Major Rune of the Undead

Major Rune of the Undead rests in the palm, a smooth tile of bone-white shale threaded with black sigils. Its surface is cool, almost lacquered, carved with a skeletal crown and a whispered glyph that glows with a dull green light when danger nearby stirs the air. The edges are slightly rounded, worn by many hands that have traded whispers of power for silence. Its texture catches the light like a bird's bone, lightly rough where the talons of carved sigils bite into the pale stone. If you turn it over, you glimpse a tiny inset shard—perhaps a remnant of some long-dead ritual—that seems to pulse with the memory of a thunderstorm of the grave. Legends say elder necromancers bound a fragment of the Undead to such runes, so they could coax obedient echoes from the ranks of the fallen. In the hands of a careful keeper, Major Rune of the Undead acts like a quiet chorus behind every strike. When slotted into armor or jewelry, it nuzzles its wearer with a steady kinship to the undead: minions flourish a little longer, blood curses find sharper bite, and the tether that holds the restless in thrall tightens into a more reliable chain. It does not shout for glory; it whispers for control. The wielder learns to listen—tones of bone, pulse, and shadow rising in chorus as commands flow through the rune's glyphs. In practice, it makes the necromancer's craft feel more like storytelling with a grim audience: the dead remember their lines, and the living writer can change the scene with a measured gesture. Meanwhile, the world has learned to trade in whispers as much as metal. A hunter who favors the long game might not seek this rune for a single flashy moment, but for the sustained narrative—the slow accretion of power that lets a skeleton soldier outlast a frontline, or a ghastly tilt in the balance during a siege. When stories travel, they travel fast, and whispers travel faster still. I heard of a shipment that rolled through town with no banners, just the clink of coins and the soft throb of emerald rune-core. It found a home at Saddlebag Exchange, where seasoned buyers haggle in hushed tones and prices shift like the tides. A Major Rune of the Undead, in decent condition, can fetch a sum that buys time and patience in equal measure, depending on the day and the crowd. So the rune remains less a trophy than a promise—a slender piece of bone and light that binds the dead to the will of the living, turning the quiet into concert, the grave into a stage where cooperation and consequence rise together in a slow, inevitable march. Some evenings, when the moon climbs the watchtowers and the air tastes of copper and rain, the rune seems to hum with the memory of unsaid bargains. It reminds the collector that power is a conversation with history, a pact that must be paid with patience and care. Every time.