[Cards] Wraith's Ring (Patreon)

The last scroll slid into place on a newly-carved shelf, its chain-ribbon visible through his smoke-wreathed and skeletal fingers. This cavern would serve its purpose well enough: a cage for the horrors he'd locked away in himself and these scrolls.

His eyes followed the sparse torchlight playing across his now idle hands until they came to the blackened, cracked ring on his finger. In a painful rush of emotion came the memory of the same pearl, untarnished, set in a silver band and held up to a beautiful, smiling face.

It was the only remnant he kept from his past life, from before the destruction of his name. Yet still, despite the pain it brought him, it carried with it a feeling of warmth and belonging: a sensation so alien and perverse to him now that he reeled, barely managing to steady himself against a shelf before falling.

As his emotions calmed, he released his grip on the shelf. He didn't notice it dry and crack under his fingers, its young wood now bearing the mark of decay.