Berserker's Soft Wood Torch of Blood

Berserker's Soft Wood Torch of Blood sits in the palm of a weathered scavenger, its slender shaft of pale soft wood catching the campfire light with a satin sheen. The grain runs like a map of old battles, smooth to the touch, rounded where the hands learn the weight of a night trek. The head is bound in strips of tanned leather, stitched with stubborn care, and at its core a hollow where flame purrs and licks, releasing a crimson glow that seems to drink the air rather than burn it. The flame never roars into a ball of noise, but curdles the dusk into a slow, ruby mist, as if the torch itself is drinking rumors from the shadows. The blood-toned glow threads through the wood’s grain, leaving a faint warmth on the fingertips and a memory of heated whispers from a line of berserkers who once claimed this very instrument as a totem. In the stories sung by campfires, the torch carries more than light; it carries a lineage. It’s said the Soft Wood was once a living thing—a tree felled by a night of violent rain that mirrored the red dawn beyond the hills, the wood left to breathe the afterglow of violence and renewal. The Berserker’s mark that labels this torch is not mere vanity but a vow: to press on, to face the dark with a flame that remembers every strike and every scar. People who carry it—hunters, scouts, trappers of old borders—have learned to read the glow. A ribbon of crimson on a banner in the distance, a crackle in the fire that sounds almost like a name spoken softly, or a whisper of wind through a ruined gate that tells you you’re not alone. It’s a tool, yes, but more often, it’s a compass pointing toward the heart of the world’s remaining stories. In practical terms, the torch serves as a reliable beacon when the nights refuse to end. It illuminates hidden runes carved into crumbling archways, reveals the shimmer of bloodwort along a tunnel’s edge, and acts as a signal between small scouting parties moving through fog and gorse. Its heat keeps chill at bay and, in tighter moments, the torch is a deterrent to breeding cold and fatigue, a small ritual that steadies nerves before a perilous crossing. Traders treat its glow as a promise of reliable light, a thing you can count on when the map seems to dissolve into ink and rumor. Prices, of course, drift with the market’s breath. I watched a cautious buyer tally a purse of coins, eyes flicking toward the stall where a certain Saddlebag Exchange keeps its rails and receipts. The going rate hovered near two gold coins, a price that feels almost ceremonial for something that travels with you from damp cave mouth to sunlit ridge. The seller’s smile suggested this torch isn’t simply an object, but a passing of a story from one traveler to the next—an exchange as old as the road itself, in which value isn’t just counted in metal, but in the courage to keep walking toward the glow.