AGONY-TOSKA

Prologue — The Operation of Two Worlds

This world is not singular.

In the physical world, an event later known as the White Flash shattered human perception.
In a single moment, countless people lost their minds, vanished without trace, or were stripped of consciousness entirely.
It was eventually discovered that the vanished had not died—they had been transferred into another realm.

A world formed from the collective human psyche.
A mental world.

Here, the laws of reality do not apply.
Emotion becomes material. Trauma becomes energy. Memory reshapes itself into terrain, creatures, and architecture.

The Laboratories of the Physical World

To study and control this mental world, governments established hidden laboratories.
They did not select the mentally stable—instead, they chose those already fractured:

• Individuals diagnosed with severe mental disorders
• Survivors of dissociation and psychological rupture
• Engineers, researchers, and laborers deemed “irreparable” by society

Experiments revealed a crucial truth:
the deeper the psychological trauma, the greater one’s capacity to alter the mental world.

These subjects were classified as Adapters.
They were deliberately sent into the mental world to build structures, stabilize systems, and expand its boundaries.
Those who succeeded dissolved into white light and were absorbed by the system itself.
Those who failed were left as hollow bodies—quietly disposed of in the physical world.

The Original Cycle of the Mental World

Before interference, life in the mental world followed a complete and self-sustaining cycle.

When eyes appeared on the surface of the Sky-Sea, they emitted light that guided new life into existence.
Following this light, the newly born descended onto the World Tree, passed through its hollow, and entered the world.

Their purpose was singular:
to discover new Sacred Tree seeds, plant them across the land, and, at the end of life, return to the Tree—becoming part of it once again.

Memory fed the tree.
The tree sustained the world.

The Rise of the Elders

Among the first humans to enter the mental world, some recovered memories of the physical world.
They remembered time, death, desire—and the fear of limited existence.

They became known as the Elders.

Unlike the natural order of the mental world, the Elders sought control and immortality.

Towers, Trees, and the Theft of Light

The Elders discovered that the light emitted by the eyes of the Sky-Sea did more than give birth—it could be altered, redirected, and harvested.

They built vast towers.
At their summits, modified Sacred Tree saplings were planted, fitted with artificial leaves, sensor arrays, and injected with Sacred Tree Modification Serum.

When eyes appeared upon the sea, the towers rotated.
Their leaves tracked the light, seizing it mid-descent—stealing it from the World Tree.

The Corrupted Descent

Deprived of proper guidance, new life could no longer arrive intact.
While descending, their bodies and consciousness were dissolved by the altered light.

They became rain.

This rain—called Holy Water—fell not upon the Sacred Trees,
but was channeled through layered cathedrals and drainage systems into the depths below.

The Underground Temple

Beneath the cathedrals lies the hidden temple.
When the rain collection is complete, the Elders descend by elevator.

There, they receive, refine, and consume the Holy Water—
extending their own existence by draining the lives of the newly born.

The natural cycle continues to collapse, quietly and unseen.

Now

The mental world still functions.
The towers still turn.
The light is still contested.

And in the laboratories of the physical world,
new Adapters are still being prepared for transfer.

No one knows what will happen when the World Tree can no longer sustain life—
when the eyes of the Sky-Sea cease to open—
or whether the collapse of this mental world will come first…

Or the collapse of reality itself.