Nestled in foothills between the high peaks of the Sefghal Range, the lonely ruins of Ghalburg are only kept company by the wreckage of Ghalburg Keep on the slopes above. Though the burgeoning town was once known as a welcome stop on the way through the mountains, it has been shattered, pulled apart stone from stone, vast swathes of it put to the torch. Here and there, once-mighty timbers still stand as charred skeletons of formerly sturdy homes, memorials to their missing inhabitants.

The keep, perched in the hills above the town, is no less desolate. While it was spared from the same vast devastation, it still was broken open like a raw egg, its innards tumbling down the hill towards the town. The outer curtain wall was shattered in several places, and one whole corner of the central keep is gone, strewn across the grounds and out of the bailey. Like the town below, all the keep’s defenders are missing. No bodies remain to be found in any of the wreckage.

Now, this ruined settlement lies as a fearsome warning and an unanswered mystery. What force laid waste to the castle and its town? Was it some unknown group of raiders from the steep, storm-wracked peaks above? Or did Baroness Ghal set this horror in motion with untoward experiments in her obsessive effort to resurrect her family’s fortunes? Rumors abound, but no story yet bears the imprimatur of truth. The only certain thing is that none of the town’s residents have been seen or heard from since, and travelers through the region now avoid the once-popular town like the plague.

On a small mountain rising out of the rain forest, nestled in an opening amidst thick-trunked gray-brown trees wreathed in lianas, a cool dark pond bubbles up from the rock below. Barely convex with the force of its spring, the pool does not reflect the light of the sky overhead, only the undersides of trees’ leaves. When rain falls, as it does every afternoon of the wet season, the sky’s water slides off the quietly bubbling spring and seeps into the rocky earth around it. It is only in those moments, when that thin sheet of sky-water oozes away across the pool like oil, that one may see the gray clouds or spotty blues of the sky overhead reflected on the pool.

The spring’s water is uniformly cold to the touch. Soothing on a hot day, local animals sometimes swim in it, never fighting while sharing the spring’s waters. Indeed, the local wildlife is larger, healthier, and more frequently docile than others of their kind. But a careful observer will note that no animal drinks more than a single sip from the pool on any visit, preferring instead to dip themselves in the spring without drinking from it. But the trees around the spring, watered by it, grow strong and tall. And these local animals eat freely from the small fruits hanging on those thick-trunked trees, casting seeds far and wide.

The spring is reputed to belong to the jealous god of life, growth, and small beginnings, a formidable being who is not to be trifled with, taken for granted, or scorned. The story goes that anyone who drinks too fully from the spring offers themselves to this god of life, Tel, and invites Tel to work through them. Often, the story ends with an incautious and thirsty person clutching at their mouth in horror as mushrooms erupt from their skin and a small fruit tree with glistening gray-brown bark roots down through their feet and branches up through their skull. So it is that the spring is held to be both sacred and dangerous, a place to be venerated and, for the most part, avoided.

There are exceptions, of course. There are stories of some few more-favored by Tel who drank deeply from the spring and were blessed without becoming trees. And the people who hold the spring as holy do visit at certain times of year, as new growth burgeons and as seeds are sown, to make offerings and perform the rituals known to be pleasing to Tel. Those who are coming of age are bid to take one sip from the spring during these rites, in hopes of long and fruitful lives, while those whose limbs have been wounded, withered, or warped may sip in hopes that Tel will guide their limbs once more. But apart from these times, the spring is left alone on its mountaintop, a world apart from its surroundings, its strange reflections and turbulence unexamined and untouched.

Beneath the kindest branches of the go-now trees, ushered on by a warm wind now at one’s back, now easing the sweat from one’s brow, the most fortunate travelers wander on the Softest Road. It is not, it’s said, a route any may find by hunting it. It is rumored to be the least helpful road of all: only those who wander without urgent need may find it, and only those who continue on their path without worry may enjoy it. The focus and drive to seek a place, to rush from here to there, will lead any traveler on the Softest Road away from the giving earth which springs beneath their feet to deposit them on the hard and rocky dirt with no way to return. Those who stumble off the Road can find no path behind them, no hint of the Road they had just trod.

In fact, the only way to seek the Softest Road or remain upon it is to lose oneself in the enjoyment of one’s journey. Those who fall into a beautiful day’s travel, who marvel at the wonders around them and give in to the enjoyment of their surroundings, may find the ground beneath their feet shifting one step at a time, the land before them coaxing itself into a more even semblance of good footing and gentle travel. Slight slopes gain even grades and good gravel. Steep ones have regular steps, seemingly natural stones set perfectly for the walker’s gait. Dust never rises from the Softest Road, never choking and cloying, never thickening to sodden mud. Traffic, such as it is, is infrequent and rarely hostile. Beautiful vistas open themselves to the viewer on either side (or both) as the Softest Road meanders through gorgeous dells and sunny copses.

Trips which should have taken weeks may only require days on the Softest Road, though any given day’s travel might see one deposited early in a new place apart from one’s final destination, if the traveler gives over to dwelling on time or anything besides the joy of the journey. And there are stories of the opposite, of those who find themselves on the Softest Road for weeks when a trip should have taken an afternoon, too entranced by the marvel and relaxation of such perfect walking to find their way out.

There are stories of those who’ve found impossible places on their journeys on the Softest Road, visions of worlds unknown, of improbable structures and fabulous landscapes and even vast star-dotted emptiness. None know whether such places might be reachable, or found again, for none who’ve left the Road in their urgency to explore such have returned—at least, none who might be believed.

If nothing else, it is a certainty that the Softest Road does not traverse the space between two places. Those on the road are not seen by those off of it, except perhaps as momentary glimpses of travelers in strange places: striding upon high cliffs, stepping from tree to tree, or emerging from vast waters. The longer one walks the Softest Road, the further afield one may go and the stranger the things one may see.

It is not known who made the Softest Road, or if it was ever made at all. Perhaps it is simply some diffuse spirit of the vast universe finding its way to share with those amidst it. There are stories, tall tales told of some few who learned to find the Softest Road in one step; these folk strode without a care or a worry, passing from place to place in a joyous wandering, never staying long. They brought with them bizarre myths and ancient legends, and left behind them little relics of other lands before stepping out again never to return. Some say they’ve learned the trick of it too, but even these folk may lose their way from time to time, becoming too attached to a desire to truly live the aimless, wondering, wandering way of the Softest Road.

The delicate traceries of crystalline trees rise from the glass-covered loam of an ancient forest. They glimmer, refracting sunlight until it dances across the earth around them, shimmering in their vitreous leaves. It is dangerous to walk among the trees with eyes or skin uncovered: many have been blinded by the brightness of the Stone Trees or burned when a leaf’s lens seared their flesh, and the fine-crushed debris of last year’s leaves will shred its way through any foot. On still and sunny days, the land around the Stone Trees smokes and bakes. On windy ones, the rainbows they cast dance.

Meditating in the heart of the Stone Trees’ glade is both a rite of passage and a form of augury for the wise ones of the local people. These practitioners say that the most potent prognostications are revealed beneath the sun’s brightest light, but they caution against the casual pursuit of such knowledge—the Sun-of-the-Trees can take as quickly as it gives, and more than one would-be oracle has fumbled their way out from the Stone Trees blind, bleeding from their dreadful stumbling.

The blood they leave behind soon disappears.

Near the edge of the Stone Trees, the glassine sheets of sloughed crystalline bark lie heavy and still amidst the leaf debris of the surrounding wood. The boundary there, between the old wood and the crystal trees which rise from their midst, is feathery and ill-defined. It wavers back and forth. Those few who’ve tried to track the edges of the stone tree grove within the vast and aged forest all disagree as to where the true edge lies. Sometimes, they even disagree with themselves. The only thing they can regularly agree on is that the boundary seems to move at times, replacing wooden giants of the forest with the refractive stands of the crystal trees. But the border shifts back as well, and a year after disappearing some massive trees thought lost to the stone and glass reappear as they were, fresh with their missing year’s growth. None have seen the border there shift and carried the tale of it back with them, but plenty have disappeared.

Those that disappear have never returned with the massive trees.

The center of the Stone Trees’ glade remains undisturbed, however. While the boundary may waver around the glade’s edges, the center does not shift. The locals say this is because the Sun-of-the-Trees—that refracted kindling glow that haunts the Stone Trees on even cloudy days, rising to blinding brilliance in full sunlight—lives there and holds the grove still in its presence. Those who doubt or discount local stories claim that the phenomenon is astrological and geological in nature, tied to the movement of the stars and the composition of the earth beneath the glade. While some have attempted to dig into the earth beneath the fractal crystal spires, to test their hypotheses, their expeditions have uniformly ended in disaster and failure. Digging through vast taproots harder than iron, facing frequent tunnel collapses as though the earth itself wished to smother interlopers… even the largest projects lose their workers when they hit the first crystals, breaking tools and hopes on the stone trees’ adamant foundations.

Most stories told of those digs ooze with the work’s dangerous drudgery. But some few shed the banal to speak of whispers down in the dark, or to hint at revelations seen in the gleam of a crystalline root. Few who’ve worked one mining expedition will ever sign up for another.

The Stone Trees have proven similarly resistant to attempts to remove them from their glade, though the acquisitive may sometimes depart with bark, leaves, or even a small branch. These artifacts and keepsakes are treasured by collectors of oddities, and have sparked the curiosity of many. But while plenty of the curious have attempted to enter the glade, far more stop at the edges, sit down, and simply listen to the music of the trees as they chime in the wind. It is, they say, the most enchanting sound they’ve ever heard: a portal to a space beyond, and a source of peace in the world.