They marked you.
Whether you served them with absolute fanaticism or fought them with your heart and soul, they marked you.
Anyone who had to fight one of them had a taste of it, but it was that handful of champions who proved strong enough to fight them over and over, with minds resistant enough to come face to face with the abominable creatures themselves who could tell you what a truly thankless job it was. And yet, when called, what else could you do? Once you'd faced them, you couldn't forget what they were capable of. Once you knew what would happen if they were free, you couldn't stop knowing it. Once you understood, you were the only ones who could stand for the rest of the world so no one else had to learn to live with that terrible understanding.
Once you'd seen how terribly fragile that veil called reality was, it couldn't be unseen.
It was the cruel, spiraling paradox of the Old Gods.
Azeroth's truest champions took that to heart and simply did their best to make sure as few people as possible were trapped in that spiral.
They suffered for it. Beyond the death, corruption and madness they faced. Where there were Old Gods, there were always Titans involved and you simply could not be around so many beings and their creations that could twist fabric of the universe itself with a finger (or a tentacle) and not have it rub off on you. People who were sensitive to the layers of the world beyond the obvious one had a hint of it but it was entirely another thing to have that forced on you. It was one of the reasons so many went mad under the influence of the Old Gods and their servants.
Jama tried to explain it to Baine once: "It's one thing to be theorize that you're sharing your reality with beings beyond your sight or understanding, it's another Earth Mother bedamned thing to have to come eyeball to eyeball with one of them." Baine- who had some experience with the Old Gods, not to mention entirely too much with alternate timelines/realities -had somewhat understood and Jama counted herself a lucky woman for it amongst so many other things.
Jama claimed she sometimes looked out over the plains and saw great, shadowy creatures walking across them, so tall their legs alone stretched hundreds of feet taller than the High Rise of Thunder Bluff. They never seemed to take notice of anything, like their little physical world was beneath their regard, for which she was grateful.
Adraste could sometimes be found standing stock still, looking straight up into the night sky with a frozen expression for hours on end. What she saw, however, she never said, not even to Mhere.
Mhere herself could hear wordless murmuring in the back of her mind and sometimes caught sight of hazy, shadowy colors clinging to people out of the corner of her eye. Enough she went to the priests of Ironforge for help, fearing the combination would drive her into true madness.
Not long after Garrosh Hellscream's fall, when Y'Shaarj drained its last energies, Rhaspidy found she could no longer tolerate crowds, not even for festivals or holiday celebrations. She kept seeing shadow figures passing through and around people and the last and absolutely last trip she ever took to Ogrimmar, she felt eyes on her and turned her head to see a figure standing stock still amidst all of the movement, grinning at her with a wide mouth full of teeth and little else. She'd turned her face against Cam's shoulder and wouldn't look until he'd led her away to a safely isolated place.
Liikaa couldn't walk long roads over flat lands anymore. Too many times she found herself moving along only to find herself two steps close to a threshold that would lead her to a barren hellscape filled with mountains of jagged rock spearing up toward an endlessly spiraling and utterly chaotic sky. And across it, just over the horizon, a ziggurat of impossibly shifting angles that hurt her eyes to even look at for more than a few moments. Those times, she would turn sharply away or hearthstone back to her beloved ranch and throw herself into her farming, because she needed distraction from the temptation to cross that threshold simply to see, despite the inevitable insanity it would bring.
And Zhai...Zhai, who had unknowingly gone to face Yogg-Saron pregnant with her first child...Zhai for ever saw darkness darker than black writhing amongst every shadow, sometimes waking up to find them dancing taunting over floor, wall and ceiling in an endless, squirming dance. When her first two children showed the ability to see such things as well, Zhai started to despair. Hahji tried to point out that it equally came from a bloodline closely tied with shadow hunters and witch doctors (especially when their first born would actually become a shadow-hunter) but neither he nor their friends could ever free Zhai from the fear that somehow she'd brought such horrid knowledge on her precious daughters against their wishes. She carried that fear and guilt within her to the end of her days.
They all unanimously decided to do their best to ignore these intrusions on their consciousness. They'd turn and cling to mates and family and close friends for anchors.
And yet, when it came down to it, every single one of them would stir and face off with another Old God when the need came.
Because someone had to.
The cruel, spiraling paradox of the Old Gods.