Nox was curled into a ball still full of fear and pain from her deadly encounter with the angel. He power had been weakened and in order to prevent its severing she hid in the night sky and held a peaceful recovery. No matter how much time passed she remained hidden, frightened. She watched as worlds crumbled under the might of what she began to call mother. A being of an infinitely larger darkness than her own hidden behind a blood red eye. Despite the overwhelming fear she felt towards her mother, she admired her and even looked up to her. Every obstacle that threatened her mother's goals were squashed like insects creating a spectacle of suffering on scales she had never seen. A fireworks display of suffering.
Her many forms now destroyed and forgotten were one with the sky with the exception of her original form that always remained at the back of her mind. She had utilised the darkness in people's minds and hearts to consume their life and the shadows sucked the energy from the living. Despite her essentially being a parasite, she did not lose pride for she diid not have any for as long as she became stronger and continued to survive then being a parasite didn't affect her. After all, her previous attempts at active hunting had only resulted in a slow but disastrous failure.
Despite hiding in fear, she still had resentment towards creatures that leeched off of her mother's grace with gluttony not caring for the effort that she put into carefully weaving the world around them even if they were for nefarious purposes. So she began to cloud minds with madness and disease. Feeding on their most primal of fears. Filling them with self destructive thoughts such murder and suicide. Through their deaths she gained more power as she slowly drained away the energy from their soul stones subjecting to complete and total death. Despite the constant reseting of the universe, many of the same rules still applied. Reincarnation was removed as an option for the living when they fell prey to Nox though the universe would just create new souls to inhabit new bodies. Oddly enough, the Gods of this world didn't find distaste in her actions as the God of Death Mortus would visit frequently with souls he wished to subject to her madness.
But a parasite never goes unnoticed by the host. The body will fight back eventually.
-----------------------
Erendale 15th March 1066: 1 Year After Crimson Goes into Hiding.
The clatter of hooves against the neatly placed stone road plodded through the darkness if night as the howls of wind and the savage spitting of rain splattered against the floor and night's sky. Three horses were hurrying towards a collection of lights illuminated in the suffocating darkness revealing themselves to be windows of ghostly still houses and streets. Their riders hunched forwards in an attempt to increase their speed of travel whilst their horses galloped violently towards their destination. They soon passed into the streets of the deadly silent town and stopped in their tracks allowing for the riders to climb down from their horses.
The 3 began to travel along the street of the silent as they kept looking around themselves wary of something or afraid. Quickly, they passed down the nearest turn into another street as if they were trying to escape something when they stopped dead in their tracks. Laid before them was a confusing but terrifying scene. Around 100 peoples lay motionless across the streets unfazed by the storm that lashed at their silhouettes. The 3 carefully approached the nearest of the townspeople and turned their body to face them recoiling at the sight before them. Their face was deathly pale and their eyes glossed over. They were dead and putting 2 and 2 together they noted that the large crowd of bodies in the street were all dead also. With no clue as to what could have caused this, they continued to search through the town. But upon reconvening at the town centre where a well awaited them they found that in fact the entire town was deceased. No visible destruction, no struggle. They had all simply walked out into the streets and fallen over dead but as to why this happened eluded the 3.
"Demons." Muttered one of the three through his mask to the other and in response they quickly made their way towards their horses as the darkness now began to ease paranoia and fear into their minds as their paces quickened towards their horses. But when they arrived, their horses lay on the road with the same glossed out eyes as the townsfolk. "What the?" Asked one of them with a shaky voice as he began to slowly back away from the horses. Yet just as he seemed he was going to run. He fell to the ground and deciding he had been affected by whatever was happening here the two opted to escape the town also. But despite their efforts another one of them fell to the cursed streets of the silent town.
Now only the last of the three remained deluded with madness as yanked his sword from his sheath and began to thrash it frantically around him hoping to hit whatever was plaguing this town but soon he felt weak. His arms became sluggish and his hand useless. His sword fell to the floor, its clang like a gong of death as his body followed it.