What if, at every pivotal moment in human history, just as civilization was about to reach higher ideals, a fairer order, and a brighter future, a "tentacled shadow" in black robes, alone or in a group, appeared without a sound and dropped one fatal "drop of water" onto the driest tinder, drowning the fire of those ideals before it could even rise, in a sea of brutality and disillusionment?
That is not merely a punishment inflicted on an individual or a species.
It is the systematic castration and suffocation of an entire civilization's soul, stretching across the long sweep of history.
