When Iver woke once more from that sensation of being torn apart, all he saw was a wasteland.
The entire world had descended into a frenzy of chaos.
People screamed, panicked, and hated. Then they were swept up in it—killing, destroying, shattering--
The Transcendents had gone mad, attacking everything they could reach as though they were celebrating.
Rather than "hypnosis" or "mental control," it was more like zombies, or fanatics who had lost their reason. Their behavior was extremely abnormal, filled with an intense sense of immersion and release. Their rampages were accompanied by uncontrolled howls and roars.
Brilliant spells bombarded the earth... and even the gods walking upon it had begun attacking one another.
The world had clearly been normal before...
Iver realized this with absolute clarity.
Because if the world were destroyed at this rate, he could never have witnessed "the city collapsing and disintegrating." People would have destroyed everything they saw and touched long ago.
In other words, the world's destruction had happened only recently.
At some point, the apocalypse had descended without warning.
[August 1, 1902]
At that moment, that unhurried, sarcastic voice rang in Iver's ear:
``` [Long before people realized it, Whisper of the Void had already wormed its way into everyone's minds]
[Like the hooked feet of a worm clinging to the intestinal wall, the gaps in people's hearts had long since been filled by those whispers]
[Yes, no one could refuse the warmth of being understood, forgiven, and embraced]
[Everyone's heart lacked one such warm whisper, and no one could ever be completely understood by others. Whenever people suffered a grievance, their hearts became like a child's. They wanted to lose their temper, curse, strangle a passing bird, and destroy castles in the sand—and they did not do so only