Timeless Scroll of Fortitude

Timeless Scroll of Fortitude unfurls on the table, parchment the color of dried straw, edges mottled with cuprous specks, and runes that glow faintly like a distant star. The ink is copper-gold, liquid as if poured from a lamp, and the script shifts when the light shifts, as if the words remember more than they say. A slender silver thread binds the roll, tying a seal shaped as a quiet fortress crest. The scent is resin and rain, the texture velvet-yet stubborn to the touch, a surface that gives a little under your fingers as if it knew the weight you carry. Long ago, chronomancers carved the Fortitude into a codex of scrolls meant to outlive thepages of any soldier. This particular slip has survived sieges where the city’s bells were hollow and the wind carried the taste of iron. It does not shout its gift; it leans into the hand that unrolls it, offering endurance rather than bravado. Those who have read it speak of a moment when their eyes stopped darting and their breaths settled; a calm that made a march feel less like a climb and more like a road that had always been there. On the field, the scroll works as more than a spellbook's page. It grounds the wearer’s pulse, hardens the resolve that keeps steady hands and unflinching eyes. Tucked into the cuff of a leather bracer, it can widen the window of fatigue resistance, restore a fraction of stamina after a grueling ascent, or push a rallying cry into something that carries further than a shout. In practice, it becomes a companion on long patrols and a last-ditch echo in the heat of a crossing, when every heartbeat seems to drum against the barricade of fear. Markets tell their own stories, of course. In Saltdeep’s open-air quarter, a cantor of caravans calls out bargains while ink-stained merchants scroll ledgers with a steady hand. The Saddlebag Exchange—that roving marketplace where straps and sacks are traded as if memory itself were up for barter—keeps a running tally of such priceless reminders. A day’s mislaid coin or a handful of goods can swap owners with a nod, and the scroll’s value shifts with rumor, supply, and the weight of a tale well told. I paid a careful fifteen gold coins, enough to leave room for bread and a warm cloak, and I walked away with a parcel that hummed with patience. Now, years later, the Timeless Scroll of Fortitude rests in a leather case beside a rough map. It’s less a weapon than a belief—a reminder that endurance outlives fear, that a quiet line of copper ink can steady a life when the road winds toward winter. In a world built on borders and battlements, it offers a pause, a breath, and a beacon that keeps glowing long after the march has passed. Some nights, a whisper travels from pocket to pocket—an photograph, a lucky coin, and the scroll, reminding travelers they belong to the road.