Shard of Lowland Shore gleams in the lamplight, a thumb-sized shard whose surface is a mosaic of salt-blue and tide-green. It feels cool and smooth, except where the glaze has worn away to reveal grainy, shell-rough facets that catch a fingertip and leave it damp with remembered brine. Across its face, faint lines run like the coastline you’d trace with a fingertip, and along the edge there are micro-etchings that look almost like wave patterns frozen mid-break. When you turn it, the color shifts as if a drop of cloudlight were trapped inside, a tiny tidepool of glass that seems to breathe with every breath of air. Lore-level whispers claim it is a fragment from the Lowland Shore itself—an old coast swallowed by shifting sands and sudden storms, kept safe by a sea-warden who swore to guard the memory of every harbor that has ever slept with the tide. In the markets and in the company of old captains, the shard is spoken of less as a curiosity and more as a quiet instrument. Its value lies not only in appearance but in the way it hums when near damp air, as if the subtle currents of the sea whisper through you. In practical terms, smiths and tailors prize it as a crafting component for coastal-themed gear—an infusion that lends a glimmer of seawater to cloth and a stubborn resilience to metal. For navigators and explorers, it can function as a quest catalyst: a clue in a sailor’s diary, a key to unlocking a submerged doorway beneath the old harbor, or the missing sigil to summon a sea-temple’s protective ward. It’s one of those items that feels as if it accumulated stories as much as ore. That storytelling quality makes the Shard of Lowland Shore a traveler’s companion, not just a collectible. When I carried one through a glassy marketplace canyon, the air smelled of brine and kettle steam, and a trader mentioned Saddlebag Exchange in hushed tones—the kind of place where corner booths gauge value by shimmer and lore rather than coin alone. They told me the price ebbs and flows with the tide, and that seasoned merchants will trade a shard for a map fragment or a whispered favor from a coastal NPC. It wasn’t about a fixed price so much as a covenant with the sea: respect the memory, and the memory will reward you. So I pressed the shard into a coat pocket and walked on, feeling the faint pulse of lowland shoreline seeping into the world again. In a hundred little quests and conversations, its presence nudges the story forward—a reminder that the coast remembers us even when we forget to listen. And sometimes, at dusk, cradling it by a lantern, you hear the shoreline sing back in bells and boats, a memory etched into your map. For those who walk coastlines in search of forgotten harbors, the shard is a quiet compass, guiding not north but memory toward what remains of the old shoreline.