The Bracelet

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.

I was about to answer...

...when the sea began to boil.

Something beneath the water...

...started climbing toward the surface.