Runes are perhaps the only most important item to all of Elden Ring Runes. Not only are they the universal currency accepted by all merchants throughout the Lands Between, but, they are also provided to Melina so that you can level up with a Site of Grace. You'll spend tons of runes in one playthrough, so you're likely to see plenty of runes.
On a not-so-formal inspection, runes might appear to get like the iris connected with an eye. Certainly, there are lots of eye themes being found in buy elden ring runes, but Reddit user freetrolley42 has revealed a less strenuous and seemingly a lot more likely theory: runes are typically just slices of wood in the Erdtree.
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You will look at the images freetrolley42 shipped to a pretty good argument, except for an even better comparison, read the image for Hero's Rune (4) this is also an MRI of your tree trunk. If we changed the MRI image from blue to yellow, both would look almost similar. Following this logic, smaller Golden Runes tend to just slices of Erdtree branches, while Numen's Runes, Hero's Runes, and Lord's Runes are common slices in the Erdtree’s trunk taken at various points along its length.
Not everyone inside comments agrees, however. The prevailing theory ahead of today was that runes are related to eyes. This is sustained by the fact some enemies can spawn with glowing golden eyes that grant extra runes when slain. There's also the simple fact that the majority of Elden Ring's NPCs have eye colors that reflect their allegiance to a particular god, like Mohg's red eyes and Ranni's blue ones.
Both are only theories as there’s no definitive description of runes in Elden Ring and nobody at FromSoftware comes forward to present an explanation. I’m personally a fan of the sliced tree explanation, and possibly we’ll even find some proof within the upcoming Shadow in the Erdtree DLC.
