The devs posted this in the news section a while ago, it\'s usefull to read that

In CB we will have a first implementation of the Death Realm (DR). When a character dies, his body lays on the ground, lifeless. No one can touch the body since it\'s surrounded by a magic death aura. Touching that aura can be fatal to anyone. The spirit separates from the body and asks to the gods to be resurrected. The Death God, being evil and greedy, asks a magical item to bring him back to the world of the living. If he refuses or has nothing to give, he is thrown to the Death Realm. In the realm of death everything is dim and shadow and the spirits of the dead cannot die again, they may be knocked out but never die no matter how badly they are wounded. Here he must find an exit from DR to come back to life.
In first CB release the request from the gods will not be present, so players will be directly thrown in DR. The DR world available in CB is quite small and will be expanded later.
Our vision of DR is a lot wider than this. DR will become a world by itself, where evil NPC have their home and where evil aligned players can decide to live. In the future DR will give many opportunities for quests, guilds and exploration.