Moonlight poured like pale slag over the Wilting Dao Sect's outer ruin — terraces once bright with lanterns now smothered by thorn creepers and moss-thick stone.
Where disciples once chanted forging hymns under drifting incense, only the cold hush of wind moving broken tiles remained.
---
Li Tianyin stumbled down the cracked steps, tiny feet raw where root bark scraped flesh clean.
The ember-hammer seed pulsed behind his ribs, every heartbeat striking the flaw wider.
Each step dragged marrow flame deeper into bone veins too thin to hold such heat.
---
Ahead, the ruin's edge dipped into a hollow — a slag pit half-sunk into the earth, crusted with black flakes like scorched snow.
Rusted racks of ancient hammers, their handles eaten by rot, leaned against broken stone walls.
And in the pit's heart — a single vein of raw spirit ore flickered faint silver under moss and ash.
---
Once, that pit fed the sect's outer forge. Novice disciples dumped slag there after each failed forging — the scraps of spirit iron too flawed to pass elder tests.
Where others cast failure aside, the pact whispered: Flaw devours failure.
---
The wolf's echo tasted the stale iron in the air — its low growl rippled through Tianyin's cracked marrow like teeth scraping a dry bone.
The forge ghost's ember hissed: Claim it. Feed it. Forge it.
---
He slipped down the slag slope on hands and knees. Ash clung to his cracked ribs — marrow flame hissed through the flaw, catching faint sparks of old spirit iron buried in the pit's crust.
---
Tiny fingers brushed the cold ore vein — a raw seam, too dirty and unstable for any sect elder to waste time refining.
To Tianyin's flaw, it tasted sweeter than gold.
---
The ember-hammer seed pulsed. The marrow flame spread down his wrist — tiny veins glowing faint ember orange.
He pressed his palm to the ore vein — bark-ash lines flickered like tiny runes scrawled by a child's dream of a hammer strike.
---
On Earth, he'd scavenged rust lumps from gutters, striking them with borrowed hammers until his palms split open.
Every drop of blood whispered the same vow: Rust or gold, I forge all the same.
---
Here, the rust was spirit iron.
The hammer seed pulsed.
His flawed marrow begged: Strike it. Bind it. Feed it.
---
He broke off a chunk of the ore with raw fingers — nails split, flesh scraped to red. The ore hissed against his skin, burning faint lines into his palm.
Pain sang. The flaw drank. The ember flame devoured the iron grit like coals swallowing slag.
---
The wolf's echo curled around the ore chunk — spirit beast teeth gnawing the impurity from within.
The forge ghost's ember pressed heat through marrow, binding ore flecks into the hammer seed.
---
The pact demanded a strike — but he had no hammer yet.
So he used his bones.
---
Tiny fist clenched around raw ore.
He pressed the chunk to his cracked ribs — each breath forced bone against iron, each heartbeat struck the ore deeper into marrow flame.
---
A hiss. A crack. A faint ring like iron on iron — born not of forge stone, but of flawed bone.
The Silent Bell deep in the ruin's root trembled at the echo — faint runes flickering awake in the slag pit's walls, remembering chants they hadn't sung in a century.
---
Spirit ore fused with the hammer seed — marrow flame hissed bright white, folding slag and bark ash into the seed's raw core.
---
Tianyin gasped — lungs clawing for air that tasted of rust and ruin.
Ribs cracked again — pain ringing through the flaw like a vow.
---
No master praised him.
No elder witnessed his forging.
Only ruin dust and root wind heard his marrow flame's whisper:
> Failure devoured. Flaw forged. Limit struck.
---
Tiny bones trembled, but did not break.
The ember-hammer seed glowed steady — spirit ore fused inside, a promise of the first true hammer yet to come.
---
Above the pit, wind rattled rusted racks — old hammers hummed in their sleep, iron ghosts nodding approval at a child too flawed to quit.
---
In the ruin's hush, the Root-Fed Child sat alone in the slag pit's black cradle — marrow flame bright, flaw wide, hammer seed hungry for the next strike.
---
End of Chapter 14
---