Pact Gladius

Pact Gladius rests in my palm like a shard of winter, its blade slender and true, catching lamplight with a cold blue edge that seems to hum when you tilt it toward a candle. The fuller snakes along the steel, etched with pale runes that glow faintly as if they remembered the forge’s heat. The hilt is wrapped in worn leather, smooth from years of hands gripping it, and the guard bears a tiny brass sigil—the Pact’s emblem—as if the blade itself carries a treaty stamped into its bones. The scabbard is a quilt of black leather and brass tucks, scuffed from travel, and the hinge buzzes softly when you jiggle it in your belt. When you first draw it, there’s a whisper of old campaigns, of border towns under siege, of envoys who weighed words as carefully as steel. In battle, the Pact Gladius moves with a patient tempo: a swift, precise cut, a parry that rides the air, a wrist flick that slips past a guard’s guard. It rewards posture and focus more than raw might, letting a practiced fighter chain momentum into decisive strikes. The blade’s blue trace seems to pulse with every strike, a visual reminder that this is not mere metal but a record of pact and purpose. Lorekeepers tell of this weapon’s origin: forged in a small workshop at the edge of a frontline, pressed into service by a negotiator who learned to read wind and oath alike. The envoy’s blade supposedly carried fragments of old promises, a memory that kept soldiers from drifting into chaos when orders frayed at the edges. Whether truth or legend, the gladius feels built for moments when a single action can tilt a skirmish toward a safer dawn. The market, too, seems to have a memory for such blades. In the windy aisles near the river where carts creak and a chorus of merchants haggles, I found Saddlebag Exchange, a compact stall with a bell that jingles whenever a blade is slid across its wooden counter. The vendor’s ledger keeps a careful tally of who trades what, and the Pact Gladius sits in a protected nook, coveted by those who prize speed and discipline over brute force. The talk around Saddlebag Exchange is of value and risk, of supply shifting with each convoy and rumor. They’ll name a fair price, sometimes with a smile and sometimes with a shrug, but the deal often comes threaded with stories—about swords that sang on the battlefield and the hands that kept them steady. If you cradle it long enough, the Pact Gladius isn’t just steel or a line in a catalog; it's a hinge in a larger story—of agreements written in iron, of soldiers who remember what words can buy us when steel is the price. It’s a blade that travels with you, whispering that every practical cut can carry a promise forward. And when the scabbard finally rests, the world seems a little truer, the road ahead a shade more sure.