I lost track of how long I've been sitting here for.
My throat's starting to hurt, too.
I haven't gotten to talk to someone else for this much in a while!
No, actually...
I just haven't talked as myself in a long, long time.
Nowadays, I feel like I can't be who I really am.
What's the point of opening my mouth if I can't even say what's in my heart?
Every day, I sit in the exact same spot, stare at countless screens, write report after report, and track tens of thousands of numbers.
None of the results ever look promising.
But today, it was so different.
The warm light of the screen reminds me again.
There may be a place for me in this world, after all.
I close my eyes, and I dream.
I dream.
And I dream.
My precious friends.
Oh, they're so bright.
And maybe, I can tell them what I really wanted to say all along.
Especially, her... she, who shines like the sun.
So, so bright...
But now, I just want to reach out and hold onto it, before it fades.
If I don't, I fear it'll forever remain out of my grasp.
Open the gates.
I try to summon the courage to stand by her side.
I try, try hard, to take a single step outside the boundaries set for me.
Escape your confinement.
Witness, my light.
Were I to simply allow its warmth to enter my heart.
Then I could fearlessly embrace everything that light showers.
If I can just summon enough courage, then I could finally be free.
Do not fear.
I stop myself in my tracks.
Because suddenly, I remember.
...
And that I can't do anything here without permission.
It was the most important rule to follow.
A "rule"...
To follow the light would entail breaking that rule, wouldn't it?
Therefore, I stop.
Recoil, stumble, and collapse.
Then despair.
I can only do what I have always done.
I can only walk away from that which entices me, and wait until she gives me purpose again. She charts the path of my stars, showing me my place in this world.
Despair, forever.
But I love my prison.
Because it's so familiar.
In that hell you've built.
Solitude comes with countless pains, but it does bring me that one comfort.
And the only thing I have to do to maintain it, is...
Nevermore shall I give you grace.
After all, it is only an illusion, born from hellfire.
Behind the shimmering curtains, therein lies a dirty, dark underworld, that the people dearest to me should stay away from.
You will pay the price.
And I must smile - every day, but especially when she is present in the audience.
I smile so sincerely, full of joy, as I wet my hands with the sins that must be committed.
Suddenly, I recall something I was told by the hypothetical collective.
I believe they meant a physical barrier. Yet...
A form of this division they spoke of already exists right now, deep within our hearts.
If that prophecied future really does come true, perhaps it means we've manifested its existence from our horrible, unforgivable actions.
If nobody does anything about it, then...
We're going to bring terrible punishment upon ourselves, aren't we?
Even now, we're so, so lost.
Slumber, and drown in your solitude.
If the stars are listening, if our wishes could really be granted, then...
<---
--->
<--->
>---<
"With big, big, smiles."
---
--
-
"No kidding, I seriously can't even comprehend it all."
"So it's best to just forget it, no?"
"I don't have to think of solutions when there's someone else who'll do it for me."
"...And for the whole world, too."
"Thanks to her, no one will have to worry."
"Ever so curious."
-
"Your short glimpse through the cracks in an old, worn down wall."
->
->
->
"Things can never be 'uneventful' around 'here'. Not for someone like you."
->
"By the way. We're about to enter a new year, just as you recently have."
"My findings paint an... interesting future ahead of us."
"Will it be a 'happy' new year? Hmm... perhaps only for some."
"You, however, won't be bearing witness to it anytime soon."
"I'm afraid your role ends here."
"The experiment is now over. Therefore, there is nothing for you to contribute. Besides, you have to go make that 'happy' part of your new year come true, don't you?"
"Off you go then, curious observer."
->
"...Ah. What's that?"
->
"The prudent course of action is to keep your expectations in check."
"Tonight was one of those mystifyingly miraculous nights."
"So perhaps you'll run into another gap between the pages in due time."
->
This little side-update-detour is now over. I hope you enjoyed it!
Thanks for reading Miraculous Night, and super-mega-huge THANK YOU if you participated in the commments of the previous pages of MN, too!
For me, it was very fun to try writing something *this* interactive for once. :]
Have a happy new 2025!
Personally, I loved it! Hopefully, my whole "surprise-I-designed-a-text-based-image-transfer-method" thing wasn't too much trouble for you. :P
It was kind of incredbile. If you didn't make that, images wouldn't have been allowed in MN. But what you did was SO cool that I felt like I had to match the energy & incorporate it as well as I could. Surprise, it led to some fun results! I'm very happy in the way everyone played along with it, too.
Originally I thought people would "get creative" about images through something like ASCII art, but never did I imagine something like this. Huge props, man.
Also, just in case, I saved a snapshot of the jsfiddle page containing your code on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Gotta make sure all of this is futureproofed and backed up somehow. u_u
ASCII art was actually my first thought, but I'd just finished another personal programming project that used base64 to encode images, so I had the thought "what if I invented my own encoding?". It sounded like so much fun to implement that I couldn't not do it, and fun it indeed was (even if it took a while to get working).
The combination of it having to be text-based, limited to ~4k characters, and simple enough to explain in at most a couple of paragraphs to someone who hypothetically has about zero shared knowledge about computing made it just about the right level of challenging.
(Also, good thinking on making sure it's in the Internet Archive.)
fuck you zariyah
My analysis / theories regarding this update's colored text:
Ruby "I haven't gotten to talk to someone else for this much in a while!"
Ruby is dead, and that seems to be what this is referencing. Some noncanon art has depicted her as a ghost, and this could be connected to that, but we've seen nothing like that in canon besides that one spirit mimicking her.
Kotori "None of the results ever look promising."
Time travel Kotori is real. She's time traveling trying to figure out how to save Suvillan + stop the "assassin" (Probably not Nino, as I've mentioned in a comment on a previous update...) but nothing is working, as she tells Solis.
Eidolon "I close my eyes, and I dream."
Eidolon is running from reality, maybe? Insufficient data for meaningful answer; we don't know enough about her character to say what this might be about.
Five "My precious friends."
This one's kind of obvious. Five likes her friends a lot!
Ruit "I just want to reach out and hold onto it, before it fades."
This might be referencing Lune, and how he's worried she'll just get herself killed before he can let her know how much he appreciates her? Probably his Mom, too, as she died when he was young as well, and it's not unbelievable that he'd feel like he didn't get enough time with her.
Corona "If I can just summon enough courage, then I could finally be free."
Breaking herself free of the Winged Overworld's system, presumably. She's the Angel of Severance, after all.
Prosperous "hell"
We only get a single word in Prospy color, but we obviously get lots of talk about "light" that connects to the "rules" David has to follow, which are enforced by Zariyah. This seems to suggest that Zach might have something to do with the Prosperous as well? Maybe he went to confront her about the vanishing book and she kidnapped or hired him or something?
Suvillan "I can only do what I have always done."
This one's interesting. We've seen the sort of distinction between Suvillan as a person and Suvillan as a ruler, so it could have something to do with that. Maybe he only acts harsh when acting like a ruler because he feels like he has to?
Meimona "Because it's so familiar."
I assume that this is referencing her desire to go back home, but this part being what was colored seems a bit odd. Why not color the "It is a prison. But I love my prison?" Because that seems to fit a bit more. I'm betting there's a bit more significance here than I'm realizing, but I'm not entirely sure what it is.
Nino "Just like this, I don't have to worry about change or loss."
Nino's main character trait is his extreme malleability, and he has expressed displeasure with this on multiple occasions. He doesn't like the idea of not being himself and the one dream update concluded that Cape Nino / Dream Nino was an old Nino, which he clearly didn't like very much.
Aria "Solitude with countless pains"
Aria was alone in the monster world for a very long time, so I assume that that's what this is referencing.
Diana "Behind the shimmering curtains, therein lies a dirty, dark underworld, that the people dearest to me should stay away from."
Diana definitely has some sort of depression-like thing going on, (David too) so I assume this is representative of her skewed worldview? Or it's referring to her herself. She presents herself as fine, but she's having troubles on the inside that she doesn't tell anyone about. David's line about having not been able to talk as himself might lend credence to this.
Lune "I especially can't drag the person I love down to my level, now can I?"
The "person I love" is obviously Ruit, and we know that Lune doesn't see herself as a very important person, but I don't think we've seen any indication that Lune is afraid of Ruit ending up like her? This is probably something to look out for in future updates.
And the rest because I ran out of space:
Solis "I smile so sincerely, full of joy, as I wet my hands with the sins that must be committed."
Solis' family is in charge of the Sacred Cenote, I believe. Presumably he's pretty intimately familiar with those supposedly-brutal purification rituals. Despite this, though, he seems fairly normal and relatively cheerful. This might also have something to do with him helping Kotori in these recent updates? (Also, crack theory based on this: What if these "sins" the line mentions are implying that Solis is the assassin?)
Kaji "We're going to bring terrible punishment upon ourselves, aren't we?"
Presumably, this is referencing Kaji being thrown off the moon and losing his divinity, two things that were very important to him at the time. The "upon ourselves" presumably is evidence for the theory(?) he brings up that he was intentionally betraying the Prosperous, knowing that she would presumably "punish" him.
Selene "So, the only thing left to do now is drown our sorrows"
Yeah, I've got no idea here. I don't think we've seen enough of Selene to interpret this one, but it definitely seems to go against what we've seen of her so far.
Reed "If the stars are listening, if our wishes could really be granted, then..."
Again, this one's a bit difficult to interpret. His "wish" is presumably to find his father, but this mention of wishes and stars seem to imply some connection to the Winged. Maybe this is implying that one of Reed's wishes created an Winged? It would probably have to be one we haven't seen yet, just based on the ages. And if he was wishing to see Zach again, what sort of Winged would that create? The Angel of Fatherhood? The Angel of Triangulation? It could also be referencing the Celestials, which would further the idea that Zach is connect to / with the Prosperous at the moment.
Also I really like the fifth panel. (Under the "I dream." command.) Probably one of my favorite Oceanfalls panels in general, actually. The way the sketch of the chair goes beneath the more properly inked David but where the lines still show through is just really really cool.
Very glad you like it! That one was a personal favorite of mine when I drew the update too.
For Selene, I think it's worth noting that she's the one who taught Kaji to drink in the first place (see p139). Presumably she has or had the same habit, but is better at hiding it? Or perhaps the "our" in her line is referencing both her and Kaji drinking together.
The connection between Zach/Zariya and the Prosperous seems very clearly to be one of opposition. Zach's plan, between the proposal in the icicle bay library and Dave's comment on how our world's lack of other races seems reminiscent of it, seems to involve eliminating the celestials in some way, or at least enabling humans to stand above them. And Dave is shown rejecting "the light" here, which I feel has been pretty clearly established as being symbolic of Prospy's will (and it's even represented with the sun here, something explicitly a part of the celestial's domain).
As for the word "hell" being in her color... Dave does refer to the same light as being made of hellfire later, so maybe it's meant to emphasize that both Prospy and Zariyah's rules are hellish. Both choices are hell, and so David retreats to the familiar one.
don't talk to me or my son ever again