Taham, the Adversary of Severance

Taham, the Adversary of Severance, gleams with a cruel, lacquered obsidian sheen, its blade breathing a cold blue glow along a line of sigils that ripple like frost on a window. The edge is keen as a winter moon, yet the surface bears tiny micro-channels that remember every oath sworn nearby. The hilt is wrapped in worn leather, tanned to a deep brown that has absorbed decades of weather and whispered bargains, while the guard curls in on itself, a lattice of links that resembles a chain half-broken, half-binding. When you tilt it to the light, the runes flare—some silver, some copper—like a night sky in motion, and the pommel hums with a faint, almost intimate thrum, as if it keeps time with something living just beyond reach. Old scrolls say Taham was forged by Bindweavers in the wake of a great schism, a blade meant to sever bonds so completely that even memory could drift apart. Yet the Adversary of Severance proved stubborn, turning the moment of cutting into a lesson on which ties matter most. Those who have faced it tell of a weight in the air, as if the room itself remembered every oath that once held a group together and then watched it splinter. Some whisper that Taham’s edge drinks fear as a moth drinks light, leaving a cold quiet where courage once stood; others insist the blade binds only what should be bound, freeing what time and treachery had cuffed shut. I’ve watched scholars cradle its sheath as if it were a small, dangerous sun—beautiful, dangerous, impossible to ignore. In battle, Taham carries with it a paradox: a weapon that feels both a severing blade and a key. Its true power, the old masters murmured, lies in peeling away the subtle bindings that keep enemies alive long enough to threaten a second or third time. Practitioners say a single clean strike can peel back a ward or unravel a cycle of tethering magic that keeps a foe aligned with a fatal, stubborn rhythm. Then comes the follow-through—an opening, a breath for allies to strike, or a moment of clarity when a stubborn adversary finally folds. It’s not merely damage; it is narrative in motion. A wielder who understands Taham learns to read the battlefield like a cask of stories, where every bond broken reveals a new path for the next chapter to begin. Caravans gossip at dusk about Taham as much as about the weather, and the market’s heartbeat mirrors their treks. On one fog-wreathed morning I wandered into the Saddlebag Exchange, a narrow-street trading row where relics mingle with rumor. A broker with ink-stained fingers and a hat worn to a point gave Taham a cautious nod, as though acknowledging it carried more than steel and luster. The price drifted with the crowd—hushed bids, counteroffers, and the occasional sigh that a blade’s legacy is heavier than gold. By midday, traders spoke in careful whispers about pale gold pieces and the way the exchange’s ledger swells and recedes with the moon. It’s a rare thing to watch a market breathe, yet Taham makes it so: a blade that doesn’t just change hands but reshapes expectations, a tangible thread in a larger tapestry about who binds whom, and who dares to sever. So Taham rests again in its cooler case, the room dimming around it, a reminder that power in the world often arrives wearing the quiet weight of a single edge. Those who carry it do so with a respect born of story and consequence, knowing they aren’t merely wielding a weapon—they’re continuing a long, fragile conversation about severance, binding, and what it means to choose which ties endure.