The buried forge hall lay silent beneath the ruin — a cavern of cracked stone veins and rusted racks that once rang with hammer hymns and ember chants.
No master's bellows hummed now, no sect disciples fed coals or turned ore.
Only the Root-Fed Child's marrow flame flickered — the hush broken by the heartbeat of a flaw that would not die.
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Li Tianyin knelt beside the dead forge lizard — tiny fingers smeared in beast slag and hot iron marrow.
His ribs split wide under the rune brand's hiss — the forging fang pulsed steady behind bone, its tip humming like a hidden blade pressed to flesh.
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The pact roared inside him: Strike. Draw. Shape.
The forge ghost flared: Fang must wake.
The wolf's echo curled around the marrow fissures: Bite the stone. Birth the fang.
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He dragged himself to the forge hall's heart — a cracked anvil stone sunk deep in a ring of slag crust and old iron dust.
Once, sect elders struck thousand-layer blades here, carving runes into spirit ores that would live for centuries.
Now, a child's flawed bones would stand where the masters fell silent.
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Tianyin's palms pressed flat to the anvil's cold surface — iron veins beneath the stone pulsed faint ember light, stirring at the pact's hiss.
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The forging fang trembled behind his ribs — half-spirit iron, half-beast echo, half-ember flame devoured from slag and prey alike.
It wanted out — not as an echo seed trapped in marrow, but as iron teeth that could bite Heaven's throat.
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His breath rattled.
Cracked ribs hissed ember steam.
Tiny chest heaved against rune fissures.
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On Earth, he'd once shaped a scrap rebar blade on a roadside curb, using only a rust pipe and a borrowed file.
Bloodied palms. Burnt fingers.
But when the edge caught light under neon haze, it gleamed like a king's sword.
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Here, the cost was deeper — bone for steel, flaw for blade.
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He pressed his cracked chest to the anvil stone — ribs scraping cold iron, ember sparks dripping from the rune brand.
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Pain howled — marrow flame screamed behind bone.
The forging fang pushed against ribs that refused to break clean.
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The forge ghost sang through marrow: Strike the limit.
The wolf's echo snapped: Bite deeper.
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Tiny fists slammed the anvil stone — raw knuckles ringing dull notes where sect hammers once roared.
Cracks spread through ribs — marrow flame hissed white-hot.
The forging fang shivered — edges blooming ember runes along bone fissures.
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A roar, half-breath, half-ember:
> "Flaw devours limit. Flaw births blade!"
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A final crack.
Bone split wide.
The forging fang tore free — a sliver of iron and rune and echo marrow, dripping ember light as it struck the anvil's cold throat.
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It quivered there — no longer just a seed inside cracked ribs, but a living shard of spirit iron.
Crude. Rough. Raw edge flickering faint white heat.
But it was a blade.
His blade.
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Tianyin's palms wrapped around it — tiny hands trembling as ember flame licked fresh fissures up his arms.
Pain fed the pact.
The flaw devoured it.
The forging fang purred — hungry to bite more, to drink limit and iron alike.
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He pressed the blade's raw edge to the anvil stone — dragged it across once, twice, sparks flickering ember runes awake along its jagged length.
No sect elder guided his wrist.
No master's hammer tempered his strikes.
Only flaw. Only flame. Only bone.
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The forging fang's echo rang one clear note — a promise that even Heaven's laws would break when the flaw struck true.
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Li Tianyin slumped over the anvil — breath ragged, ribs a cage of cracked ruin and ember runes.
But in his bloodied palms, the first flaw-forged blade hissed softly — a tiny iron fang that would feed on the world.
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Above, the ruin's cracked terraces trembled under the Silent Dao Bell's hum — somewhere far beyond, the world turned in its sleep, blind to the flaw crawling beneath its skin.
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End of Chapter 20
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