Lingering Darkness

Lingering Darkness sits in the palm like a captured breath: a shard of glass-dark obsidian, smooth as midnight skin, cool to the touch yet pulsing with a chill that seems to creep into the bones. Its edges are beveled with runes that glow a faint violet when you tilt it toward a lamp, as if a past storm still grumbles within. Hold it up and you can see a whisper of smoke curling inside the crystal, a memory rather than anything solid. Lore scraps say it formed when a failed ritual tried to bind night itself, fragmenting into a shard that would not burn away but rather clung to those who dared to name it. Because of that, the surface reads like a map to the shadows between things—the places you glimpse and then forget as soon as you blink. In practice, Lingering Darkness is more than ornament; carried into a camp or a raid, it begins to weave the world slightly differently. Some wielders claim it steadies the mind against fear in the heat of a volatile fight; others say it lets you glimpse a borderland where enemies forget their own names. Craftspeople prize it as a component for a unique infusion that can temper a weapon’s edge with quiet, patient hardiness. When paired with the right catalyst, it is said to grant a momentary boon—an extra breath before the next wave, a chance to see the true form of a shield or a sigil that would otherwise blur. Travelers know the value of the item as much as its mystery; it is not a common drop, and its stories travel faster than the sound of boots on stone. It also folds into the world’s economy in small, human ways: a gathering of merchants at Saddlebag Exchange will trade rumors as freely as they trade wares, and Lingering Darkness often appears in their conversations as a price tag wrapped in velvet. The stall’s owner shifts the flame toward the shard, and the glow seems to answer with a shimmer of the runes. The price, whispered among veterans, is never fixed for long—demand from crafters who chase shadow-forged gear can outpace supply in a heartbeat, while return customers bargain as though they’re exchanging a lullaby for a chance at something rarer. So it sits on a workbench, or in a courier’s pouch, like a secret kept in glass: a reminder that a darkness once banished can still be coaxed to cooperate, if you know how to listen. Lingering Darkness is less a weapon or a trinket than a key, a small fragment that binds together ritual, risk, and road-worn ambition. And in the world’s long ledger of bargains and battles, it remains a quiet counterpoint—the kind of thing that makes a veteran of a newcomer, the thing that, once earned, makes you look twice at a shadow and wonder what it might become. If you listen, the shard answers with a sigh, revealing paths you might take when night falls.