Relic of the Lich

Relic of the Lich sits cool in the palm, a flattened disk of obsidian carved with sigils that spiral in on themselves like the swallowed teeth of a tidepool. Its surface is smooth but not flawless, a lacquered sheen that catches every glint of flame-lit dusk and throws it back with a chill that seems to seep into the marrow. At its center, a pale green ember flickers faintly, as if a green star were trapped beneath glass, pulsing in time with a heartbeat you can almost hear if you press your ear to the cold disk. The rim bears a thread of rusted metal, the kind that speaks of long journeys and hands that wore away at brass and bone to keep its secret intact. When you hold it, the texture shifts—from the icy slip of stone to a faint, powdery roughness that suggests years of contact with soil, ash, and whispers. Lore will tell you the relic was never meant for the hands of one person, but for a lineage that walked between vaults and graves, a conduit for a power that never quite dies. They say the Lich, whatever name the old bards dared to whisper, bound his or her essence to a cold artifact so that it could be passed along, studied, feared, and eventually forgotten by those who weren’t listening close enough. The relic survived not by cleverness of its maker, but by the way its sigils drink in memory, growing stronger as it absorbs the stories of those who dare to call it forth. Hold it too long in bright daylight, and the ember will dim; cradle it in shadow, and a spark of frost might leap along your pulse, a reminder that you’re a caretaker of a small, dangerous history. In the world it threads through, the Relic of the Lich is less a weapon than a hinge—an object that can tilt a moment into a choice. For a necromancer, it is a rare fuse that can awaken born kin of bone and shadow, granting a temporary surge in minion health, speed, and resilience. Those who study it claim it can cool the breath of a living foe in order to slow a fight, or intensify your own life-leeching rituals so that even a failed gambit regenerates something more than just your own vitality. Used wisely, the relic doesn’t simply empower; it harmonizes with the wearer’s intent, turning a single skirmish into a quiet, inexorable crescendo of necromantic precision. Overuse, however, invites a creeping fatigue—an inner frost that gnaws at focus and makes every whisper from bone and sigil feel like a debt coming due. Market rumor breathes on the relic’s price as well, the way a cold wind sketches the fog above a harbor at dawn. In the stalls of Saddlebag Exchange, where traders trade tales as much as trinkets, the Relic of the Lich is a coveted, precarious thing—valuable enough to attract a weary buyer and dangerous enough to repel those who fear what it might awaken. A careful vendor will name a price in gold and rusted coins, a sum that shifts with mood and rumor, the kind of figure that makes a buyer weigh risk against a future charged with eerie potential. Some days the chatter hints at a lineage worth protecting; other days, it warns of bargains that will cost more than currency. In every telling, the relic remains a doorway—glinting, biting, forever asking who you intend to become when you unlock its green fire.