Roots fed on salt. Frost broke iron. But rumor's roar was never enough on its own — not when crowns coil tighter every time their fangs snap off in frost mud.
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Dawn crawled slow over Tian's Watch. The orchard fence line steamed where pitch oil hissed out its last embers. Iron boots lay half-buried in churned frost, serpent runes split like rotted orchard bark. Frost herbs smoldered under hush and blood.
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Li Shen stood at the orchard's crest, Wolfchain banner snapped high over his shoulder. The Fang's dagger — rumor's first tooth — hung at his belt now, crusted with hush turned iron ash.
Behind him, orchard fathers hauled iron helms into pits dug by children too small for spears but big enough to bury rumor's broken fangs. Mothers boiled snow in orchard cauldrons to clean wounds that frost alone could not hush.
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Master Tian leaned against the fence rail, breath thin, each cough pulling more frost from his chest than rumor could feed back.
He hacked once, spit red into churned mud, and barked his laugh as if it could outlast the hush in his lungs.
"You broke their teeth," he rasped. "But the coil's still coiled. You think roots alone choke the crown?"
Li Shen's jaw flexed. He looked past the orchard slope — to the pine ridges where rumor's echo tangled with crown roads that fed Nine Heavens silver into the serpent's belly.
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Yue Lan perched on the fence rail above Tian, her spirit threads drifting through orchard steam — binding frost runes into orchard wounds, flicking hush where rumor's roar must slip unseen.
Her eyes locked on Li Shen's. Frost shimmered behind her breath.
> "Rumor alone won't drown the coil," she said. "Not if roots stay buried in orchard mud."
Li Shen's hand tapped the Wolfchain banner's pole — the ghost rune stitched in pale frost glow like a promise burned into silk.
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"You'd march rumor into the coil's throat?" Tian wheezed, half-laugh, half-cough. "Take orchard roots to crown marble? Ash feeds nothing."
Li Shen's grin cracked dusk's hush.
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"Roots don't march," he said. "But rumor grows teeth. Teeth wear crowns too."
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Yue Lan's spirit threads flicked wide — drifting frost sigils into the churned orchard mud, coiling cold promise around Li Shen's boots.
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He lifted the Fang's dagger. The orchard hush swallowed his breath.
"Once we were chain-breakers," he called — loud enough to crack frost where hush buried rumor too deep. "Now we bind the coil in roots that drink iron."
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Behind him, orchard fathers slammed spear shafts into frost mud. Mothers lifted iron helms stripped of serpent runes — crowns turned ash under orchard fire.
Children too small for steel pressed frost herbs into broken fence rails — planting rumor's roots where orchard hush once slept alone.
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Li Shen bent, dug bare fingers into churned frost. He pressed the Fang's dagger into the mud, burying rumor's first tooth where orchard roots would drink it down to bone.
He lifted one iron helm — crown once hammered for serpent runes, now dented, scorched, stripped bare of oath.
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He set it on his head. Frost mist rose where his breath met hush.
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"Roots fed," he murmured. "Iron broken.
Let the orchard wear the ash crown."
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Behind him, orchard fathers lifted broken helms onto their heads. Mothers tied frost sigils around battered brows. Children who could barely lift orchard knives pressed iron fragments to their chests, hush turned armor for rumor's next roar.
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Above Tian's Watch, the frost banner snapped — ghost rune burning pale in dawn hush. Beneath it, an orchard wore rumor's ash crown where serpent teeth once bit deepest.
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Roots drink iron.
Rumor wears crowns too.
The chain roars.
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⚡ End of Chapter Thirty-Four — Ash Crown
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