Star of Dwayna

Star of Dwayna rests against the hollow of my palm, a five-pointed star of pale ivory set in a frame of oxidized silver that feels cool as a night breeze. Its edges are finely kissed with runes that catch the light in a way that makes the room seem brighter, as if a dawn breeze had decided to linger inside the pendant. The stone at its heart glows with a soft, almost holy blue, like a distant star newly born, and every time I tilt it toward a lamp, I see a delicate lattice of wings etched along the outside, as if they might lift the tiniest breath of life from the air itself. Lore has it that the Star was a fragment of the goddess Dwayna’s own celestial crown, a relic salvaged from a time when illness and despair pressed down on every road and village. They say it was carried by healers who learned to bend its quiet warmth into a sheltering glow, a promise that even the gravest wound might be tended back to light. In the heat of a night market, I learned to read its glow not as a miracle in isolation but as a piece of a larger tapestry. When worn, the Star of Dwayna seems to resonate with the rhythm of the people who carry it: guardians and healers, craftsmen and wayfarers who trade fear for care. In practical terms, it’s a trinket that strengthens a patient listener’s resolve and steadies a group’s breath in the moment when the fight grows thick. Players that lean on healing, protection, or even quick, decisive buffs tend to favor it, because its magic isn’t loud, but it’s there in the margins—the extra shield when a siege starts to turn, the momentary clarity that lets a team re-synchronize after a blunder. It feels less like a tool and more like a quiet companion—one that reminds you of why you entered the road in the first place: to mend, to guard, to keep the line from breaking. The world doesn’t stop to admire trinkets, though, and reality press-gangs you into the ordinary grind of trade and barter. On a sun-warmed afternoon I wandered into Saddlebag Exchange, a stall tucked between a crowd of chatter and the clatter of coin, where a grizzled trader sifted through velvet pouches and moonlit charms. He weighed the Star in his palm as if measuring a heartbeat, then priced it with the control of a man who has watched a hundred bargains rise and fall. The numbers hovered between a steady few gold coins and a touch more, a reminder that rarity has its own currency. I watched as another customer traded a bundle of herb charms and a handful of glimmering shards for it—a dance of value where stories, not just silver, are exchanged. In the end, the Star changed hands at a price that felt right for the moment: enough to cover the nights of travel and the new risks I’d take to keep its light near. And so it sits again, pendant-dusted, warming against the night air, a little beacon and a bigger reminder: this isn’t merely an object of possession, but a thread in the ongoing story of healers, pilgrims, and towns who choose to believe in a dawn that never fully leaves.