Floating above the clouds, a city glides through the air—a miracle made manifest. No scientist can explain such grand defiance of the natural order through mere technology, nor can any mage fathom the magic required to sustain such a colossal dominion. Only its eternal creator, Sariele, knows what it takes to keep it aloft, the costs it demands. For this domain among the skies, she is more than its ruler—she is nothing less than a god.
Yet, even farther above this wondrous city, one island rises still above it all. It was the first that Sariele’s will gave permission to disobey gravity; for a long time, it was the only one she required; and if the sky were to ever collapse, it would be the last to make its descent. From its distant perch, Sariele’s Observatory appears small, yet like a guiding star, it leads the city’s drifting islands and its people through the endless sea of clouds. They look toward it for direction, to a sky above the skies in seek of knowledge.
Few have had the privilege to visit the Observatory, for only those with personal invitation from Sariele herself may set foot on its hallowed ground. Those who have describe it as a building unlike any other. It is neither modest nor grandiose, and its architecture and designs are veritably unique, unseen anywhere else in the marvelous city below. Here, Sariele resides alone, overseeing the world she has manufactured beneath her. Under her ever-present gaze, her people are free within the growing system she has shaped—so long as they do not violate her few, immutable rules—and as the city now thrives without her direct intervention, she simply watches from afar, its many pieces shifting across the board of her design. Months, even years, are known to pass without her presence in the city’s streets, yet none doubt that she is there, watching from her Observatory above.
However, it is not solely the realm below that Sariele fixes her gaze upon from here. Long before she granted sanctuary to those who wished to dwell among the clouds with her, this island was where Sariele isolated herself from the rest of the world. She ascended to the skies with a purpose, for the higher she climbed, the clearer she could see. Yet it was not the lands lands below that captivated her, it was what remained above that she looked to—the boundless aether beyond her reach. Even now, for as far as she has risen already, she still looks only higher… but for what?
What star guides her gaze? What knowledge does she seek in her sky beyond the rest?