so, the events of the au take place in a parallel universe where vongola lost and byakuran became bored of building mafia, because he found a better way to carry out his plan.
regarding my au: i think the main idea can be perfectly conveyed by the image of "trying to cover a dead body with flowers." the apostles (guardians) of the main god (byakuran) wear white robes, but if you look closely, you can clearly see blood stains on them. his followers wear wreaths, but the flowers they used for the wreaths grew on the graves of those who went against byakuran. byakuranβs followers sing songs, the chorus sounds incredible, but they sing about how all those who are not with them must fall at their hands. vongola fighters arriving at one of the cult meetings note that none of the followers look human anymore - they don't blink, walk barefoot even on glass, and even after being wounded by flames, they still try to get up and continue the fight until their bodies turn to mush. they don't stop singing until they lose their voices and the ability to sing.
byakuran's guardians look incredibly beautiful if you don't look too closely, but if you stare long enough, it's immediately obvious they're not human. byakuran himself walks around undisguised, his wings revealing that he's not human.
by the way, when the mafia cleared out one of the cultists' points, they tried to identify those who were there, and it turned out that almost all of them were listed as missing, and their families couldn't contact them for a very long time.
i tried to put together some photos so you could see the au aesthetic. yes, it's a screenshot from hannibal. yes, the cult most likely involves cannibalism, because byakuran isn't human and has no idea what's going on in our heads, or what's allowed or not allowed in humanβs society and what is morally wrong or acceptable.
i actually thought about that. i thought about concept of something like flowers or mushrooms growing out persons skin which were considered as a blessing from byakuran, but mostly this was just to cover rotting flash of some of his followers - byakuran knows a little about people and their biology so he sometimes did something that made damage to his followers bodies, but they were still okay for sometime bcs of byakuran powers. so, he just covered them with flowers lmao (kikyo helps him every time), my aesthetic king. some people betrayed vongola bcs of byakuranβs speeches, and the singing of his followers rather calms a person down so that he loses his vigilance, and they can get his ass.
i think that flowers themselves don't grow after a battle, but if guardians enter the battle, then people can indeed see the flowers, but only until guardians leave - this is just an illusion so that people believe in the good intentions of guardians and that byakuran approves of their actions, in reality, burning flesh (thanks to zakuro) or mangled bodies (thanks to daisy) remains on the battlefield. illusions of flowers are kikyoβs work btw. he is the main reason everything looks mostly beautiful in the battlefields. bcs. you know. bellflowers.
