Minor Rune of Infiltration

The Minor Rune of Infiltration rests on the counter, a slender oval of tempered glass framed in patinated bronze. Its surface is cool and slightly uneven to the touch, a mosaic of micro-fissures that catch lamplight and scatter it into copper pinpricks. The sigil along its edge—a hooded figure with eyes that gleam like hidden embers— is etched with careful copper-gilt thread, so it glows faintly when the air holds its breath. Lore says it was forged by a clandestine guild who taught their apprentices to move unseen, to slip through cracks of stone and memory alike. Some say the rune keeps a ledger of every threshold it has ever crossed, a quiet historian of doors left ajar. Those who wear it do not shout their success. The Minor Rune of Infiltration is the kind of boon you feel more than hear. It doesn't turn you into a phantom; it nudges reality just enough to blur the line between seen and unseen. When etched into armor or a cloak, it affords a faint edge to stealth, a slightly slower glide past a watchful gaze, and a quicker return to cover after a near-miss. In practice, it's a tool for scouts, couriers, and those who prefer turning a perilous route into a whispered shortcut. It is not a guarantee of triumph, merely a quiet invitation to move with the room’s rhythm rather than against it. On a winter night along the riverfront stalls, a young scout named Kael tests its effect for the first time. A patrol pauses by a lantern, and he slides the rune into a pocket, feeling the world dim at the edges. He threads closer to a locked gate, notes the creak of the hinges, and slips through, unseen as ash on snow. The rune doesn’t do the heavy lifting; it tangles perception the way a reed finds the wind, giving Kael room to move without inviting the blade of fate. He reemerges into the alley’s hush with the whisper of consequences he almost did not hear, and the city seems to exhale around him. Markets in the caravansary belt are where the rune moves from memory to trade. In the Saddlebag Exchange, a lined stall with a faded awning, the talk is of demand and drift. A clerk lifts a slab of chalk and writes the price in glimmering copper: Minor Rune of Infiltration — 2 silver, a touch of copper if you want it with a spare parchment note promising safe passage through a guarded corridor. The price dances with caravans: a dip during dry weeks, a spike when a raid is whispered in the alleys. A buyer might barter for a little varnish to preserve the sigil or a small scrap of map showing shortcuts through the city’s bones. The chatter around the stall threads together the futures of many who rely on a rune’s quiet promise. Whether kept as a talisman or traded as practical tool, the rune becomes part of a larger network: a ghostly infrastructure that makes soft corridors through stone and through the rules that guard it. In the end, it is less about power and more about possibility—the chance to move where others stop, to listen for the moment when shadows become allies.