Carrion Aetherized Short Bow

Carrion Aetherized Short Bow glows with a pale, sickly iridescence, its limbs carved from obsidian-black wood that looks damp with some long-ago rain. The grip is wrapped in dried hide, slick as new moss, with sigils burned into the surface like quiet footsteps. The bowstring hums faintly, a dry, almost nervous whisper when you draw it, and at the notch a fragment of bone—faintly etched with runes—gleams as if it remembers a last breath. It isn’t a weapon so much as a relic that breathes on your skin, the kind of thing you feel before you see it: a tremor in the air, a scent like earth after rain, and the memory of scavengers circling a quiet, forbidden truth. In the stories whispered around lanterns and market stalls, the Carrion Aetherized is more than wood and sinew and bone; it is a covenant between decay and resolve. The craft behind it speaks of a time when aether was coaxed to cohabit with carrion’s memory, binding a hunter’s will to a weapon that could strike through rot and ruin. Those sigils pulse when the air grows cold, and if you listen closely, the bow seems to borrow a heartbeat from the world’s own long slumber. Some say the arrowheads are shaped from bone reclaimed from the land’s dead, others that the aetherized core carries a whisper of the plague’s own patience, waiting for the right moment to reveal what it has learned about endurance. Either way, the bow feels like a pact you make with the night—a compact to shoot with precision where others would hesitate. In practical terms, it’s a weapon that favors poised, decisive hands. Its shots cut through tangled brush and heavier armor alike, delivering rapid, clean strikes with a cadence that many skirmishers learn to anticipate. The aether-touched bolts carry more than impact; they carry stuttering bursts of energy that can pierce the first line and land a secondary, needle-thin follow-up. It’s the sort of bow that rewards patience—the pull tightens your breathing, your stance steadies, and when you release, you hear the world exhale a little as the projectile finds its mark. For those who weave stealth with force, the Carrion Aetherized Short Bow feels like a partner that understands the language of ambush, a partner that makes the long, careful chase feel suddenly intimate. And so it moves through the world, from ruined watchtieres to crowded caravans, each encounter a thread in a larger pattern. I watched a hunter named Mara cradle it as the sun sank behind a shattered clocktower, her fingers tracing the sigils as if whispering thanks to old, patient bones. She spoke softly of the market and of Saddlebag Exchange, where traders haggle beneath canvas and lamp-light, where a bow like this can trade hands for roughly a gold and a handful of coins, or a little less when you’ve earned the seller’s trust with a tale of pursuit and kinship with the wild. Market talk is a language all its own, and Mara’s eyes twinkled as she recounted how a buyer’s nod could tilt the day’s end from scarcity to something you’d tell your grandchildren about. The Carrion Aetherized Short Bow remains, for those who listen, a reminder that power here is never merely weapon, but history, memory, and the patient art of moving through a world where every shot writes a small, enduring line in the greater story.