Skyreach Peak rises above the green country east of Krypton Kingdom and above the canopy of Shadowglade Forest, in the high silent air that mortals have, for most of their history, treated as a country that did not properly belong to them. It is older than the kingdom, older than the forest at its feet, older than the names anyone now living has for it.
Its slopes hold what is left of the old shrine routes — wind-cut stones laid into the rock by priests of an earlier age, when the world had still believed openly in the celestials and had wanted Kryor, on certain days of certain years, to see it more clearly. The faithful climbed in long quiet processions. The shrines were tended. The peak, on the highest mornings of the highest summers, was a place where prayer carried.
It carries less now. The shrines are weathered. The processions stopped within living memory. Most of Celesterra has forgotten that the routes were ever walked. A few priests of Darklume have remembered. Silas Grimshaw has been to the peak twice in his life. There is, in the long reading of the chronicle that is now beginning, a small hard sense in the higher orders that the peak will, before long, be needed again.
