Brother Elian didn’t mind the isolation. In fact, he’d spent the last twenty years perfecting a single view. He sat before the Great Arched Window, the very one that looked out over the sea of clouds and the floating spires of the lower valley. "Is it ready?" a young initiate whispered from the doorway.
The wind howled through the jagged peaks of the Iron Mountains, but inside the Monastery of the Azure Mist, there was only the sound of a single brush scratching against parchment.
He wanted his painting to be more than art; he wanted it to be a portal. He captured the way the morning sun hit the gold-leafed domes of the monastery, the precise shade of the pine trees clinging to the cliffs, and the ethereal glow of the mist that never truly lifted.