I guess you could call it reality distorting. Starving, but food doesn't satisfy you. Freezing, but fire isn't even warm to the touch. Gods, or so they call themselves with the power to block out the sun.

It's not all the time, most of it anyway. Everything's perfectly fine for a few works and you're going about your life, working or ... whatever you do. Then you wake up one day and everything's different. It lasts a week or two usually, then something else happens.

Maybe some day the wall comes down and a giant venomous reptile attacks the city.

Something like that.