The ember flame hissed where Li Tianyin's chest met cold slag and old rune lines.
It was not the searing blaze of a sect's grand forge, not a divine phoenix flame blessed by immortal elders.
It was smaller than a coal spark — yet older than any sect script that once rang beneath this Wilting Dao Tree.
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Inside his tiny ribs, the flame licked the cracked marrow like a tongue tasting raw ore.
It found the flaw — the fissure that no spirit doctor, no bone-forging technique could ever close.
Where others saw a defect, the ember found a crucible.
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The wolf echo curled tighter around the fissure, its ghost-fur prickling with each flicker.
The forge ghost's ember spirit pulsed alongside it — iron will, beast will, marrow flaw… three predators forced into one den too narrow for them all.
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A newborn's bones should have snapped under such heat.
His flesh should have crisped.
But the flaw drank the burn — not sealing it shut, but stretching it wider.
Pain poured through him — hot and cold, iron and ash, memory and hunger.
Earth memories flickered behind his sealed eyelids:
The forge yard where he once bent iron with brittle hands.
The rust flakes he'd hoarded like coins.
The cracked hammer that failed him the night his breath failed too.
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Here in the root forge, the hammer found him again — not in steel, but in flame.
Each pulse of ember forced marrow to warp.
Each gnash of the wolf's echo forced marrow to crack again.
Each sigh of the forge ghost fed slag veins below him with a promise: Devour limits, birth blade.
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He coughed. A baby's lungs, too weak to hold so much heat.
Blood flecked his lips — dark as ore dust.
The bark's ash veins in his palm hissed, catching stray sparks before they fled.
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A hiss — a whisper — a vow.
The flame burned, not to purify, but to temper.
Not to seal the flaw, but to feed it.
Tiny bones hummed. Cracked marrow glowed like molten threads.
Inside him, the ember flame folded wolf's echo into forge ghost — binding beast will to iron will in marrow's gap.
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Above, the Dao Bell's rune trembled again — struck by the echo of a hammer that had never yet struck true.
The Wilting Dao Tree's roots sagged lower, pressing deeper into the hidden forge — feeding the pact with centuries of rotting Dao sap.
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When the ember flame sank at last, it left behind a single, faint sigil scorched across the fissure in his marrow — a brand no healer would understand:
Flaw: Unsealed.
Temper: Begun.
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The pact whispered through him:
Beast blood. Forge breath. Flawed bone.
All his.
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No sect elder saw it. No heaven's envoy marked it.
In this forgotten hollow, Li Tianyin forged his first marrow temper alone.
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A breath.
A hiss.
A flaw that refused to heal — because it would never stop devouring.
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End of Chapter 7
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