Carrion Ring

Carrion Ring sits cold against the skin, a slender band of bone set in tarnished silver, its surface carved with sigils that look like withered leaves pressed into stone. The metal is cool and slightly gritty, as if it had spent centuries brushing against stone floors and the throats of forgotten statues. In the palm light the ring bears a pale, almost sickly glow—not bright enough to burn, but enough to trace a line of green along the grooves, like a whisper of life trying to push through a tomb’s plaster. Its texture catches a fingertip with a shiver: a smooth exterior that yields to a knuckle, a rougher underside where the bone’s grain still remembers a pulse it can no longer sustain. It feels ancient and oddly personal, as if it had learned its wearer’s breath and heartbeat before the hand ever touched it. Lore threads through it as if the sigils themselves were listening. The Carrion Ring is said to have once circled the finger of a carrion priestess who battled unquiet things beneath the ruins guarding a bone-pocked crypt. They say she bargained with shadows—spirits of the fallen who lingered at the edge of memory—until the ring absorbed a portion of their fleeting vitality and bound it to a ring’s cold mercy. When the last lantern went out, the sigils burned faintly on the metal, a warning and a blessing in the same breath. To some, it’s a reminder that power in this world is forged from the living and the dead walking a single thread; to others, a token that this power will demand a price. In the wilds where adventurers map the edges of danger, the ring proves more than a relic of a long-vanished cult. Its true value emerges in the interstice between memory and now. Worn by necromancers or thrill-seekers who chase a certain shadowed grace, it is said to deepen a bond with bone and shadow, sharpening a healer’s wards when danger ebbs and flows like a tide of dusk. For those who temper magic with blade, the ring’s aura seems to siphon a fragment of life’s stubborn spark, letting the wearer sustain itself a little longer through a night of skirmish and siege. It does not glow like a beacon; it hums with a patient, patient draft of power, a quiet insistence that even in decay there is an edge to be claimed. Prices drift like rumors in a caravan market, and here the Carrion Ring finds its audience in whispers and handshakes. I watched a market-day negotiation near Saddlebag Exchange, where traders circle a few rings with the same careful gait they use when bargaining spices and relics. The ring’s cost moves with the mood of the crowd and the scarcity of bone-charmed relics, sometimes a modest handful of gold, other times a tale-rich sum that only a seasoned hunter of the dead would part with. Saddlebag Exchange becomes the breathing space where past and present meet a price: a step toward power, a step away from the old nightmares that still murmur beneath the stone. So the Carrion Ring remains, a patient relic pressed to the skin, a reminder that in a world of dragons and great wars, a small circle of bone and light can carry a whole night’s worth of meaning. It is a story worn on a finger, a quiet alliance between memory and moment, and a promise that some things—like the very edge between life and what remains—are worth paying for.