulsed: Again.
He drew another breath.
Ribs cracked wider — the flaw split deeper.
The ember seed glowed orange, then dull red, then bright again.
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A tiny sob slipped free — not fear, not despair.
A hiss — a forge's promise.
Pain sang through marrow.
The wolf's echo curled around the bone anvil, howling low — each note a hammer blow, striking the seed again and again.
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Outside the cradle, the wind caught the last leaf, lifting it from his shoulder — spinning it into the hollow root, back to the dead forge's cold heart.
Roots quivered. Slag veins pulsed like old veins remembering flame.
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Within his cracked chest, the final breath forced marrow to snap at the edges — a break no healer would ever mend.
And the seed answered with its first true ring.
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A spark. A hiss. A heartbeat that sang like hammer on iron.
The Bone Anvil took its first blow — and the flawed child's forge whispered back:
> Flaw devours limit.
Flaw devours pain.
Flaw devours death.
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The ember-hammer seed glowed steady.
No tool yet.
But the core was shaped.
And the next strike would not break him.
It would forge him.
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End of Chapter 11
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