There is something wrong with the world. The world is sick. Scholars say that it wasn’t always like this, but to the people of the Throne, it is an everyday fact of life. The sun rises in the east, one eats and drinks to live, the night is purest evil. The Night Malefic, as the people call it, is the idea that the world responds to the wickedness of the deeds which take place there. Wherever natural law is broken, wherever a disgusting crime goes unpunished, wherever something happens that is just wrong, the Night Malefic grows. It leaks into the dirt and settles into the land like a canker, getting worse over time. The blood spilled from the roadside murder nurses carnivorous plants, the cannibal rises again from his grave with his hunger renewed, the hanged and crow-eaten pederast draws the neighborhood children to his death site like an eerie dream. The Night Malefic takes innumerable forms, and is always at its most powerful in the dark. The night itself is considered to be an evil time, when the laws of God and man are subverted and perverted, and each new dawn is a blessing – proof that you have survived the terrible dark.
