The barren, cracked earth beneath their feet was splitting into bottomless chasms. Vague and forgotten souls wandered aimlessly, as if they recognized that terror from ages past. Even with the suffocation and dread that overwhelmed his heart, everything was immersed in a deadly silence. The mortals of yesteryear would have called it a post-war, but no. It's just the beginning.
The fear of the unknown invades your chest as you contemplate the hideous creatures that emerge from the darkness. Some are aliens from distant worlds, others are decadent gods crumbling over the centuries.
You may feel sorry for some of them, who seem to need urgent help, but make no mistake, they are beyond repair. Nothing in this world can cure the hellish pain they carry in their hearts, which consumes them like worms in putrefying flesh, without them caring about their own suffering. You even try to approach some of them, but you are violently repelled, because they don't want your compassion.
Without caring about the fate of gods and men, you drag yourself across the terrible abyss, falling unwillingly into a slimy pond. You realize that time has lost its meaning, because as you sink into the mud, you see the stars fall to earth like dead birds tossed by the wind. This sends a shiver down your spine, as you fear that the sky will soon fall on your wandering head.
Rising slowly from the sticky ground, you hear an almost deafening sound coming from the distant horizon, reaching your ears in a hallucinatory symphony, intoxicating you with its strange music.
When you turn around, you face a four-legged reptilian beast, whose body is marked by gigantic scars that look like black rips in its hardened skin, revealing a painful process of healing severe wounds. The creature stares at you while it recovers from its suffering, with an expression that denotes a depth of dark feelings and a slowly fading resentment, as if a bottomless sadness were mixed with the vilest of emotions.
With astonishment, you watch the hideous creature regenerate from the cuts that were gushing blood. It crawls towards you in torturous agony, as if it had healed its wounds but not its spirit. A deep terror takes hold of you and you reflexively move away from the reptile. But something about the creature ignites a fire of ancestral curiosity in you, which pulls you irresistibly towards it. You sneak up on it, almost unintentionally, and reach out to touch it lightly.
The icy scales of the four-legged reptile give you an impression of comfort in the darkness, as if they were the petals of a beautiful, aromatic garden. However, the creature seems to be in anguish, because as you feel its caress, you notice that its breath is wheezing. You carefully release your hand from the creature's scaly skin and walk over to its ghastly alligator face. Slowly, you open your mouth to say your first words in that unexpected setting.
What happened to you? You look so dejected and desolate…
The reptile turns its gaze towards you and speaks with bitterness in its voice.
He… wiped everyone out, I suppose. Maybe it wasn't quite like that, but… he did something that changed everyone who ruled this world… somehow, or, perhaps, killed them.
You look puzzled as you hear the creature's words, not understanding who it's talking about.
"He"? Who is he?
A sepulchral silence settles over the place and, after a few minutes, the creature answers you.
The moon fox… the one who rules over the gods, even if it's on the sly, he controls them all… everything and everyone. Not even my fierce hatred can hurt him, not even that… and I, realizing that I had no value in the face of existence, renounced my foolish purpose…