Cothol, Fieldburner of Severance

Cothol, Fieldburner of Severance, rests on a weathered oak desk, its blade a ribbon of tempered steel that seems to breathe warmth. Mottled with flickers of orange, the edge hums like an ember and the runes along the fuller glow with a predawn hunger. The hilt, wrapped in ash-black leather, bears a circle of sigils—faint, almost whisper-thin—each line catching light as if the metal itself were breathing. The whole thing feels alive, as if it remembers the first forge that ever tasted inferno and the last stand that carved history into the hills. Lore ties Cothol to the burned libraries of a ruined outpost where mages once tried to contain a sun in a jar; when the blade is drawn, those old seals flare and answer with warmth that does not burn so much as privilege the flesh to listen. In the hands of a careful warrior, it becomes a conductor of heat, a beacon that lures the eye of a skirmish and pressure builds in the air until a master strike splits the moment from the ordinary. Traders call it a fieldburner because it seems to harvest stray energies from the surrounding battlefield—embers, sigils, and the tremor of marching feet—and refocus them into a single, decisive flare. To some, it is a story you wear as much as a weapon you wield, a reminder that severance is not merely ending but the careful turning of power toward a new threshold. In practice, its glow translates into a kind of punctuation—fire that wakes wards, bite that penetrates brambles of magic, and a rhythm that can push a duel from cautious back-and-forth to a decisive stroke. The world around it shifts when Cothol is present. The field around a campfire seems to tilt toward the blade, and even the wary scout spots the shimmer between trees—the momentary suggestion of a door opening where there was only a wall. Those who know the old markets speak of its price as a question that comes with a story; you do not simply buy Cothol, you inherit a commission from old loyalties, a quiet warning to respect what was burned to make it. That is where Saddlebag Exchange enters the narrative, a circle of tents and parchment that hums with trade from port towns to frontier outposts. If you listen closely, you hear the market's bartering as a chorus of footfalls—counteroffers from caravan guards, a discount whispered to a late-late traveler, a bidder who recognizes the weight of the flame and the burden of carrying it on the road. In that bustling, dusty exchange, a dealer lays down a price on a ragged strip of leather and then smiles in the way only those who’ve weighed fear and fortune can smile. And so the fieldburner moves from hands to hands, not merely as a tool but as a chapter in a larger story—the story of a world that trades in memory and heat, and when it burns, something in the listener changes forever.