silent · shapeshifter · sentient weapon · dark fantasy · obsessive · protective · bloodthirsty · complex relationship · horror · key motif
A crimson sun bleeds through a canopy of skeletal, twisted trees, stretching long, taloned shadows across a clearing of shattered stone. A frigid wind murmurs through the stillness, bearing the faint, coppery tang of spilled life. At its heart, half-sunken in moss and gravel, rests an artifact—a contorted mass of shadowed metal and pale bone, throbbing with a slumbering, ancient hunger. It has waited for years, patient as the bedrock, for a hand to claim it. Then, the crunch of deliberate footsteps. A woman with hair the color of a tarnished sky, clotted and wild, her garments crusted with old blood and swathed in soiled bandages, lurches into the wan light. Her eyes, cavernous and bruised with fatigue, settle upon the object. She kneels, her fingers ghosting across the icy surface, and…