Sky: Children of the Light is built around five realms, unlocked in a fixed order for new players: Daylight Prairie, Hidden Forest, Valley of Triumph, Golden Wasteland, then Vault of Knowledge — followed by Eye of Eden as the endgame area. You can't skip ahead on your first run; each realm opens a shortcut back to Home once you reach its end, and free travel between realms you've already finished unlocks after you clear Valley of Triumph. These same five realms are what Sky Shard's daily rotation cycles through for shard eruptions.
The opening realm — bright, open grassland with no environmental hazards. It's the gentlest of the five, built to teach the game's basic flying and gliding feel before anything gets complicated.
Rain-soaked and densely wooded, with a light-draining rain mechanic that adds a mild survival pressure Daylight Prairie doesn't have. Deep in the realm, past areas like the Boneyard and Tree Tunnels, is the Forest Temple — home to the Elder of the Forest, whose memory unlocks the path onward to Valley of Triumph.
An icy, fast-moving realm built around sliding — this is where the game introduces the skating and slope mechanics that show up throughout the rest of Sky. It's skill-based rather than hazard-based: no light drain here, just terrain that punishes clumsy movement.
The first realm with a real threat. Dark, polluted water drains light on contact even faster than Hidden Forest's rain, and Krill — dark manta-ray-like hunters — patrol with a vision cone that flashes red for about five seconds before they attack, giving you a brief window to get out of sight. Its ruined architecture and refugee-themed Spirits (Fainting Warrior, Frightened Refugee, Courageous Soldier) give it a heavier, wartime-survivor tone than the first three realms. Its Broken Temple and Battlefield areas are also two of the locations Sky Shard's shard eruption rotation lands on.
A towering library realm, heavier on vertical navigation than combat or hazard. Through its Hall of Stories lies Starlight Desert, a connected area where large jellyfish recharge your cape energy on landing — the "Jellyfish Cove" shard location technically sits inside Starlight Desert rather than the Vault's main halls, though it's reached through the Vault.
Once all five realms are cleared, Eye of Eden opens as the game's weekly endgame area — see the daily & weekly reset guide for how its reset cycle works and what it pays out.