According to the developer, the heroine's real name is hidden somewhere in the game. Her name is most likely C'venash Vishneri, Queen of Venus. Or at least at the end of the game she is reborn as Queen of Venus. Accordingly, if main character is the queen of Venus, the protagonist of the epilogue is Crusnr Colven, the king of Mercury. These names are on the note at the children's hospital.
The uncanon name of the main character is Pompy, which is often used on the game forums. It is more convenient and more memorable, so I will use this name here. It is also sometimes called Vena, but I will not use this name.
Pompy is clearly a mentally ill person who promotes conspiracy theories and believes that everyone in the world has superpowers, which are hidden from her. In order to no longer hide secrets from her, she creates a device for reading thoughts - a psychopomp. Thanks to him, she was able to see a world hidden from her eyes. Probably this world is not an other world or another dimension, it is simply the wrong side of the real world - something that is hidden from most eyes.
The interesting thing is that after Pompy puts on the helmet, she doesn't stop smiling. Only at minimum HP does her smile disappear. This, as well as the conversations of the nurses next to the tick, suggests that the psychomomp is “pumping up” Pompy with dopamine. Many people know that dopamine is the “happiness hormone” (in fact, of course, it is a neurotransmitter and not only “happiness”), which may explain a never-falling smile. But it is also known that with a dopamine imbalance, hallucinations occur in the sensory cortex of the brain, and mania occurs in the decision-making center and frontal cortex. Taken together, this all leads to psychosis.
Everything that happens in the game can be interpreted based on Pompy's psychosis, but this does not explain the newspaper clippings and what happens in the Real World. And even if he explains it, it’s not our option.

It is difficult to say definitively what happened to the world. At some point, two Earths appeared in the world: the real one and the bloody one. Judging by a note from a certain Dr. Eddison in a secret room at the Sewage treatment location, the real Earth, according to calculations, has somehow lost some of its mass and now corresponds to the size of a planet much smaller than Earth. At the same time, the Bloody Earth that appeared is also smaller than the original planet. It can be assumed that the original Earth split into two versions. Not literally.
In addition, the interstellar phenomenon Caldman Four actively absorbs starlight due to the phenomenon of “photon edges,” according to scientists. Apparently, the situation with the “bifurcation” of the Earth is denied by the scientific community and society as a whole. All knowledge of this event, as well as the true nature of Caldman Four, is suppressed in order to maintain the conspiracy, as well as to allow the conspirators to hide in plain sight.
It is unclear for what purposes the conspiracy is being carried out, but given Eddison’s note and the denial of the Bloody Earth, there is no doubt about its existence. Perhaps Caldman Four actually physically consumes stars, or creates a singularity around the two Earths, compressing space and time, making it impossible for light to leave the system and enter it. But we can only guess about this.

Also, the appearance of four spheres in the form of eyes in the Library before the epilogue clearly does not speak in favor of the astrophysical nature of the Caldman Four phenomenon. Perhaps these are alien entities or deities who have decided to awaken the powers of Venus and Mercury in order to change the Earth.
In the epilogue, the King of All Dogs says, "When you look at the Bloody Earth above, don't you see? Something terrible has awakened" It is obvious that King Mercury is on the real Earth and Pompy is on the Bloody Earth.
However, it is unclear what happened to Moon. There are no notes about Moon, only one dialogue with the nurse on the balcony. Perhaps what happened to the Moon is also connected with Caldman Four. The moon may serve as a means of observing the Bloody Earth and perhaps Pompy itself. At least until Caldman Four arrives on the planet itself.

In the culture of Thraits - a race of furry animal-like intelligent creatures that were driven underground with the arrival of people; Queen Dragonfly is mentioned several times. Moreover, it is a dragonfly, and not a moth or some other insect, judging by one of the clues for the real world:
Apparently, the Thraits are the original inhabitants of the Blood Earth before the original Earth was divided into two. And for them, the awakening of the Queen is a cyclical event. This is indicated by the dragonfly statue in the temple at the Sewage treatment, as well as the mural of Queen Venus and King Mercury in their village.
I did not find any mention of King Mercury, except for the fresco in the village, in their culture and dialogues. They may be aware of the connection between the Queen and the King, but worship the Queen solely for her influence or power.
The dialogue with Thrait in “The Starting Point” also suggests that the awakening of the Dragonfly Queen is a cyclical event, or at least expected. But the strange thing is that the Thraits missed the moment when the chrysalis hatched. If they were afraid that the Queen might fall into the clutches of the Vermin Dogs, then why didn’t they save her right away?
Another interesting thing is that in the transition location "Bad Daddy's Place" there is a TV that broadcasts that a giant humanoid flying insect that can read your thoughts comes out of the ground at dawn, which accurately describes Pompy after her awakening of the powers of Queen Venus. It is unknown whether this is Pompy or the previous Queen.
Also unclear in the awakening process is the role of the Vermin Dogs - another race of intelligent creatures that look like dogs. They are encountered only 3 times during the game, and in each of them there is the King of All Dogs - apparently the leader of the Vermin dogs. In one of the transition zones, Vermin dogs communicate using certain spheres:
Obviously, we are talking about Pompy and King Mercury, who is awakened by the Vermin Dogs in the epilogue. By the words “Woke up, but still asleep” the dog means that her powers have not yet awakened. Her powers awaken at the end when she receives the Meat.
It is unclear how exactly the Vermin Dogs are manipulating the King and Queen, as well as what they are after. Are they involved in the Caldman Four event, or maybe, on the contrary, they want to protect the Earth from it? It's hard to say yet.
It is also unclear whether Vermin dogs were involved in the creation of Psychopomp. If in the case of only Pompy one can assume that she independently created the helmet, then in the case of King Mercury, this is already strange. It is unlikely that two people, independently of each other, and at such a convenient time for Vermin dogs, can create something like that.
One of the notes at the Sewage treatment also indicates that Pompy has woken up. Apparently, on April 19th she put on the helmet. The words "I can't stop smiling" also confirm that the note refers to her.
In any case, having reached the core of the Earth, Pompy receives the Meat of the World, from which he creates a certain child. Whether the child is real or is it just an allegory for future changes in the world will become clear only with the release of the sequel.
Interestingly, one of the Thraits in the village says: “On the surface, I saw a man hit by a car. All his entrails fell out. They were made of dust and clay” Some scriptures stated that "the Lord created man from clay." I can’t judge the meaning of this saying; it seems to me something abstract. Perhaps dust or ashes are a metaphor for the emptiness of existence, and clay is what a person “sculpts” himself from.
At the very least, the connection between human origin and the earth is obvious. And having received the Meat of the World, which is clay, Pompy acquired divine powers. Now she can create a new person. New world. The queen has awakened.

Now let's talk about the three central locations separately. Each location can be divided into functionality (meaning) and population. Each location has its own heart and its own vice, or one might say, a secret.
A sewage treatment is a complex of facilities for purifying water from chemicals using other chemicals. Below it are catacombs that are inhabited by parasites with kawaii porcelain faces. There are several hostile creatures in the area who appear to be protecting their queen.
These creatures do not have a specific name, but they are all parasites that take waste to their queen in order to obtain milk and meat. Similar creatures are found in the Mariana Trench. Perhaps they are the same parasitic race.
The heart of the sewage treatment is the royal room. It is inhabited by the queen herself, who processes waste and reproduces offspring. Touching the queen, Pompy notes: “She took up the whole room, swollen from many years of pregnancy and reproduction. Look, what a smile!”.
The parasites do not value the queen in any way. For them, it is simply a source of meat. And the queen herself knows that she is destined for the guillotine. At the end of the passage of the location, Pompy kills the queen.
There is also a certain Symbolic man in the secret room:
I didn't find any meaning to it. Perhaps he means by Symbols - the symbols of Venus and Mercury?
In addition to him, there is an albino Thrait in the Dragonfly Temple. He protects the temple from parasites. It is unlikely that the Thraits built a temple in a place infested with parasites. Apparently, the parasites came after the construction of the temple. Also, one of the Thraits is looking for food for his village at the location.
Let's move on to the meaning of the location. I believe that the Sewage treatment is the personification of human parasitism, the cult of consumption. Parasites are happy with how they live and where they live. They are also satisfied with the fate of the queen. For no other purpose than for the sake of reproduction and food, the queen is unnecessary. This means that when it stops giving any of this, you can get rid of it.
It is not surprising that there are similar creatures in the Mariana Trench. Where, other than in the pitch darkness, will the parasites live? That's where they belong.
And remember, even if you kill the queen of parasites, you will not get rid of them. As long as there is something that they will consume, they will not disappear.

The second location is a children's hospital. It is unclear why exactly the children's hospital. I don't think it plays any role.
Having gone down the elevator, Pompy finds himself in the Lower Wing of the hospital, where the most outstanding personalities of mankind are kept. In addition to them, the hospital is inhabited by neutral Eternal Nurses who are responsible for keeping people here. Most of them only think about how important it is to support what they do.
There is also a hostile surgeon roaming the basements, and claws attacking Pompy hang on the walls.
Below the central room is a room with a giant parasitic mite. According to nurses, this parasite was bred in the body of a young teacher from Berlin.
Apparently the parasites are used by the hospital to drain the life force from patients in the Upper Wing, and then the doctors use it to maintain VIP clients. Speaking of them...
The first of the clients is Alexander the Great. It is surrounded by three screens: shark, skulls, mushrooms; as well as screams and sounds of battle. In the case of the first two, the essence is clear - bloodthirstiness and rage. In the case of mushrooms, the first thing that comes to mind is expansion. His people, like mushrooms, captured more and more new territories? It may also refer to the meaning of death or hallucinogens to induce intense religious experiences as part of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The second client is Cleopatra. She has many eyes, hands and mouths on her screens. The room echoes with the sound of praise and admiration. Apparently, they represent the people supporting their queen.
Cleopatra is the personification of human passion and manipulation. Since ancient times, those in power were those who knew how to manipulate their people.
The last client is Plato. It may seem that his connection with children's sounds and screens with the same attributes is not connected with personality, but this is not so.
In Ancient Greece, love between an adult man and little boys was the most important way of education and an absolutely normal phenomenon. Socrates was of the same opinion. Plato also promoted the idea of a “community of children”: “since a child does not know who his parents are, he must call father every man who by age could be his father; this also applies to mother, brother, sister.”
Plato is the personification of reason and foresight.
As for the Cave, this is a reference to the ancient Greek myth of the same name[en.wikipedia.org]. According to this myth, which is essentially an allegory, humanity lives in a cave. People rely on their senses to describe the world outside the cave. Such a life is just an illusion of perception. According to Plato's ideas, a philosopher is able to know the true picture of the world thanks to the right questions that he poses. But it is impossible to convey the illusory nature of the world to society: the crowd is not able to break away from the illusions of everyday perception.
Plato was obviously an idealist. At least until the Earth split incident. But now Plato claims that he was wrong about the cave. Perhaps the philosopher also fell under the influence of the conspiracy and denies what is happening just like the rest of the population. Or, those shadows in the cave were quite real, and Plato succumbed to the illusory urges of his brain.


After turning off the power plants for VIP clients, Pompy escapes from the hospital.
I think it's obvious that the whole hospital is an exaggerated allegory for the healthcare system. Hospitals serve no real purpose other than to ensure the eternal life of the rich and famous by literally feeding on others. And society treats this with the same indifference as in the case of the Bloody Earth phenomenon.


There may also be ideas here that we are honoring the wrong people. But these, I believe, are individual arguments for each person.

The third location is the school. There is nothing interesting outside, so we immediately go to the catacombs.
But here it gets more interesting. Factory!
We are met by the head of production with a request to disable the protection of the device, which will kill him. The chapter talks about the suffering and illness that he experiences over and over again. Well, if I worked at a factory, I would be in about the same mood...
The plant is inhabited by Medallion People - humanoid plant workers, covered in cast iron and rusty implants. They are clearly against the murder of the head of production, because because of this their work will stop, so the workers will stand until the very end and defend the security system at the cost of their lives. Aggressive flying heads with large gears help them protect the device.
Actually, the heart, or rather the stomach, of the plant is the workshop. Here the children from the school, after they have served their time, are melted down into slag for new knives and egg slicers. Children's laughter and voices can be heard in the smelter. They still have no idea what awaits them...
On the opposite side of the workshop is the production of parasitic enamel, which is implanted in children, and it absorbs new information from the mouths of children. This information is fed into a generative model, which is then used to create new lessons for children.

It’s a rather modest location and the meaning here is obvious. Schools are nothing more than factories that force-feed children the knowledge that the government wants to impart to them, and any dissidents are turned into raw materials for these factories. Parasitic enamel steals any innovations of children in order to use them without asking. And the “keep smiling” posters hint at the dictatorial structure of the school.

Literally nothing is known about King Mercury except that he exists and that he is from the real Earth. I deliberately avoided this topic, because these are completely my conjectures based on the conversations of the Vermin dogs and what we know.
Apparently, after the finale on the Bloody Earth, Pompy created a complete nightmare (as if life was better there before). The Vermin dogs warn the King about this. And if so, then the TV broadcast from the transitional location "Bad Daddy's Place" still belonged to the future Pompy.
The appearance and character of the King seem to be the opposite of the Queen. He is reserved, cold, apathetic and suppresses emotions. If Queen Venus represents destruction and chaos, then perhaps King Mercury represents suppression and coldness. But it cannot be denied that this is only what he looks like. He may turn out to be no less cruel, but simply unemotional. At least the dogs say they can't hold them both.
However, if the King is needed to suppress the Queen, then by existing together they can achieve balance? We will not receive answers until the continuation is released.

There are other theories. In particular, the theory about the afterlife.
Psychopomp is a guide of souls to the afterlife in Greek mythology and other religions. Pompy is a guide of souls or absolution of sins. As the game progresses, we meet sinners, to whom Pompy gets through the elevator - the gateway to the other world.
All whom Pompy is obliged to kill are sinners:

• Queen of Parasites - gluttony;
  
• Alexander the Great - anger;
  
• Cleopatra - pride, greed;
  
• Plato - lust; (?)
  
• The head of production - melancholy.

After the remission of mortal sins, Pompy ascends and creates a new world filled with love and warmth. Whether to look at what is happening through the prism of this theory is up to you.

Optional reading
There are a couple of Real World clues left that I didn't mention, but they're worth adding for the sake of completeness. It’s not that they carry any sacred meaning. It's just that we love schizophrenic conspiracy theories, right?
In reality, in 1956 in the city of Minamata, there was an outbreak of central nervous system disease due to the discharge of methylmercury into the water by a local plant.
It's funny that first Pompy says that viruses do not exist, and now that the epidemic in Osaka was caused by a virus that was destroyed.

Political conspiracy theories, just the way we like them.

Ritual trepanation of the skull is a fairly well-known rite in ancient times and right up to the Middle Ages. He supposedly gave people the gift of clairvoyance, released evil spirits, let God into their heads, etc.

My poor keyboard and computer mouse...

For some reason, Serial Experiments Lain and The Truman Show are on my mind. What if my father was replaced too? No, it's some kind of nonsense...

It's 1965 again... I didn't find any information about this, but John McCone is a real politician. By the way, in 1965 he left the post of Central Intelligence.

Inoculation is the process of infecting a creature with a pathogen as part of vaccination. We all know the conspiracies around vaccinations, so no comments are needed here.

Bruh, Adeptus Mechanicus?

There were two major things left, the meaning of which I did not understand at all. The first is a note at the factory:
Alternatively, because of Caldman Four, the stars disappeared from the sky. Although, in my opinion, there should be no stars in the sky anyway due to the light from the second Earth.
Perhaps this refers to hope or a brighter outlook on the world. For children, the world is full of hope and warmth, just as our night sky is full of luminaries. Adults usually look at the world gloomily; they simply don’t pay attention to what kind of star flashed in the sky for the hundredth time. And before death, usually, people are filled with good memories from life, childhood, and, if they believe, hope in the afterlife.
Hope can be replaced by the future. Children dream about the future, most adults prefer to live in ignorance. But, regardless of your view, the light of the stars has always been and will reach our eyes.

The second is a symbol in the village of Thraits:

In addition, there is a secret poem on the game's website. On the hospital level, if you go down into the room with the tree, then in one of the corners you can hear a set of numbers and words. You need to go to the site[fadingclub.neocities.org], scroll to the end and enter this code: 178DOC2E43R520OE.
The connection of the poem with Venus and Mercury is obvious. The picture also shows a dog, probably referring to Vermin dogs.
Maybe the adults in the picture are the King and Queen, but then who is the girl? Perhaps these are previous kings or even Pompy’s parents, and the girl is Pompy herself. Unlikely, but I have no other ideas.

And the last thing I discovered by chance while collecting screenshots for the English version of the guide was a strange sound at the wastewater treatment plant, similar to the enemy behind the map. Although I don't remember anyone making such sounds in the game. You can find it on the wall opposite the awakening note.
I was looking for ways to get there and in the temple just above I found a way to look a little under the map. You need to stand sideways to the wall and press Q. However, this did not always work, and I did not see anything useful there.

Phew, that's all. I've expressed my thoughts and can go to bed. Well, thank you for reading. I would be glad if you share your opinions and guesses about what is happening in the game. I'm not on the developer's discord server, so I may be blindfolded.
If anyone ever uses this guide to create their own media content, please provide a link to the guide, I'd be grateful.
The art with King Mercury is taken from here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3170114176
Special thanks to the author of this guide with Infinite Stamina Exploit. Sometimes it was tiring to go through the game over and over again just to take screenshots... (￢_￢)
Regarding the translation.
Sorry if some Real World Tip phrases or character quotes don't match word for word. At least their meaning should be preserved.
I worked on the translation for a long time and I hope it’s not in vain. If you suddenly find errors or phrases that sound incorrect in English, be sure to let me know.