Legend LXXVIII – The Bonemaster's Collection

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Deep beneath the forgotten swamps of Narkh'Zul, where the world's roots pulsate like black veins and water flows silently over ancient graves, lies a fortress no human has built. Its interior is made of stone, shadows—and bones. It is called the Crypt Hall of a Thousand Screams, but those who truly know what dwells there speak its name only in trembling voices:
The Bonemaster.
No one knows if he was once a man, or if his form merely reflects the shape his power deems necessary. He wears armor forged from the remains of great monsters, adorned with horns, teeth, and bone fragments woven into patterns like runes of a long-forgotten alphabet. His face, if he has one, rests beneath a colossal skull mask, reminiscent of the grimace of a primeval god. From his eye sockets burns a dark fire that never flickers. But it is not his form that makes him fearsome—it is his collection. The crypt hall lies beneath him like a labyrinth of death and memory, an endless cathedral of pillars forged from spines and floors that creak under the weight of millennia. There lie relics the world has long since lost: spears that slew kings; masks that summoned demons; daggers forged from witches' tears; animal skulls whose owners are now not even mentioned in legends. Every piece the Bone Master keeps is not dead—it sleeps. For a relic added to his collection never loses its story. On the contrary, it lives on, whispering, whimpering, screaming. Some nights echo through the crypts like a storm, as a thousand memories awaken at once. And at the heart of this chorus strides he: tall, heavy, but not shuffling—rather, with the dignity of a ruler over a world no one else may enter. One day, however, a stranger entered his halls. A thief, it was said, one of the best in his trade, audacious enough to believe that even the Bone Master was merely another guardian. He sought to steal a single artifact—a small horn, scarcely larger than a hand, crafted from white, gleaming bone and traversed with golden lines. It was said to have the power to summon every beast that had ever roamed the world. The Bone Master, at first, let him have his way. For he knew that a relic follows its owner only if it acknowledges him. When the thief grasped the horn, he froze. The golden lines began to glow. Voices—thousands of voices—snareed his mind. And in those voices lay not the power he had sought, but the memory of all those who had been driven to war and ruin by that very horn. He screamed. And the Bone Master stepped out of the shadows. “Relics are not among those who take,” he said in a voice like breaking rock. “They are among those who remember.” The horn fell silent. The thief sank to the ground—not dead, but empty, as if the relic itself had rejected his soul.