The Dao Bell's broken hum still quivered through the black iron chamber long after Tianyin's tiny hand fell back to the cold slag floor.
His marrow crack ached. The wolf's fang burned in his palm like a coal with teeth.
Above him, the rune that had awakened on the bell's rim bled faint silver threads into the air — drifting motes of old sect oaths, loose and half-starved for a will to bind them.
---
No master knelt to draw a formation. No elder traced sigils in incense smoke.
The pact formed not through rites but through flaw.
His cracked marrow drank the bell's hum — marrow that would never seal, veins that leaked limits and swallowed echoes.
---
The forge ghost's ember flickered behind his ribs.
It pulsed through the marrow fissure — once, twice — testing the echo trapped in the wolf's fang.
The fang's smoke-threaded spirit growled, not with hunger this time but with promise.
Beast and forge ghost met in the flaw — an ember gnawing at bone, a fang gnawing at spirit.
Two predators sniffing each other in the dark, finding in the boy's weakness a chamber deep enough to hold them both.
---
In the silence, Tianyin's breath rasped.
He was too small to speak words.
But the bark's ash veins in his palm pulsed with a chant older than syllables: Flaw devours limit. Flaw devours limit.
---
The Dao Bell's rune hissed once more. A single spark, bright as iron struck clean, flickered above his cracked chest.
It drifted down, sank through skin, slipped along the marrow fissure like molten steel poured into a broken mold.
His body spasmed. The crack widened — he felt it as an ache behind the breastbone. A burning that should have ended his tiny breath.
But the flaw fed on the pain. It drew the ember deeper. It split the wolf's echo open like dry bone under a hammer.
And then it bound them together.
---
A soft hiss like coals finding breath.
The first forging flame.
---
In that pitch root forge, the ember pact took shape:
— Forge Ghost: spirit iron's lost will.
— Wolf Fang: beast's remnant hunger.
— Marrow Flaw: the chamber wide enough to hold both.
No perfect cultivation manual would name this pact.
It was not righteous. Not demonic. Not even heretical.
It was flawed.
And therefore endless.
---
The tiny flame flickered over his chest, half inside his cracked bones, half licking the slag floor around him. It hissed against ancient runes, feeding on ash, bark dust, cold ore veins.
The forge ghost moaned softly — a note of approval, like a hammer striking steel just right.
The wolf's echo settled deeper in his marrow, curling like a predator around a nest.
---
Above, the Wilting Dao Tree's roots quivered — something old and hungry stirring in its dying core.
Below, Li Tianyin breathed the ember flame into his flaw.
He did not scream. He did not cry.
He forged.
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End of Chapter 6
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