The cracked cradle shivered under Li Tianyin's tiny palm — stone veins bleeding their last grains of old iron into the night wind.
Above, the Wilting Dao Tree's final bark shred fluttered down, landing in the boy's hair like an accidental crown — brittle, dark, full of dead roots that whispered secrets only his flaw could hear.
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In his fist, the iron grit clung to sap and blood. Cold flakes pricked the bark-ash veins that threaded his palm. The wolf's echo snarled low — a cub's growl, claiming prey not yet born.
The forge ghost's ember flickered hotter than before — flickers of spirit flame crawling along the marrow fissure like a forge's tongue licking cracked ore.
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He pressed the grit to his chest, just above the ember brand scorched across his flawed marrow.
Pain flared — not the sting of a cut, not the burn of fire, but the deep, bone-splitting ache of raw ore meeting spirit flame inside flesh not meant to hold either.
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On Earth, when he was fourteen, he'd stolen scrap wire and melted it over charcoal in a backyard pit.
He burned his palms black. Blisters popped and dripped into the molten trickle — he'd sworn to himself then: I'll hammer my own steel, even if my bones split for it.
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Here, there was no pit — only marrow.
No coal — only flaw.
No hammer — only will.
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The forge ghost hissed: Strike it.
But he had no hammer yet.
So his own flawed bones must strike instead.
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He pressed harder. The iron grit dug into thin skin, cracking it open until blood leaked over the ember brand.
The wolf's echo snapped at the taste — a predator's thrill in the marrow's hollow throat.
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His ribs rattled — a cough that should have been fatal for a child so young.
But the pact fed on every drop — ember flame rising, marrow fissure stretching wider than any spirit doctor could ever mend.
The iron grit hissed as it sank through skin — flecks drifting like tiny meteors into the forge ghost's flame.
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A spark.
A hiss.
A child's raw breath scraping the hollow forge's dark air.
The iron grit clumped together where the ember brand coiled behind his ribs — sap and blood binding each flake like slag folding into a bloom of steel.
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The wolf's echo wrapped its smoke around the grit — gnawing it smooth, shaping a seed in the flaw's endless throat.
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In the cracked cradle's shadow, Tianyin's tiny heart stuttered under the strain.
The pact flared hot enough to boil marrow.
The flaw yawned wider — devouring pain, sealing nothing.
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A single rune flickered over the iron grit — the same note the Silent Bell whispered days before.
A hammer's promise:
> Strike. Shape. Devour.
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His breath rattled once — twice — then steadied.
Blood clung to the bark shred still tangled in his hair.
Beneath cracked ribs, the grit glowed faint orange — not yet a hammer, but the seed of one.
A piece of dead iron.
A flicker of ember.
A flaw that would never close.
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He opened his eyes — black irises ringed faint silver where the pact nested.
Tiny fingers closed into a fist over his chest — pressing the ember-hammer seed deeper.
No mother sang a lullaby.
No elder whispered good fortune.
In the hollow forge's ruin, the Root-Fed Child forged his first tool with nothing but flawed marrow and stubborn breath.
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End of Chapter 10
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