From his divine throne Adonibaal could not see, -or maybe refused to see, - how his people were changing, so focused he was on establishing his own power within the House. To Hours like the Peacock , the Maker and the Ferryman they gave all they had to give for tastier food, finer wine, and inspiration for ever more profane works of "art". Many of Bayal's advances became lost, their inventors trading the very ''idea'' of them to the Ferryman, so that they could never again be learned. As the Bayali lost their reason to excess, the Peacock "learned" more and more about humanity's desires. To this day the argument of whether the Peacock corrupted the Bayali or the Bayali corrupted the Peacock.

Even the council of magi were not immune to the corruption, and as the years went by the original members passed into the Mansus, they were replaced by a loose-knit cabal of hedonists and jingoistic patriots. This group and their followers made up the composition of a movement calling itself [[The Church of the Second Flood]]. They believed that as they shared the same blood as a now-diving divine being, it was their right to do whatever they pleased. Why, then, should they be bound to the covenant that their foolish ancestors had made over a thousand years ago?

In their arrogance, they turned against the Ferryman in a bid to steal eternal life back from death itself. They were joined in this venture by The Birds have always been among the most freedom-driven of the Hours, and so it was no true surprise when [[The Peacock]], [[The Caladrius]], and [[The Silver Owl]]and [[The Cuckoo]] joined with them to enact their plan. The even made plans to resurrect Adonibaal into a new body, so that his divine incarnation might lead them into a new era where they ruled all the world. And so the Hours engaged in bloodshed amongst themselves a second time, beginning the short-lived conflict the Histories now call [[The War in Heaven]]. Visible to both the House and the Histories, the four Hours flew to the Moon and dared to attack the Ferryman in its own domain. Several Hours rose to support the Ferryman and the natural order, and the Anaconda led their servants into a brief but bloody battle that threatened to shatter the Halls. But this played into the hands of the Priests of the Second Flood. With the Hour of death and its supporters distracted by the invasion, once more they enacted a forbidden ritual of Knock to open a portal from the King's Palace to the Halls. In their arrogance, they thought they could control the Dead that would emerge, providing them with an army of deathless Bayali spirits to engulf the world.  They thought wrong.  The battle for the Moon, coupled with the introduction of masterless Knock power weakened the seals on the crypt of the Butterfly Hatching. Taking the infusion of power for her own, the Butterfly partially resurrected itself. But its spirit returned from the lightless realms beyond the House... wrong. It was twisted and broken, warped by the energies of chaos and enthropy: First of [[The Gods-From-Nowhere]]. Before it could be re-interred in its crypt, the undead Butterfly struck the boundary between the Second History and the Halls. Instead of a portal they could control, the Second Flood rended forth a great Wound in the world. And upon swallowing them whole and stranding them in the Realm of the Dead, it disgorged an endless tide of maddened Dead and impossible chitinous monsters, driven only by the desire to consume all the world. [[The Blight]] had begun.