A kingdom no map remembers. A boy who was never meant to leave it. A soldier who was never meant to find it.
“My name is Kasan Ooften, of the Povathel. This is my story.” A world lit by moving paintings. A war between gods that split heaven from earth. And a fracture, torn open by machines Kasan's grandmother never had a name for — wide enough to pull a soldier and a boy in from the other side.
The World of Eden
Eden is not a garden — it's a nation, built by the survivors of a war between gods, and still governed by what that war cost them.
Cast out of paradise after their creators' own war in heaven, the Povathel built a nation on what was left — a mainland flanked by four smaller islands, ruled by a council descended from the five survivors of a forty-five-year war that killed nearly everyone else. Kasan grows up here, in a farming village near Jackume, raised on his grandmother's stories and his father's canoes.
A three-day journey from home, Nemu holds the great temple and the great library — towering shelves of scrolls and hide-bound books, stories of gods who defied Orathal still standing carved into every doorway. It's here that Kasan's class of students, chaperoned by their instructor Eur, first learns how small their village really is.
Named for the king of the gods himself, the capital is carved stone and gold-lit temples, statues of gods both faithful and fallen lining every road. It's a city built on the belief that even wickedness has its place — “the world needs wickedness so that it can shed its light properly on the love which overpowers it.” Kasan finds more than a city here. He finds a war he didn't know was coming.
From the Pages
Prologue · Rebirth
“The dirt and clay of our world were misplaced by children, children of the Gods, the Boiyeks.”
Opening line
Across the Fracture
“What world have they created?”
Kasan, on first crossing over
The Temple at Nemu
“We believe in a true good. Only trueness and good can be found through wickedness and evil.”
Eur, instructor
Epilogue · A Letter Never Sent
“You have always been a father to me when I had none… Wherever you are, I will find you again.”
Alex, to Ryan
Who You'll Meet
A young man of the Povathel, raised near Jackume, whose grandmother's stories become his own the moment the fracture opens.
Daughter of Benuke, the king's leading general — and the reason Kasan stays in the capital longer than he planned to.
Instructor to Kasan's class, and a former monk of the great temple who knows more about the world beyond Eden than he lets on.
Leading general of the king's army, and the first to test whether Kasan is worth his daughter's trust.
The soldier on the other side of the fracture — already known to readers of Appalachian Chronicles.
Ryan's adopted son, caught between two worlds and, eventually, the one who understands Kasan best.
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