Celesterra was given to Kryor in the first ordering of the worlds, and for many ages it was a world of open belief. It is no longer. Its mortals worship kings and armies and grain reserves and the strength of the man wearing the bigger sword. Faith in unseen celestial beings has, in many parts of the continent, become a sign of weakness — and in some regions, a punishable one. To believe in something one cannot see is, by the prevailing wisdom of the great cities, the practice of fools.
That made Celesterra perfect for Drexel. A world that does not believe in monsters is slow to notice one. He stepped through the Ember-portal from Kolonoth and emerged here, on a continent that did not know him and was not yet hunting him, and he moved quietly for four months before the first northern church fell. By the time the second one fell, the first had been forgotten.
Its few remaining holy places — Darklume Cathedral, the old shrine routes climbing toward Skyreach Peak — were tourist curiosities at best, derided at worst. Krypton Kingdom and its military patrol the country around Shadowglade Forest. Beyond that, the continent goes about its business with its eyes on its own commerce.
The world is beginning, very slowly, to remember. A feather kept under cloth at Darklume is the seed of it. Kryor has, at last, looked down.
