Dimensional Descent

Leonel sat in silent meditation. Absolutely nothing was happening around him, and the same was true within him. His mind was completely clear, and his thoughts seemed to have entered a state of dormancy. He was truly doing nothing at all, simply waiting.

It was a novel sort of feeling. He hadn't been able to clear his mind like this for a long time, staring at the blank, dark space of his own eyelids. But it did nothing to change the negative emotions stirring within him.

He could feel it bubbling upward, that cold indifference toward everything, that look that gazed down upon the world itself as though nothing was important before his whims. It was the very same emotion that he had feared taking root in himself for so long, and yet he had inevitably reached this point despite his efforts... and the greatest shame of it all was that he simply didn't care.

He originally valued lives only because he couldn't think of a logical method to differentiate human lives, but there was another reason. It was because his father had instilled certain values within him, and if he ever reached a point where he simply stopped caring... the result on the other side wasn't something that he would want to see.

He had said himself many years ago that this was the case. He had avoided it, he had dodged to the best of his ability, running away from his own nature, and yet here he was...

He could feel that there was something inside him. That very same feeling his usual laziness stemmed from, the same feeling that encroached on disregard for all life, it was the kind of feeling that came from someone who already sat atop it all. He was lazy because nothing was worth his effort. He was indifferent because he had already seen it all. He didn't care about life because he had already seen too many people die, and maybe he was waiting for someone to finally kill him.

Too bad they were all too weak.

All of them. Rushing around the world, pretending as though they were accomplishing something when, in the end, they were just pawns on the chessboard of someone

in

muscle memory that extended beyond him, or maybe it was the muscle memory of a

could do that. But it was amusing, the woman he was doing it for he had hardly looked in the eye in the last several weeks. He could see that hopeful expression in her eye, the hope that

similar

well have been the same. And

did

raze to the ground soon enough. She wanted to support him, to be by his side, and it was admirable, especially considering how much

would be just like this. Maybe he would be able to love them as babies, but what about when their thoughts became more complex, when their cries turned from something instinctual to

they would be like him, their father. Would they look upon the world with indifference as well? When they gazed down upon the structure of all that was, realizing that their father had handed it to them on a silver platter without even

himself every step of the way. If he never reached the pinnacle of the world, then maybe it