HUNTOKAR: This is a story about Huntokar, said a voice on the radio. A voice you had never heard before, though she has been speaking to you your whole life.

I am Huntokar, the destroyer. You have already been destroyed, you just don’t know it yet.

Once, long before this sorrowful now, there was only the Mudwomb. We gods waiting to be born. The Woman From Italy. The Distant Prince. So many others. We waited for time and space to begin. In the Mudwomb nothing happened. Even the idea of action was impossible. In the Mudwomb you weren’t yet, but you knew that someday you would be.

And then history began, and we scattered out into the light and the hours. How simple and easy everything seemed in those first few millennia. There was only ever one of anything. The Woman From Italy dipped her hand into the stars, running her fingers through the great glowing coils of the universe. The Distant Prince explored every far-off cave and every out-of-the way hole, all of the dark places. A cloud in the corner of the sky glowed, changing colors every second, and dropping dead animals long before animals ever existed. I sat cross-legged in a lake for ten thousand years.

But nothing lasts forever, not even us. Soon there were other beings in this universe, and everything changed. The Woman From Italy became fascinated at the pain that could be inflicted on these creatures. The Distant Prince began to shape some of them into wounded servants driven wild by what he had done to them. The Glow Cloud controlled the minds of any that got too close. And I, I thought I was the exception. I thought that I would nurture them, rather than rule them. I was, of all of us, the only good one. But it was I who would end up truly destroying them.

I have spent every moment since my mistake trying to put back together what I took apart, but it is beyond me. Every action that endeavors to improve only causes more suffering and terror. Even my appearance, once a source of awe, is now to them strange and horrifying. Nothing fits together like it used to.

Cecil. Sweet Cecil. Who I tried and tried to guide toward the truth, but I could never quite say the words. “I am the Destroyer,” I would say to him, but what could he make of that? My cowardice concealed the details of my crime. I couldn’t bear to repeat them. Until now.

I say this in every world at once. Everyone must understand what has happened. This is a story about Huntokar, but this also a story about you and them and every poor soul who hears it.

Of course I say ‘Cecil,’ singular, as though there were one of anything. But as we now know, there is not one of anything. There is Cecil who would not listen. There is Cecil who listened, but could not comprehend. There is Cecil who did his utmost but who failed. There is Cecil who was gone long before I came. There is Cecil and Cecil and Cecil and then there is me, trying to explain to him over and over about the choice that I made. But all that ever comes out is the truth.

“I am Huntokar,” I say. “I am the destroyer.”

All true. All useless.

Each of us in those early days chose our domains. The Glow Cloud, in the clouds. The Distant Prince in the distance. The Woman From Italy, everywhere but Italy. We could each of us do whatever we wanted in the places that we chose.

There was no criteria for my choice. I came across a valley, dry, almost lifeless, save for a few brave people who had worked out how they could be sustained there. And I chose them. I guided and taught them, and gradually a town grew: Night Vale. The one place in the world that was truly mine. I am the creator.

And it was, I suppose, in the moment that I first felt love for my creatoin that the fuse for the unraveling of all things was lit. Although it would not happen for many centuries, at the very inception of my greatest satisfaction and happiness, this tragedy became inevitable.

Worship of me started, as they became aware of my kind presence in their lives. Their love gave meaning to the passing of my years and in exchange I gave them a better and better world. They developed ceremonies devoted to me, wearing soft meat crowns, and building what became known as Bloodstone Circles.

And this is how it was for a long time. Night Vale was not a place with any distinction to anyone in the world, except for me, who watched over it and loved it, a love that would spell its end.

Now, in this destroyed world, I am forgotten. Still they have Bloodstones, and still they worship, but never does anyone ask: What is being worshipped in those circles? Why do we have all of this meat strapped to our heads? What once was tribute is now a series of gestures, as human and meaningless as they were before I came along.

They see glowing arrows in the sky, dotted lines and circles, and they think nothing of them. Air traffic. Space debris. Weird birds. They do not, cannot, will not read the messages from their god.

The only ones that truly remember me are the oldest ones, the ones that stand outside of time. The Faceless Old Woman, who came to this country trying to find some answer to a long ago betrayal. She remembers me, although she would never speak up for me. Her ways are ways of sorrow and they lead only to herself. She is a closed loop of a person.

The Glow Cloud remembers me but can do no more than flash welcoming colors to say hello. I have no human mind it can control, and so there is no way for us to speak.

And of course the others. The Distant Prince. The Woman From Italy. The five-headed dragons. That beagle. They know exactly who I am. And more’s the doom of Night Vale for that.

The path to this destruction was laid by the humans. They invented a bomb of utter dread, a weapon so horrible it could never be used, and then they threatened to use it. Fools, they faced across water, squabbling over misunderstood ideas and announcing in louder and louder voices that they were prepared to end their species’ history over a point of pride. Some of the gods encouraged it, enjoying chaos and fear as entertainment, and spreading paranoia as they moved through the world.

I tried to keep Night Vale calm, but even my children weren’t immune to the growing fear.

And then the day came. November 7, 1983. A practice Armageddon mistaken for the real thing, and so, through this misunderstanding, transformed into actual Armageddon. The power of a fearful thought. The bombs were in the air. There were only minutes left. The people of Night Vale huddled, waiting for the end to their story.

I could see it as it was about to happen. I could see the flash and the tower of fire. The heat that transforms a body into only its shadow. The slow sickness and the dying of crops. I could see starvation and a winter that would not end. I could see all of this, as though it had already happened.

I looked up into the sky, as the people around me wept and said goodbye to each other. And I saw something else. A planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It hung so close that it filled the entire sky.

And that was the moment that I decided: no. I would save them. I would save the town I created. I am the savior.

It was a simple idea. I would have to remove Night Vale from this ending world. I didn’t know if it would work, I had never seen any god try this. But I had only minutes, and I knew that I must save my only town. I was naive, but lovingly so. You should not forgive me just because I had love in my heart. Intentions never matter.

Night Vale would stand alone, disconnected from all the rest of the universe, but safe. Or that was what I thought.

No action is without consequence. I am the destroyer.

What happened next was a horrible cracking noise. A noise like I had never heard before, like no one had ever heard before, because this particular thing had never been broken, not in the history of all possible histories.

When I tried to lift Night Vale out of the world it belonged in, I shattered reality. And I did not shatter reality just in my Night Vale, but in all Night Vales, all Night Vales that were or could be. Every possible Night Vale in every possible universe broke simultaneously and fell into each other.

There was a Night Vale exactly like my Night Vale, but in which on a single day a single citizen wore a green shirt instead of a yellow shirt. There was a Night Vale that had grown into a great metropolis: skyscrapers and crowds and little bars where people sat and talked about the great things they would write when they stopped going out to little bars so much. There was a Night Vale that never was, in a world where humans never came to be.

There was a Night Vale in which Old Woman Josie would never die, and there was a Night Vale in which she had never lived.

There was a Night Vale in a world that had flooded, and this town floated on the water and thrived, its lights spreading iridescent over the waves, like an oil slick. There was a Night Vale in which there was no Huntokar, and this town should have been safe from me, but then all the other Night Vales fell into it, and it too was destroyed by my action.

Every Night Vale then, every Night Vale now. Every Night Vale past and present. Every town with every possible person, making every possible important and unimportant choice. All of them, a fractal of Night Vale, an endless iteration of Cecil and citizens, and in my moment of foolish hope, in my belief that I could save anything, I reached out my clumsy hand and destroyed them all.

I guess here is where Cecil would say it. So, Cecil, I’ll say it for you. Let’s take a look at the weather.

[weather: "Full Metal Black" by The Royal They]

Night Vale is shattered, but for now is still here. Time is startlingly persistent in that way. Even badly wounded, it moves.

And so the towns, every possible version of the town, balance precariously on their broken reality. Some versions of the town fell completely into other versions, becoming folded into their reality in unexpected combinations. Others merely opened borders with my original Night Vale, doorways through which travel was possible but not advisable.

For a while, I believed we could go on like this. If we only put our heads down, and insisted on living, without looking at or considering the world around us, we could just keep moving, and the main thing was to keep moving. Denial was key. As long as we denied, then nothing was wrong.

The other gods were attracted to the sight of my teetering domain, but I was able to arrange truces with them. They did not do anything that would upset the balance by which my world barely hung, and in exchange they could poke their heads in, look around, maybe take a few versions of my Night Vale to turn into playgrounds for their terror-filled delights.

Others were drawn, not only gods. There were those who came to help, like the Angels that Night Vale denied as strongly as they denied their own situation. And there were those who came for debased purposes of their own, like those awful men and their awful crates.

The important thing wasn’t a life worth living. The important thing was just a life that continued.

But now the five headed dragons in their grief and their anger have pulled all the other gods into this situation, and our fragile truce is ending. The cracks are widening. All possible Night Vales are opening up to each other. There will never be only one of anything ever again. When all realities are real, sense cannot be made. Everything at once is essentially nothing at all.

I have tried so hard to keep Night Vale moving forward, unaware of what had happened to it. Blissfully ignorant. But my efforts end here. The world is finally falling apart, piece by piece, and I stand by. All the powers of my thousands of years, and I can only watch it fall.

Cecil, sweet Cecil, whose life lies directly on the fault lines of this broken reality, he narrates his own ending without realizing it is his ending. He does not understand what is happening to him.

And so here I am, telling you this story. So that, at least, in your destruction, you will understand who has destroyed you. And you will understand that she destroyed only out of a loving desire to save you. May you perceive her as foolish and naive, rather than monstrous.

Even as I speak, I look up in the sky and see that dark planet of awesome size, perched in its sunless void. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It’s so close now. I can see it just above me. Maybe, even, if I tried very hard, I could touch it.

This has been a story about Huntokar. She who thought that she could save. She who, in saving, instead destroyed.

I am the storyteller. This story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells.

Good night, my Night Vale. Good night.