The hollow root trembled in its sleep as Li Tianyin clutched the wolf's fang in one tiny hand. The forge ghost's ember flickered under his skin — a drifting coal spinning faint sparks through flawed marrow.
His breath rasped like wind through cracked iron. The wolf spirit's echo curled deeper into his bones, gnawing gently at his flaw — not devouring him, but nesting in the marrow fissure like an ember burrowed in old ash.
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Further in, the den widened. Roots pulled away from ancient stone to reveal a black iron chamber — half-buried, half-sunk into the deep root's belly. The forge sect's last hidden chamber: a silent bell room, where no flame had whispered for centuries.
At the heart of that chamber rested a Dao Bell — wide as an ox's back, cold and rust-bitten, its bronze cracked in a dozen places. Old runes ringed its rim, but they were lifeless scratches now — prayers unsaid, oaths unkept.
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The forge ghost pulsed in Tianyin's chest. The wolf spirit's echo sniffed the stale iron air. They both hungered for sound — sound was life, and life was fuel.
The boy dragged himself across broken slag and root tangles. His tiny hand brushed the bell's rim. The cold bit him to the bone — but the marrow crack welcomed it. Cold meant the forge could wake.
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He closed his eyes. On Earth, he'd learned to hear hammers before he swung them — the ring of steel on steel, the pitch that told him when iron softened enough to bend. His master taught him always listen before striking. His flawed marrow never held the heat long, but it held every sound like an echo in hollow bone.
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Here, he did not swing a hammer. He had no hammer yet.
He had only a cracked palm and a wolf's fang.
He lifted the fang with all the strength his tiny arm could muster. It wavered, trembled, then found the bell's rim.
A tap. Not even a strike — just marrow-flawed flesh touching ancient bronze.
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The bell should have stayed dead.
But flaws drink echoes. And echoes remember.
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The cracked runes flickered — a single pulse. The old forge ghost hissed in the dark. The wolf spirit's growl vibrated through Tianyin's ribs.
The Dao Bell whispered its note — not a roar, not a gong that would shatter sect walls, but a trembling hum like the breath of a buried god.
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He felt it in his cracked marrow first. The hum sank into the flaw. The Primordial Dao Embryo flickered awake, absorbing the note as fuel. The bark's ash veins pulsed silver through his tiny hand.
The Dao Bell's rust split further, veins of dull bronze flaking away like scabs. The rune rings blinked. One rune — the oldest, hidden under layers of corrosion — hissed free.
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A single note. A single rune. A single flaw.
Together they made a pact.
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Tianyin's eyes opened — black irises flickering silver where the forge ghost nested. The wolf echo gnawed at the marrow crack, pulling the Dao Bell's hum deeper into his blood.
No sect master blessed him. No elder named him disciple.
Yet in that hidden root forge, the Silent Bell sang once more — a broken hymn that only a flawed child could hear.
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Above, the Wilting Dao Tree's last leaf curled inward, as if remembering a prayer it had never spoken aloud.
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Below, the flawed forge found its first voice.
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End of Chapter 5
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