Since I couldn't think of a good way to work this into golbez's PoV and still get the effect I wanted- another interlude! This is strictly third person POV. If you want to know what inspired this scene- I highly suggest you download the song called "March of Loss" or buy the CD (Last Embrace).

How can something so terrible be born? It does not simply appear, a dark blot hanging in the sky without warning. No, it happens slowly at first.

Little by little, the days lose thier brightness. The wind grows still for a time, then goes wild so that not even the sturdiest of ships may ride it, casting the denziens of the sky upon the ground in it's growing rage.

And still the days grow darker...

The sun becomes wan and pale, it's warmth failing to reach any part of the world. Clouds roil and reach down to the land in spinning needles to rent it apart then rise again into the sky- never whole but never gone either...filled with lightning and rain that never falls....

Soon morning is naught but a slight brightening of the sky, the banishing of the weakest stars from the sky but nothing more.

Snow begins to cover once green grasses as creatures run wild, knowing what human instinct can only vaugly understand in these events. Monsters continue to flee for the Underworld, to last some time longer against the rage they know to be building above the clouds....even should it mean throwing themselves to the mercy of gravity and lava both as they leap through Agart's crater.

Tidal waves soon begin to attack the coasts, shattering Fabul and Mysidia...and of many of the island towns, nothing is known. This storm rages for days...

And then without warning: silence.

There is no wind, and the waters calm...the earth, which had begun to groan in heavy complaint, falls quiet and still....

A calm before the last storm this world may ever know....

A calm which is broken less than a day later as the earth screams in agony, dark fire exploding from beneath the world, crawling out of caves and craters, canyons and crevices- roaring for the sky and stealing away the last of the sun's light and warmth. A black phoenix rising from it's shattered egg, the dark wings curl about the world, shattering mountains and reducing cities to smoking ruins before stealing way that warm, the passing of it's flame coating them in ice.

And then this terrible bird rises into the sky again, taking it's wings from the world to watch the beleaguered survivors wail in despair at what their own unknowing folly has brought down upon them.... their cries of why and endless despair going unanswered as the fire becomes an orb hanging overhead, visible only where the stars cannot be seen.

A time of judgement has finally fallen upon this, the final shard of a wayward existance....

The Dark Moon has risen.

(Continued in: Rebirth of a Dark Champion)

And this is what golbez woke up to. Don't you think that some days- you shoulda just slept in?