The Name They Ringed Off

Sit, $N, and hear what this ring was built to protect, or to imprison, because I am still not certain which. This leaf held a single name, written once in the Book and never repeated, and the Binders drew a ring clean around it, the same mark a scribe uses to set a name apart from an ordinary sentence: this word is not like the others, do not read it as one of them. They did not cut the name out; they fenced it in and exiled the fence along with it, and it ran aground here as a literal ring of stone around a lagoon that has never once let its water run clear enough to read what is written on the stone at its heart. The Glossator spent longer here than anywhere else on the trail, certain that a name worth ringing off so carefully must be worth knowing, but they never got close enough to read it either. What they left is not a transcription; it is a description of the ring itself, and a confession that the name may matter less than the fact that someone, once, thought it dangerous enough to need one. They left it at the Last Cartouche, the farthest point the outer strand reaches before the ring closes on itself. Go and read what they could not finish reading.

Experience

19800

Currency reward

1g 53s 0c

Repeatable

No

Sigil

Ledger and ink