The slag pit lay hushed beneath the moon's dead gaze — broken stone and rusted racks half-buried in ash drifts that tasted faintly of old iron and failed vows.
Where forge fires once roared, only the Root-Fed Child's marrow flame hissed now — flickering orange veins beneath skin too thin to hold such heat.
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Li Tianyin crouched in the pit's hollow belly, tiny palm pressed tight to the raw spirit ore vein.
The ember-hammer seed pulsed behind his cracked ribs, binding ore grit and marrow fissure together — forging impurity into fuel with each heartbeat.
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But ruin remembers what Heaven forgets.
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In the pit's deep corners, shadows stirred — thin silhouettes flickering behind moss-covered slag mounds.
Shadows born from spirit ores that never knew a master's hammer — impurities cast off by the sect's novice disciples, left to fester in cold stone and root sap until their half-dead sparks learned to crawl.
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They were forge shades — residue ghosts, spirit echoes half-beast, half-ore.
Their breath rattled like quenching steam trapped too long in slag veins.
Their eyes glowed faint iron-red under bramble creepers.
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When the Silent Bell's roar awoke the ruin, they sniffed the marrow flame's scent — a flaw that devoured limits was a forge they could not ignore.
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Tianyin's tiny chest heaved. The ember flame hissed at the shades, spitting sparks through the cracked ribs like a newborn forge challenging old rust.
The wolf's echo curled tighter in the marrow's throat — fur bristling at prey not quite alive, not quite dead.
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The forge ghost's ember flared: Hunt. Bind. Temper.
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The nearest shade slithered forward — iron grit clinging to its half-formed limbs. It hissed — a broken hiss that sounded like a hammer strike cut short.
Its shape flickered between beast and blade — a wolf's muzzle smudged in iron slag, claws like half-forged sickles scratching ruin stone.
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Tianyin did not crawl back.
His tiny fist clenched around the last ore chunk — marrow flame licking blood and grit into the ember-hammer seed.
The flaw devoured pain. The wolf's echo snarled. The forge ghost whispered: Strike it.
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The shade lunged — slag claws raking for the child's throat. Its roar rang dull — the whimper of iron denied a true forge.
Tianyin met it — ribs splitting wider, hammer seed pulsing heat through cracked bone.
Tiny palm struck the shade's snout — marrow flame flared. The ore chunk hissed in his grasp, melting into ember where spirit iron met flawed flesh.
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The shade squealed — spirit slag dripping from its half-solid jaws.
The pact drank it — wolf echo gnawed the echo's ghost marrow, forge ghost wrapped it in ember heat.
The flaw devoured the shade's impurity — not purifying it, but binding its echo into the hammer seed's hungry core.
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Another shade skulked from the pit's far wall — a lump of rusted beast tail and blade fang fused into a crawling hiss.
It lunged — but the child's marrow flame sang brighter.
His ribs cracked again, striking pain through bone like hammer on anvil.
The ember-hammer seed pulsed — forging shade's residue into marrow flame fuel.
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No elder swung a blade for him.
No sect talisman shielded him.
Only flaw, echo, ember.
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One by one, the forge shades crawled and struck — each hiss met by marrow hiss.
Each claw met by cracked bone ringing a silent forging note.
Each devoured piece made the ember-hammer seed denser — slag veins forged tighter behind the flaw that would never heal.
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At last, only ash drifted where the shades crawled.
No echo hissed from the slag pit's corners.
No impurity whined for a master's hammer it would never see.
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Li Tianyin stood in the ruin's belly — ribs fractured, skin scabbed with iron grit, breath rattling with ember heat.
The pact pulsed: First hunt. First bind. First temper.
The hammer seed glowed steady — flawed iron fused with shade marrow, the first echo of a forging spirit ready to strike true.
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In the pit's hush, the child's tiny breath rasped — no word, no cry.
Just a hiss that promised the flaw would never close.
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Above, the Wilting Dao Tree's dying crown shed its last bark dust on the ruin's cracked terrace — drifting down to crown the forge that Heaven forgot.
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End of Chapter 15
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