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# The Bracelet
- URL: https://the-shagal.ghost.io/the-bracelet/
- Published: 2026-07-21T00:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-21T15:32:11.000Z
- Author: Marc Faulk
- Tags: Artifacts, Flash Fiction

**"You're always telling me to leave relics where I find them,"* I said. **"I wasn't always so disciplined."*

Blink looked up from the scroll he was cataloging, one furry brow arching over his enormous eyes.

*"No,"* he muttered. *"I suppose you weren't."*

*"When I was younger, I wandered into the Blackthorn Weald. Even the crows knew better than to go there."*

I smiled at the memory.

*"I found a stag lying dead beneath the trees. No wounds. No tracks. Just... dead. One of its antlers held a bracelet of black iron woven with strands of silver. Funny thing was, the silver never seemed to stay where I'd last seen it. It shifted whenever I looked away."*

I shrugged.

*"A wiser man would've buried it. A treasure hunter would've sold it."*

I held up my wrist.

*"I did what only a young fool would do."*

*"I put it on."*

Blink sighed.

*"Of course you did."*

The clasp snapped shut on its own.

Every shadow in that forest turned toward me.

Not the wolves hiding in them.

Not the birds overhead.

The shadows themselves.

I can still remember how they stretched across the forest floor, reaching like roots beneath the earth.

*"Then I felt it..."*

Something impossibly distant opened a single eye.

It wasn't looking at the forest.

I tapped the side of my spectacles.

*"It was looking at me."*

Blink had stopped writing.

---

For weeks, the bracelet made me believe I'd stumbled upon the greatest relic in the Known Realms.

Forgotten passages appeared inside ruined castles.

Ghosts greeted me by name.

If I touched an old sword, I'd hear the final prayer of the soldier who carried it.

A king's crown whispered every betrayal committed in its name.

Even a child's doll remembered fear.

I laughed softly.

*"I thought I'd become the greatest relic hunter who had ever lived."*

*"You thought wrong,"* Blink replied.

*"I did."*

My smile faded.

*"Because the visions never stopped when I let go."*

Blink's ears twitched.

*"My reflection would smile before I did. Strangers welcomed me into villages I'd never visited. They spoke of conversations we had supposedly shared years earlier."*

Without realizing it, I rubbed my wrist.

*"Every night I dreamed of the same throne, carved from dragon bones."*

*"Empty."*

*"Waiting."*

The room had grown strangely quiet.

---

*"It ended at the Ashen Sea."*

My voice dropped.

*"The bracelet had been silent for months. Then, without warning..."*

I clenched my fist.

*"It tightened until blood ran between the links."*

Blink leaned forward.

*"Across the water stood a tower that hadn't existed the day before. Pale green light burned behind its windows. At the very top..."*

I swallowed.

*"...someone was watching me."*

*"Wearing the bracelet,"* Blink whispered.

I nodded.

*"The figure raised its arm. On its wrist was another bracelet... identical to mine."*

*"And then?"*

*"It spoke."*

*"What did it say?"*

I stared into the fire, watching the flames curl like shadows across old stone.

**"You finally found yours."*

I was about to answer...

...when the sea began to boil.

Something beneath the water...

...started climbing toward the surface.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/21/b7/21b7d236-2d58-4df4-be7a-3f48ee417ff3/content/images/2026/07/IMG_1722-1.png)