When it came to civilizations that had never suffered war or any other natural disaster, that looked peaceful and prosperous, yet somehow vanished overnight, I always felt a strange sense of familiarity... Earth seemed to have had similar ancient city-states, didn't it?
The ruins of the entire city-states remained perfectly intact, and the surrounding geological records showed no signs of earthquakes or floods, yet all the people were gone, and history abruptly broke off. I felt like I had heard of something that spine-chilling before. But what happened on this planet was clearly on a far greater scale, with much graver consequences: It wasn't one or two city-states that had vanished, but every technological city on the entire planet. And the civilization that suffered this break wasn't some primitive society, but a group of high-tech aliens who could already fly spaceships beyond the Solar System!
What exactly had happened back then, making these people suddenly abandon their cities and willingly return to a primitive society, eventually giving rise to something as twisted as the Lost Divine Teachings?
It was precisely because we had suddenly realized that the situation might be even stranger than we had imagined that Sandora and I decided to gather as much intelligence as possible through other channels before making direct contact with the Pope of the Lost Divine Teachings. It was experience gained over years of dealing with all sorts of "historical leftovers": Many things weathered by time became shrouded in layers of fog. Even if you felt you were about to see through everything, you couldn't casually trust the conclusions you came up with in your head. The final truth often took unexpected turns, and the more conclusions you made up in advance, the easier it was for everything to go wrong at the last