The ember in Li Tianyin's marrow flickered with a stubborn warmth that should have killed a newborn. But he was no perfect child. He was a flaw that refused to seal. A flaw that drank everything Heaven cast away.
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Deeper into the root's hollow throat, a wet, iron taste thickened the air. The forge ghost's faint hum guided him — not with words, but with a pulse that stirred something primal in his cracked bones.
His tiny fingers scraped at dirt and half-rotten root. He did not crawl with a newborn's clumsy flail. He crawled as if pulled by a forge's breath. The deeper he dragged his small body, the clearer the warmth pulsed in his marrow.
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Then — a new scent. Old fur. Old blood. Old teeth.
A den. Half-collapsed. Roots coiled through broken stone like the ribs of something long dead. Amid coals of spent forge slag, a skeleton curled — lean and long, with fangs yellowed by age and spirit residue.
It was a wolf once — one of the sect's ancient guardian beasts. When the forge sect fell to rot and arrogance, they starved the beasts first.
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The forge ghost flickered. The ember pulsed in Tianyin's veins, calling the marrow crack wider — like iron cooling too fast, spiderwebbing with flaws.
His tiny breath rasped. He pulled himself closer to the skeleton's fang.
The wolf spirit flickered awake — a thin smoke coiled out of its hollow skull. Empty eyes glowed with beastlight. It smelled the flawed blood. It did not roar or growl. It whispered.
> "Weak marrow... broken root… hungry…"
The spirit's echo circled the boy's ears like a forge bell tolling at dusk.
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On Earth, Tianyin had once watched a dying stray dog behind the forge yard. Broken leg, ribs showing. He'd given it scraps of burnt meat. It licked his cracked palm — its eyes said I am dying, but I will guard you for one bite more.
He buried it behind the scrap heaps when it finally stopped breathing. He'd never forgotten how its teeth gleamed, even in death.
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The whispering wolf fang remembered too. It sniffed the flaw — felt the endless hunger there. A spirit that should have scattered instead found a marrow crack that promised it shelter.
It lowered its smoke-head to the boy's tiny fist. The forge ghost's ember hissed — testing spirit against flaw. For a heartbeat, marrow and beast tried to devour each other.
The bark's ash veins pulsed silver.
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Tianyin's fist closed around the fang. It broke free of the skull with a snap — bone shards clinking on slag. The marrow crack flared. Pain that should have ended a child's life instead deepened the flaw's throat — made it wide enough to swallow the wolf's echo whole.
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A pact, but not a slave chain. A pact of flaws — hungry for marrow, hungry for rebirth.
The forge ghost's ember hissed once, sealing the fang inside Tianyin's palm like an unfinished blade.
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Somewhere far above, the Wilting Dao Tree dropped another bark shred. The wind caught it — carried it down the hollow root. It landed on the wolf skull's empty brow, like a talisman too late to matter.
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The boy's breath rattled in the dark. The forge ghost hummed. The beast echo settled in his bones. A marrow flaw cradled both like a hammer cradles a coal.
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A whisper.
A fang.
A forge waiting for its first roar.
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End of Chapter 4
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