The Grove of the Burnwillows sat at the center of the Scorchwood Isle, but the trees here were not charred and heat-marked like the rest of the wood; rather, they themselves burned hot. Their trunks radiated constant furnace heat, and thin streams of molten stone seeped from their bark like sap, dripping into the cracked earth below before cooling into black volcanic glass. During Highbloom on the Common Calendar, the new leaves opened from their ember-buds in brief, explosive bursts of flame that shed sparks like cinders on a forge floor. The leaves then hardened into red and orange panes that resembled stained glass and reflected all light.
Scholars believed the grove was fixed directly over a thin Leyline that brushed the Realm of Fire, and the seasonal eruption of new growth was considered the most consistent proof of planar intrusion anywhere in the Brimstone Breath. The willows’ trunks twisted like active volcanic channels, and their roots ran deep beneath the stone like cooling lava tubes, forming a labyrinth that resisted all mining attempts. The burnwillows themselves were completely immune to fire, and no attempt to quench or smother their inner heat had ever succeeded.
It was in this grove that Iodun the Unifier unearthed Cometfall. His journals wrote that he followed a trail of glass-rimmed magma pools until he reached the exact center. After that discovery, the grove became a place of myth and national pride, and remained a highly studied site in the archipelago; however, the Common League never succeeded in growing burnwillows anywhere else in the world.