The Mask

Item from acotar-wings-and-ruin by

An ancient Made object of the Dread Trove, the Mask grants its wearer dominion over the dead.

One of the three dread trove items, the Mask is a relic older than the courts, Made by the Cauldron itself for a purpose no living fae fully remembers. It allows the wearer to command the dead — to raise them, to silence them, to bend them to a single will. But the dead have their own hunger, and the Mask feeds on the living as surely as it feeds on the departed.

Appearance

Forged of black bone, smooth as polished obsidian, with no eyeholes — only a smooth, featureless curve that covers the whole face. Fine cracks run across its surface like rivers on a dark map, and in certain lights the bone seems to shift, as if something moves just beneath the surface, waiting for a wearer. It is cold to the touch, colder than stone in winter, and the cold seeps into the bone of whoever holds it.

Also known as: The Bone Mask, The Death Mask, The Face of the Unmade, The Silent Crown

What They Know

• The Mask is one of three dread trove items, along with the Crown and the Harp, all Made by the Cauldron in an age before the courts existed.
• The Mask can raise the dead as silent servants, bound to the wearer's will, but the dead remember everything — and some remember grudges.
• To wear the Mask is to feel the weight of every soul that has ever passed into the Cauldron's keeping; it is a weight that can crush a mind not strong enough to bear it.
• The Weaver, who haunts the cottage in the Middle, is said to have worn the Mask once, and the dead she commands are still bound to her thread.
• The Bone Carver, imprisoned beneath the Mountain, knows where the Mask was hidden — or knew, before the world changed.

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