Eight pillars of rock, metal, and glass soar towards the sky from a wide open plain. Set in a circle, with strange arrangements of mid-air arcs and lines connecting each with others, these pillars stand thousands of feet tall. Their shade alone has shaped the world nearby. Each is wider than a copse of vast trees. Together, they dwarf most cities.

No life clings to their exteriors, except a strange lichen that grows on the Pillars and no where else. Their stone is mixed intricately with their glass and metal, not as an ore but as though someone somehow blended all three together from separate pieces. The variation on the surface lies ropy in places, smooth in others, all congealed together in sheets and bands that run from the pillars’ bases to their very tops.

The pillars are believed by many to hold keys to the secrets of the night sky. Their arrangement, and the twining layers of arches and straight lines between them, etch lines across the stars that possess deeper significance. No oracle disagrees with this. Many seers believe that the truest reading of one’s fate can only be found amongst the Pillars. More than that, the Pillars are known to alter the fates of those who have spent time amongst them, though little is known of how such changes occur or how severe they may be. 

Those whose futures have been prophesied, and who have visited the Pillars, find that their prophesies no longer hold power over them. Those whose fates have been spoken, whether by curse or by boon, may have those fates tilted or twisted by visiting the Pillars. So it is that the Pillars receive pilgrims desperate to alter their futures; those who consider themselves truly cursed seek an alternate path forward, and few who know their future holds good fortune are willing to travel anywhere near the vast monoliths.

The Pillars do not guarantee any good outcomes, however. Indeed, many who visit them suffer unlikely and woe-begotten ends. Some few even die at the Pillars themselves, skin blistered by the unyielding cold of the stars, or ears riven and bloody from the Pillars’ rising whine. The columns are not silent: at all times, each has its own hum. But their hums and harmonies come and go, shifting, ebbing, and flowing in volume and tone.

Somehow, these tones do not bother the animals which have come to live in the Pillars’ shade. The most notable of these are the deer which have been said to dwell among the stones. Even when pilgrims have fled, their ears ringing and beginning to seep red, there have been sightings of deer watching, unharmed, while birdsong echoes. Some pilgrims have claimed that a stag with antlers of stone and glass watches over the herds. Others speak of the foxes which roam the land in the Pillars’ shadows, with their unblinking eyes of verdigris.

None have yet ascended the Pillars, though some few have tried. It is thought that any who reached their tips might touch the heavens, or find that they had reached the bridge to the stars themselves—and perhaps even beyond.