Carrion Flame Guard of Corruption

Carrion Flame Guard of Corruption sits heavy in the palm, a gauntlet of obsidian iron with ember veins crawling across its knuckles. The texture catches light like lacquered bone—cool to the touch at the edges, warmer and grainy in the center where runes glow a sickly orange. Carved sigils coil around the cuff, each line a memory of a burned city and the creatures that thrived on rot. When the light catches it just so, a wisp of smoke seems to curl from the gaps, as if the armor keeps a pocket of sleep-fire smoldering inside. Lore whispers say it was forged not as weapon but as ward, born in a temple where scavengers learned to braid decay and flame. The Carrion Flame Guard of Corruption was said to serve a singular purpose: to shield a watcher at the heart of a ruin while the world burned around them, binding the corrupt energy to the wearer like a second skin. In the stories, a rider with this gauntlet could walk through a field of blighted husks and still feel the heat turning to resolve at the wrist. The item carries the scent of ash and the distant crackle of coals, a reminder that flame and rot are twin forces that can either unmake or preserve. In practice, the guard makes itself felt in day-to-day skirmishes and midnight ambushes alike. It seems to pull a thread from the battlefield’s diseased heart, funneling it into the bearer and, in return, offering a shield of embers that flickers against curses and cold steel. Those who wore it reported that life force gathered closer—little surges of vitality whenever a foe fell within the aura’s reach—and that the armor amplified deliberate taps of the flame tongue of a companion, letting allies feel the warmth even through fear and fatigue. It does not turn back time, but it makes the cost of stepping into rot a touch lighter, a way to hold a line longer, a way to keep moving when the world seems to crumble. I learned of its journey not in a polished catalog, but in a stairwell of traders and tents, where leather slips and ledger pages flutter. Saddlebag Exchange, a name spoken with a mix of reverence and caution, carried the piece into daylight for a price that glowed on a brass tag—something like seventy-two gold with a modest sliver of silver. The buyer knelt, felt the weight, and spoke softly of a homecoming for a relic that had learned to burn and to bind alike. As I walked away, the gauntlet hummed once, a small thunder in the palm, and I realized that some items choose their owners just as surely as we choose them. Rumors travel as fast as flame in markets and on the trail. The Guard's reputation swells with every tale of a ruined fort spared by its glow, and every buyer wonders whether it will bind them to a fate they choose or allow them to escape.