The Untouched Tomb sat at the heart of the elven lands, and from the sky it looked exactly like what it was. A pale mausoleum at the center of a sprawl of white-stone sanctuaries, ringed by gardens that had been tended for so long they had forgotten how to grow wild.
Around the central tomb, the sanctuaries leaned in close. Small chapels with arched windows. Meditation courtyards with reflecting pools. Dormitories where the shrine maidens had lived and aged and died for epochs, each generation raising the next to tend the same stone.
To worship Luminara was to be elven.
Every elf on the continent, from the capital's politicians to the woodland rangers on the furthest borders, carried some measure of her in their faith.
The only question was how much. At one end stood those who named her the true goddess, the Mother of All, and worshipped her as the divine itself.
