Ashfall

Ashfall sits on the counter in a small workshop, a shard of volcanic patience—matte ebony with fine veins of molten copper threaded through its core. The texture is uncanny: as you roll it between your fingers, it flakes like dry ash yet holds a stubborn warmth, a whisper of embers that refuses to fade. A powdery dust clings to the edges, leaving a pale orange halo on the skin, and when you cradle it near a flame, the glow deepens, breathing. Lore has it the fragment crystallized where a sleeping volcano breathed its last, a memory trapped in mineral form. Runes run along the facet faces, barely legible, and they flare in a pinch of heat as if the stone itself keeps time with the world’s quiet pulse. Carry it long enough and you feel a stubborn pride in your grip, a reminder that fire, once tamed, can be worn. In practice, Ashfall stitches its way into a larger story of craft and consequence. Artisans prize it for the tempering it gives blades and hammers alike; some claim it invites a crackle of flame into the motif of a shield, others say it steadies the hand during delicate infusion rituals. When a smith hammers it into a dust or a small ingot, the metal seems to drink the heat and spit a brighter blade forth—less likely to bend, more likely to bite in the right moment. Alchemists mix Ashfall into glazes that make sigils glow when drawn, into oils that lend a burn in the air, and into charms that pulse with a steady ember-light long after the campfire goes cold. It is not a casual treasure; it is an ally that asks to be used, then remembers your kin. The market knows its moods, too. Travelers speak in the soft clack of coins about how Ashfall prices rise and fall with the rumor of a fresh vent or a trader’s scarcity. I walked past Saddlebag Exchange last week, a row of leather awnings where pack-mules pause at every stall. A vendor pawed a chunk of Ashfall, weighing it against a scrap of silk and a handful of cinnamon—a market bargain, he would tell you, hardened by whispers of the underground kilns and the surface daydreams of the caravans. If you listen closely, he lets slip that a single fragment can fetch more when the lanterns are low and fewer when the smiths are busy pounding out new orders. It is currency in more ways than one: a token that sustains barter, a prompt for a tale, a spark for necessity. So Ashfall travels with you, not merely as resource but as relic. It glows when you need it, it cools when you forget, and in the right hands it becomes part of a wider chronicle—one of fires kept alive by careful hands, and of stories paid for in ash and glow. If you mend a sword with Ashfall, the memory of its flame travels with you into every dawn.