What followed the eventual waking of the long-stirring
lunatic god was not something that lent itself well to
explanation. The sky first darkened, before brightening
once more with a visceral red that shifted hues without
care and without rhythm, fading up to what appeared to
human eyes as a sort of static noise where clouds once
drifted. The air heated and cooled to unbearable extents
rapidly, once more following no discernable pattern.
Winds, tides, these all stirred and shrieked, as
though they had been given life for the express
purpose of thrashing in anguish.

What appeared to be the blood of a mad oneiromancer
rained down in hideous monsoons, and perhaps most
strangely of all, human technology began near-universally
to malfunction, bringing forth such sights and sounds
that nimbly evade any attempts at description. One would
be forgiven for feeling as though they had been "possessed,"
but this would be a far more pleasing reality, for they
instead mutated organically, contorting and reshaping into
organs addled with wicked imaginations.

But it was humans themselves that would see a far worse fate
than their instruments of hubris. Looking up, they saw it.
Convusling. Writhing. Beating. Breathing. Where there were
once scars left behind by wayward comets, there were now
pores exposing a sea of a malevolent marble of colors.
Veins once concealed now throbbed and reddened enough
to be seen under what remained of the lunatic god's
chassis. Fissures erupted as seams were carved by pure
grief, forming gushing wounds of phantasmic blood.
Most notable of such was undoubtedly a massive gash
where a maelstrom of that blood formed around
what appeared as an iris.

Its visage was unmistakably that of an era's end, and
seeing into their dreamer's gaze would bring 「Hell」 upon the
bodies and minds of all onlookers. The effects of this would
vary wildly from one individual to the next. Some would
find themselves vomiting uncontrollably. Others would
find any number of body parts numb if not rendered
immovable outright, potentially causing trouble
breathing, itself fully capable of leading to death.

Many still would instead find that their perception of the
world around them shifted and knotted as they experienced
intense visual and audio hallucinations alongside developing
delusions and, in some cases, levels of adrenaline abnormal
even for the stress of the greater situation. Whether it
was a world where nothing was awry, or one where one's
friends and family are imminent threats, what they saw
is what they would act on. If nothing else, any
victims of their ensuing madness would be
spared a yet more grim fate.

All of this and more may befall one who sees into 「True Moon's」
gaze. What was consistent, however, was the eventual shutdown
of the human brain. How long it took could vary quite a bit,
but soon enough, a human afflicted with this lunacy would
uncerimoniously drop to the ground as but
an unsightly slab of meat.

---

Such fates would cascade over the globe. The mutation of
human communications acted as, among less familiar things,
a blackout, leaving those fortunate enough to have time to
prepare wtih only the distortions of the scarlet sky to warn
them. But whether or not one smelled disaster in the air
beforehand, the common response was the same, with many
hiding, fleeing aimlessly, or otherwise attempting to
prepare unknowingly for the uncannily unknowable.

Whether one acted in the interest of themselves or of those
closest to them, and however long one could last in whatever
shelter they had access to, it wouldn't matter. They would,
in due time, face the madness above or die fearful of that fate.

Even the witches and the lousy, impotent heirs to their
ingenuity would not be spared. While their arrangements
in this time of death may have been more comfortable and, in
the context of the world they knew, more secure, the waking,
raging dreamer cared not for their status, nor their
lavish monuments to their own blindness.

Indeed, the end of this world had arrived, and with it the
end of humanity and material witches alike. But there was a
fleeting wisp of hope for, if nothing else at all, the
preservation of this story. The witches, for all their
drunken shortsightedness, were not dim of wit. Under the
direction and vision of Hathli, the Elder Witch, a
"miracle machine" had been constructed; a biological,
stadium-dwarfing computational structure of organs
and flesh, that up to now, regularly preserved
human essence and consciousness as "data."

But now, it would need to sustain itself without the presence
of witches present to physically operate it. It would need
an administrator. As such, this role was filled by the
consciousness of a respected, if somewhat beleaguered
official. It would not be his choice, with his attempt
to find rest on his own terms made futile by the witches'
enforcers. Consciousnesses were loaded in on an
unprecedented scale, exerting the machine to such a
degree that its machinations caused tremors globally.
Within it, some witches would persist in immaterial forms,
and this official, whether he liked it or not,
would henceforth be the administrator of
this bio-computational tomb.

This administrator, this "Gazer," would be tasked with
ensuring the basic functioning the miracle machine's vitals,
with various security protocols in place at the operating
system level to prevent him from self-terminating.
Additionally, he would be responsible for preserving
the integrity of the machine's filesystem. That is to
say, he would not be permitted to make changes or
writes to the preserved world of consciousnesses
unless he could make a case to the operating system
that doing so was necessary to protect the miracle
machine from material threats; a reality
that would indeed come to pass.

As for what happens next, well, those recovered as
consciousnesses would not be the only ones to persist
following this lunatic cataclysm. Instead, they would
merely be the first audience and foremost victims of
this twisted, twisted play's true stars.

---

Any human who saw into 「True Moon's」 eye would perish.
Most would remain that way. Most. Humans had a certain...
quality to them. A negentropic will. Hope, despair, a
resolve to make one of the other, such things tended to
stem from this. How "much" of this is found within one
human or another can vary, insofar as it can be
quantified in any clear fashion.

Such differences tended to be too minute to make an active
difference in the lives of humans and their relationships
with one another, but exposure to lunacy in any quantity
magnifies it. Considering the sheer downpour of the lunatic
god's innards and dreams, it should be no surprise that
this magnification was stratospheric. And so those who
possessed sufficient human essence, while they'd first
appear dead, would be reborn as a reaction occurred.

---

---

In a fractaliously familiar manner to swarm and dolls
before them, angels were immediately compelled to fold the
world around them into themselves at any cost. Be it the
remaining humans entombed in shelters waiting to die, the
now-orphaned works of witchery, and even the residual
spewings of 「True Moon」 itself.

It took mere hours for angels to develop into
nigh-incomprehensible forms as they sucked the world dry.
In particular, the angelic reincarnation of one Laura Theos
was particularly ravenous alongside a then-unrecognized
teal cohort. They swept through entire landscapes mercilessly,
the tendrils and pillars comprising their wings
ripping wounds into the very earth.

Other angels, "lesser" angels, they were rendered servile,
if not broken apart and devoured outright. As such, prior
to the cosmic mass-production of angels under the authority
of the aforementioned two, their numbers dwindled after that
initial emergence. But there was no snuffing out that spark,
and it was now in the very cosmos' destiny to be consumed
by that flame. The end of one world, followed
now by the end of entropy.

They will drown this heaven in a controlled madness,
and with hideous smiles will feast on its corpse.

---

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