Ashbone: The Record of Burning Heaven

Chapter 1: The Cure Called Death

The cold in the Bone Prison was absolute, but it was the only thing that kept the burning inside Lin Jin’s marrow from consuming him alive.

Lin Jin sat on a bed carved from Thousand-Year Black Ice. Chains the width of a man’s arm, inscribed with suppression runes, shackled his wrists and ankles. He wasn't a criminal. He was the Young Master of the Lin Family.

But to the world, he was something else.

A monster. A plague.

Creak.

The heavy stone door groaned open. A beam of warm light cut through the freezing darkness, illuminating Lin Jin’s pale, gaunt face.

"Father?" Lin Jin’s voice was hoarse, scraping against his throat like sandpaper.

A middle-aged man in luxurious violet robes stepped in. It was Lin Xiao, the Patriarch of the Lin Family. Behind him followed a withered old man carrying a rusted, blood-stained wooden box.

"Jin'er," Lin Xiao said, his voice unusually soft. "How is the pain today?"

"It hurts, Father," Lin Jin whispered, clutching his chest. "It feels like... like ants are eating my bones from the inside."

Lin Xiao nodded, a flash of complicated emotion crossing his eyes—pity? Or perhaps, relief?

"Endure it a little longer," Lin Xiao said, stepping closer. He didn't touch his son. He never did. No one dared to touch Lin Jin without protective gear. "Elder Gu has found the cure. Today, we extract the poison from your body. Today, you will be free."

Lin Jin’s eyes widened. For eighteen years, he had been a prisoner in his own home. He had been told his body was a cursed vessel, leaking a corrosive energy that rotted wood, rusted iron, and killed flowers.

"Really?" Hope, fragile and desperate, bloomed in his chest. "I can... I can walk outside? I can see the sun?"

"Yes," Lin Xiao said. He looked away. "Prepare the formation, Elder Gu."

The withered old man cackled dryly. He opened the wooden box. Inside wasn't medicine.

It was a set of saws. Chisels. And a long, hollow spike engraved with blood grooves.

Lin Jin’s heart skipped a beat. "Father? What are those?"

"The poison is in your marrow, Jin'er," Elder Gu rasped, his voice like grinding stones. "To cure the tree, one must cut the roots. To save the man... we must open the bone."

"It will be painful," Lin Xiao added quickly. "But it is necessary."

Lin Jin grit his teeth. He nodded. "I can take it. If it means I can be normal... do it."

He wanted to make his father proud. He wanted to stop being the family's shame.

Elder Gu approached. He didn't use anesthesia. He raised the hollow spike and aimed it directly at Lin Jin’s spine.

THUD!

The spike pierced flesh. It scraped against the vertebrae.

"AAAAHHH!" Lin Jin screamed, his body arching off the ice bed. The chains rattled violently.

But the pain wasn't the worst part. As the spike penetrated his bone, Lin Jin felt something being pulled out. It wasn't poison. It was his life force. It was his essence.

And then, he heard them talking.

"Pure," Elder Gu muttered, his eyes gleaming with greed as he watched a pitch-black, viscous liquid flow through the hollow spike into a jade jar. "The 'Corrosion Bone Marrow' is of the highest quality. Patriarch, with this, your eldest son Lin Feng will definitely break through to the Spirit Realm!"

The pain vanished for a second, replaced by a cold shock that froze Lin Jin’s soul.

Lin Feng?

My brother?

"Father?" Lin Jin gasped, blood trickling from his mouth. "What... what is he talking about?"

Lin Xiao stood with his back to him, watching the jade jar fill up. He didn't turn around.

"Your brother Lin Feng is a genius," Lin Xiao said, his voice devoid of the earlier warmth. It was cold. Business-like. "But his talent has hit a bottleneck. He needs a boost. A supreme foundation."

Lin Xiao finally turned. He looked at his screaming, bleeding son not with love, but with the appraising look one gives to livestock.

"You were born with the Cursed Body. You cannot cultivate. You bring only disaster. But your marrow... it is a treasure."

"You... you lied..." Tears mixed with blood on Lin Jin’s face. "You aren't curing me."

"I am making you useful," Lin Xiao said indifferently. "Sacrificing a piece of waste to create a god. You should be honored, Jin'er. This is your contribution to the family."

Honor?

Waste?

Eighteen years of isolation. Eighteen years of enduring the gnawing pain, believing his father was searching for a cure.

It was all a lie. They were just waiting for him to ripen.

He was a pig raised for slaughter.

"No..." Lin Jin growled. "NO!"

"Suppress him!" Lin Xiao ordered.

Elder Gu sneered and pressed down on the spike. "Don't struggle, brat. It will be over soon. Once I drain your spine dry, you won't feel a thing ever again."

Despair swallowed Lin Jin. His vision blurred. The coldness of the ice bed seeped into his heart.

Is this it? Am I going to die here, as food for my brother?

"Pathetic."

A voice.

It didn't come from the room. It didn't come from his ears.

It came from the hollow of his spine. From the very marrow they were trying to steal.

"You act like a sheep, so they butcher you like a sheep."

The world seemed to turn grey. Time slowed to a halt.

Lin Jin’s consciousness was pulled into a deep, dark abyss.

"Eighteen years I have slept in your bones," the voice was ancient, dripping with a malice that made the Devil look like a saint. "I kept you alive. And you want to give my power to that mediocre trash standing over there?"

"Who... who are you?" Lin Jin thought, his mind trembling.

"I am the rust on the blade. I am the rot in the wood. I am the end of all things eternal."

A surge of black energy, far darker than the night, erupted from Lin Jin’s spine.

"Do you want to live, boy? Do you want to tear them apart?"

Lin Jin looked at his father’s cold face. He looked at Elder Gu’s greedy grin.

The love in his heart turned to ash. In its place, something else ignited.

"Yes," Lin Jin mentally screamed. "I want them... to ROT."

"Good deal."

SNAP.

In the real world, the hollow metal spike stuck in Lin Jin’s back didn't just break.

It dissolved.

It turned into grey dust in an instant.

Elder Gu’s eyes bulged. "What—?"

He didn't finish his sentence. The black liquid in the jade jar suddenly boiled. It shot out like a living serpent, wrapping around Elder Gu’s arm.

"ARGH!"

There was no blood. There was no fire.

Elder Gu’s arm simply... withered. The skin turned grey and flaked off like dry paint. The muscle disintegrated. In the blink of an eye, his arm was nothing but a brittle white bone.

"My arm! My arm!"

Lin Jin slowly lifted his head. His eyes were no longer black.

They were a swirling, catastrophic grey.

The chains on his wrists rusted and shattered into dust.

He stood up from the ice bed, the "poison" they feared so much now wrapping around him like a cloak of death.

"Father," Lin Jin spoke. His voice overlapped with the ancient entity, creating a demonic harmony. "Did you say I am waste?"

He took a step forward. The Thousand-Year Black Ice beneath his feet hissed and melted into foul water.

"Let me show you what this 'waste' can do."

End of Chapter 1