To this day, it’s not entirely clear what happened, but Rezograd had been a center in the manufacture of magical scrolls and other sorcery development. It had pioneered the combination of the standard Flame and Wind spells into the popular Fireball conflagration, after all, and many of the basic spellwriting languages originate from products that were created or at least improved there.

What seems likeliest is that a small but significant error was made in the Rezograd labs, perhaps in a spell that relied on crystal resonance for its motive power. In any case, the entire town and a good portion of the countryside was turned to clear, faintly purple crystal in a matter of moments. Some of those on the outskirts, notably a family of farmers, were able to flee the cataclysm but thousands of others had no such chance. The countryside for 66.66 versts around a point just south of the center of Rezograd were crystalized, with every indication that this extended to 66.66 versts above and below. Onlookers reported birds and clouds plummeting, crystallized, to the ground and subsequent excavations showed a smooth crystal surface sloping away near the boundary.

This would be a tragedy, surely, simply on the basis of the lives lost, but everything, living or dead, that touched the crystal inside that 66.66 verst limit subsequently became crystallized itself, as the bodies of some unfortunates found half-inside and half-outside demonstrated. Crystal brought outside the limit would endure but seemed to lose its infectious properties.

The Rezograd crystal turned out to have many properties that made it an ideal soulstone and summonstone, with the properties increasing in potency the closer to the epicenter the shards were collected. Pieces of living things were also more potent, with shards from crystalline humans near the old city center being worth more than their weight in gold.

Crystal hunters still travel into the region, alone or with guides, despite the littered remains of those who in the years since have become part of the marvelous, pure, and terrifying sculpture.

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