Preface:
There is a place where there is no pain. No suffering. No agony. No loss. No transgressions of time. This place is blessed by existence, yet simultaneously cursed by its own weight and importance. It is a weapon. One whose creators destroyed, broke into countless pieces to prevent it from corruption.
It was just too powerful. Too beautiful.
But...the pieces remain, they float along the rivers and seas of time and space lost, longing to be found. Longing to be reunited. Longing to be whole again.
There was a crashing, gnashing, crunching sound, one like branches and rock and home being crumbled asunder by some great, unimaginable weight. The people raised their heads to the skies and saw nothing. They looked within, and saw truth.
There was a sensation welling up from deep within. It was an unknown feeling even to the wisest, it was a painful warmness. A foreboding, nameless terror. The people in the streets glanced around in fear, looking for answers on the faces of their neighbors, but none were found. The very universe shuddered around them.
Men, women, and children all at once were torn apart at the atomic level, rent into nothingness. Their collective consciousness extinguished in the span of their last heartbeat.
There was nothing left.
It had to be.