Void-Tainted Pelt

Void-Tainted Pelt hangs from the stall’s nail like a shard of night itself, a thick swath of fur that looks damp with stilled shadows. The coloration seems to shift in the light—a deep indigo base threaded with violet specks that glimmer as if stars had spilled across its surface. Every strand feels slick to the touch, not damp, but cool and slightly oily, as though the pelt keeps a breath of the void’s undertow in its fiber. Along the edges, the fur seems frayed, almost singed, as if a distant crack in reality brushed it and left a faint halo of chill around the hide. There’s a scent, faintly coppery and ozone-like, that clings to the fingers after you’ve run them along the nap, a reminder that this is more than a trophy; it is a memory of something both ancient and hungry. I learned to listen for the whispers that ride the pelt when I pulled it from a ruined shrine near the Shadowed Expanse. The reliquary had been looted, yet this pelt remained, hanging where offerings once rested, as if the void itself wanted to keep a tie to the world of mortals. The tales say the beasts that shed such fur wandered near rifts, where nothingness breathes, and their coats absorbed a sliver of that breath. If you press your ear to the softest part of the hide, you might hear a faint rustle, a murmur not quite words, like a remember of something once feared and now curious. The lore people tell around the markets is that these pelts carry a season of dusk in their fibers, a reminder that power, in the right hands, can be steered rather than screamed. In practice, the Void-Tainted Pelt is prized by crafters who barter not just for utility but for narrative itself. Leatherworkers say it’s unusually forgiving to stitch, its elasticity helping to hold together seams that would otherwise split under strain. Some tailors fashion cloaks and gloves that dampen the wearer's footsteps and dull the edge of shadowy ambushes, while others forge satchels that resist the first rot of void-corruption, keeping scrolls and charms intact when a rift yawns open in the street. For those who dabble in enchantment, the pelt accepts minor infusion well, a conduit for quieting noises or granting a moment’s silence to the wearer when danger corners them in tight hallways. It doesn’t turn bravado into certainty, but it lends a breath of restraint to a world that often moves faster than the eyes. The market ticked with a different rhythm the day I watched a ledger flutter across a desk at Saddlebag Exchange. Traders spoke in hushed tones about supply thinning after a string of rifts, about buyers who would trade almost anything for the chance to drape a rifleman's shoulders in its velvet-dark coat. The price waxed and waned with the mood of the rifts and the moon’s quiet pulse, and the exchange’s signboard seemed to glow with an invitation: come in, trade a thing of fear for something of purpose. In that little doorway, you realize the pelt isn’t merely loot; it’s a thread in a larger tapestry—the void’s current threading through market stalls, workshop benches, and the stories people tell to make sense of what they’ve touched and what they’ve kept. So the Void-Tainted Pelt passes from one hand to another, carrying with it a secret: that beauty — and danger — can be stitched into the same seam, and sometimes the quietest fabric is the one that holds the loudest truths.