The second possibility, by contrast, explained everything better. After the two lands split, neither knew the other's true circumstances—each might even have believed the other long since destroyed. As time passed, naturally no one mentioned it, still less left any written record, and thus the present situation had come to be.

The people of Cloud Terrace Island knew nothing of the Antiquity Alliance, and though the people of the Antiquity Alliance had heard of Cloud Terrace Island, they had mostly learned of it from the mundane world, with no way to verify it—and so they had dismissed it as a baseless rumor. (To be continued.)