When they talk about you, it's as if they're discussing a maverick human being. When you protect them, they shower you with words of praise. When you choose to rule over them, they spare no effort in using slanderous terms against you.
They have always been like this. It doesn't take a hundred years of wasted time. Just one era, or perhaps just a few short years, is enough for them to easily forget the scars left by history and the various hardships they have never experienced. Because their lives are fleeting, even more uncontrollable than the fall of a meteor. On this planet, they are everywhere. Sometimes, they are like intertwined vines scattered across every inch of the land, and sometimes, they are neatly arranged and coexist with all things. But there are also times when they are the very source of disaster, an invincible force against nature, and the culprit of massacres.
It is precisely such a group of people, such a race, that has endured from ancient times to the present. They survived the meteor disaster that wiped out all things, escaped the extinction of the Jurassic period, and took root again on the land after the long cold winter melted away. You gaze at them, just as they look up at you. Among all the gods, as the only celestial body that can be directly looked at, you radiate the afterglow that a long-dead star has already burned out. You baptize these living beings who have continued through the ages, built tall buildings on the land, and established civilizations with a cold and solemn silver light. They have given you various names.
Even though the ancient gods have all abandoned this world and, in their eternal orbits, given up on watching over these humans who are more fickle and troubled than the moon. Yet you have always kept your eyes on them, never looking away, and day after day, night after night, you have fulfilled your promise to them. Even though time has passed and history has long since moved beyond the glorious era of believing in you, leaving behind a society where faith has withered, with towering buildings reaching into the clouds obscuring your radiance. Still, you watch over their nights, regardless of what names they call you by or how they tell your story.
You know that you love them, even though they have never known it.
When this planet was born, you have been looking at it from afar. You have watched over its growth. When countless disasters from outer space were hurled at it by the coldness of the universe, you used your celestial body to shield the earth from countless meteorite impacts that could have caused another extinction like that of the Jurassic period. Those wounds that should have been left on the earth became the ferocious craters on the surface of your celestial body. Your stillness is the proof of the thriving of the planet you have watched over.
But for humans, your existence is just a symbol, and your vows have long been forgotten with the decline of faith. You realize that you can no longer walk among humans easily. In just the blink of an eye, humans have changed into something unfamiliar. They don't even talk about you anymore but instead praise the sun that has never watched over them. They give infinite praise to those things that are visible to the naked eye, yet they alone forget the cold moon. Because the night is no longer as lonely and cold as it was a hundred years ago. They are no longer the children walking in the forest, afraid of wild beasts. They wear new clothes, no longer hold the spear blades sharpened from stones tied together, but they are safer and more arrogant than at any time in the past.
You see, people have forgotten you for too long. They no longer tell your story, but you are still fulfilling your promise. In the current era when the gods have left, it is obviously too foolish to cling to an illusory promise. But if you were truly a god who breaks his promises, how could you have entered into eternal and unchanging contracts with humans time and time again throughout the long years? In every era, you have shed your moonlight, and at every moment, your power has been present among humans.
This era should naturally be no exception. However, during this long period of gazing, you have come up with an idea. You have developed a longing. You realize that if you don't want to be forgotten too quickly, you need to take root in this society. But how can your ancient soul fit into this ever-changing era? True, your eyes can see through the past and the future, but your body has long since decayed, peeling off the countless scars left by time.
Once, at the call of innocent women and children, you were the only god to descend to the land. Holding a sickle like a silver moon, you hunted down and killed the demons who dared to harm your believers. However, in this era, no one will call out to you when they are in distress. You must once again choose a human to act on your behalf, but simply becoming your avatar is definitely not enough. Because you know that people no longer talk about you easily, and they will no longer know that you have entered into an eternal and unchanging oath with them. People have long forgotten their weak past in times of peace. So, you need not just an avatar but also a body.
A vessel that can reveal your divine power and remind people that you have never left.
After this thought came to you, your presence searched every night for the being who could become your vessel. Night after night passed, and countless lives were unjustly lost, and you were unable to avenge them. Finally, you found him. You finally found the person among millions of people who could become your avatar.
Out of your eternal watch over humanity, that excessive and persistent love as a god. You desired that you would no longer be ignored by humans, so you found him —— Marc Spector. This child was born with the potential to become your vessel. His constantly splitting personality was exactly the best container that could accommodate your various forms. So, you came to his side, out of your love for humanity, out of your commitment to your vows, and for various other reasons. You chose this child who, like you, was about to have a hard time fitting into this society. You hoped that this human being, whose short life had condensed your past, would become the medium for you to regain your foothold among humans.
However, as a god. Even when watching over in the name of love and persevering in the name of fulfilling a vow. The vessel that can bear the moonlight should never be a single individual. There is no doubt that you love humanity itself, but the one who can bear the crazy and persistent love of the moon can only be the human race itself, not a single human being. When your spirit descended into Marc Spector's dying life, you destroyed his chance at happiness.
You are well aware that the crazy nature of the moon has exacerbated his split personality. But what does it matter if one person is hurt? You are a crazy god. Even though you are filled with infinite compassion most of the time. But if you were not a crazy god, how could you have endured through these eternal years? How could you have remained so steadfast in your attachment to this planet when the other gods have all chosen to leave? Your foolish father had already dreamed that his rule was not eternal, and that all things would eventually fall into stillness amidst the increase of entropy. At that time, the universe would be forever silent, and the darkness would swallow up all the starlight, leaving behind only one dead celestial body after another, turning into dust and returning to nothingness. He was afraid of the sun's extinction and the coldness of the night, while you, this long-dead celestial body, have illuminated the night with the coldness emanating from your corpse.
You know the fate of extinction, yet you still cling to humanity itself. Your madness is precisely the reason for your persistence, and this madness is like destruction itself to a human being. You know that you will eventually cause the death of Marc Spector himself. But you still chose him.
Do you love humanity but have no pity for the individuals within it? Do you never feel any sigh or regret for the suffering of the human you have chosen? In your so-called eternal watch, should his individual suffering be excluded?
You have never questioned yourself. Yet he stood up again and again under your torment. He believed in you and submitted to you like he believed in death. Until you made him betray the whole world in a way that was even more unbearable than death. When your crazy persistence finally turned into a pitiful ambition and descended upon the earth, he finally chose to resist. He finally bid farewell to you, leaving you, this arrogant and inferior crazy god, in prison.
In the darkness of imprisonment, your divine power gradually weakened, and you could no longer avoid hearing your own inner voice. Your core, filled with both divinity and humanity, your fate, and your story repeatedly threw questions at you. You heard your own self-accusation, and you heard the curse from the aspect of you that symbolizes compassion among your many lunar phases. It questioned why you love humanity but not a single individual. It questioned why you claim to be persistently guarding but fail to protect a single person.
Marc Spector, the mortal you personally chose and shaped. Among millions of humans, you alone refused to admit that you loved this individual. You destroyed his life, but you also shaped his success. You made him despised by thousands of people, but you also made him successfully independent. You created him out of your own selfish desires for humanity. To this day, why are you still avoiding him? In this dark prison, you can no longer sense the earth, nor can you walk alongside him. An uncontrollable fear creeps up your spine because you finally realize.
You owe him so much, and this time, if he dies, you will truly lose him.
You, this crazy moon, in your heart that you thought was full of love, actually set off a huge wave. Your arrogance has finally brought down punishment from fate upon you. You find that your hatred for him is also a curse on yourself. Because you can't help but admit, and you can't deny, that you love him. You love him just as you have loved this planet and humanity itself for thousands of years.
He is your child, the only human among tens of millions that you watch over, the only one who lives for you and suffers for you.
The crazy moon, with its changing lunar phases, under the magnificent yet pitch-black chains of Asgard, you finally realize that you fear death because you fear losing humanity itself. You are too afraid. You are afraid of your own disappearance because if you disappear, how could there be another god in the world as persistent as you? Out of your love for humanity, you will not allow your status to be challenged. Out of your love for humanity, you will not allow the continuation of humanity to be destroyed by Mephisto. Out of your love for humanity, your compassion is just like your cruelty, and your cruelty is just like your madness itself.
And now, you have finally reached a turning point in your fate. In the suffering of imprisonment where love and hate are intertwined, you find that you cannot allow his death. Because when you decide to let go, admit his independence, and acknowledge that as the child you created, he has lived up to the appearance you expected, you cannot tolerate his passing.
But this time, fate has punished you with the hardships you inflicted on him. You will witness his departure with your own eyes, and you will hold his cold body in your hands.
The waves of love and hate, between humans and the gods, have stirred up waves that have finally wet your robe after crossing the long years, filling your eyes with the tide of sorrow.