In the hollow belly of the Wilting Dao Tree's buried forge, the Silent Bell trembled for the first time in a century.
No elder's palm brushed its rune-ring. No sect heir knelt before it in silken robes.
Only a cracked marrow child, ribs split open like an iron bloom, forged a hammer seed in the dark.
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Li Tianyin's breath rasped thin as forge smoke.
The ember-hammer seed pulsed behind his ribs — a clot of raw iron grit, wolf echo, and forge ghost flame sealed inside a flaw that would never heal.
His bones should have splintered beyond repair — but the flaw devoured each break and begged for another.
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The forge ghost hissed: Strike it outward.
The wolf echo snarled: Roar it free.
The marrow flame burned hotter — a tongue of spirit heat licking marrow raw.
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His tiny fingers dug into the cracked cradle stone.
No child should have strength enough to hold himself upright — but the pact fed him root sap, slag vein hum, iron grit, and the dying tree's last breath.
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The ember flame within the marrow hammer seed flickered to life — not a coal spark now, but a heartbeat flame that pulsed in time with the Silent Bell deep below.
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In the ruin beneath him, slag veins hissed awake.
Runes along the buried forge walls blinked like eyes opening in slag and root.
The Silent Bell hummed — a note trapped too long in rust and regret.
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On Earth, he once struck a rusted tank with a rebar rod — the echo rang in his skull for days, a ghost of steel trapped behind cracked bone.
Here, he was the rod.
His cracked bones, the tank.
The marrow flame, the spark.
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He drew a breath that tasted of root sap and old iron.
His ribs expanded — cracks split wider, but the flaw devoured the agony like fresh ore tossed in the furnace.
The pact shuddered: Strike it outward.
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The wolf's echo coiled tight, pressing its teeth into the ember-hammer seed.
The forge ghost poured flame through the marrow fissure.
Together, they forced the seed to pulse — once, twice, thrice — then the marrow hammer struck.
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A silent blow.
No hand moved, no hammer swung — yet the strike rang from deep inside the flaw.
The Silent Bell below heard it.
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Stone veins shivered. Slag seams split open, leaking faint ember motes into the hollow root.
Roots quaked. Bark cracked. The Wilting Dao Tree's last leaf disintegrated midair, a black dust spiral feeding the pact below.
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The Silent Bell's rune ring flickered alive.
One note, then two.
A broken hymn, rebuilt in marrow and flaw.
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Then it roared.
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Not a roar to shatter mountains — not yet.
But enough to quake the buried forge.
Enough to hiss through the sect's broken halls above, rattling rusted racks where spirit hammers once slept.
Enough to whisper through the abandoned shrines where no elder prayed for this child's flaw to seal.
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Tianyin's tiny mouth cracked open — a cry torn from marrow flame, not throat.
A forge's birthcry.
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The ember-hammer seed flared red — slag veins drank the roar, root shards fed it. The wolf echo howled once, then fell silent — not dead, but bound tighter into the forging pact.
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Above, wind tugged at the Wilting Dao Tree's hollow branches.
Where leaves once shimmered in moonlight, only dust rained down — black, cold, yet oddly warm where it touched the flawed child's crown.
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The Silent Bell's roar drifted to stillness.
The ember flame hissed low, steady.
The hammer seed glowed, shaped — no longer raw grit, but a forge core sealed in flawed marrow.
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Li Tianyin's cracked bones settled. Not healed — they would never fully seal.
They would always crack, split, ring like hidden anvils when the pact demanded.
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The forge ghost whispered in his mind: Hammer forged. Anvil set. Flame fed.
The flaw whispered back: Strike again.
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And the Root-Fed Child — Heaven's flaw made flesh — lifted his head to the cold night and knew:
He would strike again.
And again.
Until no limit remained.
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End of Chapter 12
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