The lands burnt in a madness that felt incurable. Flames of red and silver, casted by a sun that had turned a bright glowing crimson, devoured all that lived and breathed. Howls of men and women fleeing to places where the deadly rays would not reach filled the air choked with smoke, as their burning bodies turned black and crumbly, and only their bones stretched in their desperate run. The children swayed from stone branches, weeping in agony as they watched in disarray the lands they knew so well fall into chaos. In this folly the horses laughed and the fishes sang; the hounds barked as their skin peeled away, and the buzzing sound of insects grew deafening. The birds fell from the sky like a rain of fire, covering the earth with a plague that would cover the soil in rot.

  It had doomed mankind. It had abandoned us.

  Amidst the insanity veiling the lands, some had managed to escape. They had leaped in time into the moon’s shadow before she, too, had decided to retreat where the sun would not reach. And so they lived and prayed and the moon cared for them, hoping one day that the burning sun would at last find reason.

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  The moon bathed the last of the men and the women in her silvery arms, blessed the children birthed on her lap, and built for them grand castles and lands of eternal blue. And so they lived, they grew and reigned with the benediction of their savior in palaces of glass and pearly water. Before long, they yearned the lands scorching away, and promised to one day descend to its plagued and burning soil and cleanse it away. One day, a wielder of the night shall create dusk with its blade, and save what had been stolen from a ravenous madness.

  We chant and pray the day we can all dance and laugh at the bodiless head of the mad god.