The Gravecaller Crest

Gravecallers were the last voices of the corvid orders, hung above doorways to tell the household who among them would not see the next winter. The runes on the crown of the ring are the terms of the bargain. Those who took the relic down without speaking the terms found the bird had already spoken for them. The orders kept the rookery under the Ninth Cairn until the Long Rot. Skarrow fed on the gallows two rises west and the orders never once tried to bind it. Some things you do not put a rune on.

Every striation in the plumage is deposition. The machine writes the bird into being one line at a time, each layer a stroke of the carving. Nothing here is smoothed away. The tool marks are the artifact.