'A shard of the shattered Elden Ring. Grants the blessing of an equipped Great Rune upon use. Even if no Great Rune is equipped, it will slightly increase maximum HP upon use. It is said that the lowering of the Greater Will's grasp through cooperation will produce more Rune Arcs.' Rune Arcs are the smallest pieces of the canon's central artefact. The Elden Ring, when Marika shattered it, scattered into Great Runes (held by demigods) and into countless smaller fragments, the Rune Arcs themselves. Each Rune Arc, when consumed by the Tarnished, activates an equipped Great Rune's blessing for one death's worth of life. Without a Great Rune equipped, the Arc gives only a small HP bump. With Godrick's Rune equipped : +5 to all stats. With Malenia's : healing-on-attack. With Mohg's : a bloody umbra over allies.

'With the Great Rune menu, you can equip Great Runes that have had their power restored. You can use a Rune Arc to give even greater benefits to your equipped Great Runes.' The lore-frame the canon hides in the Rune Arc description is that cooperative-multiplayer victories generate more arcs. The Greater Will's grasp on the Lands Between has weakened ; cooperation between Tarnished, invasion's opposite, produces more shards of grace. The mechanic-frame is that helping another Tarnished defeat a boss rewards you with an Arc. Both frames make the same point : the Erdtree's gold is, in the late canon, distributed primarily through acts of help between Tarnished, not by the Order's central institution.