Assassin's Tengu Echo Staff gleams with a patient, predatory light, the night-black wood catching candle flames as if swallowing them whole. The head is carved into a tiny tengu mask, its copper eyes set with pinpricks of jade that seem to watch you while you blink. The shaft runs smooth and cool, wrapped in weathered leather that whisper-crinkles with each grip, like rain-slick leaves under a quiet wind. Runes, etched in a winding spiral down the length, glow faintly aquamarine when the room tilts toward shadow. The texture invites a fingertip to trace every line, as if reading a story in a language spoken only by those who pace the line between light and dark. Lore threads through the staff as if it were pulled from a pocket of night itself. It is said to have been tempered by a roaming assassin who learned from tengu couriers and street-corner whisperers, a figure who trusted the rhythm of a fight to move the moment forward. The Echo in its name is not mere metaphor: strike and listen, and the weapon seems to borrow your tempo, letting a ghostly twin arrive just after your first blow. There is a shiver in the air when the staff's aquamarine runes flare, as if a chorus of past assailants breathes through the wood, guiding the wielder toward the clean, quiet kill that follows. In practice, the staff is a story you enact in real time. Its first talent is speed without haste: a quick, precise strike that triggers an echo—an afterimage of your own attack that lands a fraction of a heartbeat later, compounding pressure on a distracted foe. The second, more subtle effect, lets you weave terrain and timing, stepping through a corridor of shadows as your echoes converge, leaving enemies guessing which strike was real and which was a memory. For a hunter who thrives in ambush, the Tengu Echo Staff rewards patience—waiting for the perfect second to release your echo and force a retreating line of defense into a shattered pattern. Market whispers drift through the bazaar, the way spice stories do, when the caravans return and traders dust off leather satchels. I heard this in passing from a vendor who keeps a ledger inked with rumors: Saddlebag Exchange has become a pulse point for relics like this, where the price wobbles with the mood of the crowd and the weight of the desire in the buyer’s heart. One day it’s a gem, the next a heavy coin, and always a story you’re asked to tell as you hand over your gold. By dusk, the Assassin's Tengu Echo Staff is more than a tool; it is a partner in the hunt, a keeper of whispers and a doorway to a tempo that belongs to those who walk the line between shadow and strike. It sits, quiet yet ready, waiting for someone brave enough to listen to the echoes and let them guide their next move. Its weight answers a long, patient call.