In a world of green cities and red paths, there lived the people with mantis limbs. Their long outstretched spans allowed them to draw into them almost anything they ever desired, so when these people would come across a moment when one of their desires was outside their reach, they would rant with terrible tempers.

To credit their ignorance, the people with the mantis limbs didn't realize how their world with green cities and red paths operated. Hidden underneath their very feet was a subterranean world that was key to the upper world's existence. Within that underworld lived a dark liquid mass that saw to the maintenance of the buildings in the green cities and the structures of the red paths. The liquid mass also provided the people with mantis limbs with almost everything they could ever desire, but of course this was unknown to them.

On one ill-fated day, a person with mantis limbs was diving after one of its desires. In doing so, the person inadvertently pushed into the thin ground of the upper world and found the liquid mass in the underworld. The person pulled and pulled until all the liquid mass was taken from the underworld. For a long time the people with mantis limbs studied the liquid mass and made it do their bidding, but with every command, the mass diminished.

Eventually the liquid mass became nothing at all and the people with mantis limbs were left without any ability to have their desires fulfilled. This new emptiness made the people rant with even more terrible tempers and they soon found themselves tearing each other apart. The cities turned gray and the paths turned black as there was no liquid mass to maintain them, and soon the whole upper world was littered with empty shells of the people with mantis limbs.