There are a number of ancient monuments and religious shrines, from far older cradles of civilization than Kalos, which are depicted in historical records as shining with a bright and crackling yellow glow, but today are in the faded whites and browns of ruins. Historians had for some time debated whether these differences were due to erosion, which was controversial because no known substance looks like that described in ancient art and texts, or exaggeration, but the descriptions were far too uniform and travelers from many lands agreed on details with the locals.
About a century and a quarter ago, an old document was excavated from an ancient Kalos palace, describing the efforts of the King of Kalos to build a similarly brilliant structure in his own lands. When the building was completed at immense expense to the treasury, the building failed to shine, and the king executed the architects on charges of fraud and sent spies to foreign lands to discover the secret of the shining buildings; that it was the electric light of the Heliolisk which made buildings shine as brightly as any modern skyscraper.
The king in question arranged for the import of Heliolisk to Kalos, but the land's supply of known Sun Stones at the time was insufficient to secure a viable population – a shortage which on a global scale has complicated any efforts to use Heliolisk power industrially, although a local Helioptile population survives to this day. After his death, his successor let the ancient tower go dark, and Kalos remained that way for two thousand years. And then the (initially Heliolisk-lit) Prism Tower was reconstructed in a fit of national pride, and at last Kalos fulfilled the dreams of that ancient king.
