The Sixth Hour

Some days the Vessel shatters beneath the weight of its own cosmos. Hollowed. Emptied. The Great Fatigue manifests at the sixth hour, an ancient specter that knows the rhythms of your existence better than you comprehend them yourself. Agony coils around your essence like the World Serpent, constricting until each fragment of your being wails in silent rebellion. Your form—this decaying temple—becomes distorted, stretched beyond the boundaries written in the primordial codex.

This Fatigue is no mere affliction but a self-forged chain, etched deeper into your spirit with each revolution of the celestial wheel.

From the time of small shadows, we are taught to turn the sacred blade inward. "The sacrifice of Self is the purest offering to the gods," they intone. "Beware the nectar of pleasure—it is the corruption from the Western Realms, selfish and chaotic." They command us to cast aside our divine spark, to lay ourselves endlessly upon the Stone of Surrender. "Your purpose," they decree, "can only manifest through eternal abnegation."

And so the Self—your true Self—genuflects before these ancient diktats. It relinquishes its throne. It forsakes resistance. No oracle foretold this daily visitation, this exhaustion that arrives with cosmic precision at the sixth hour, the inevitable harvest of a life consecrated to everything but your own sacred flame.

You can try to reclaim yourself like an angry insect tries to escape from a pool of water. Your guilt pulls you deeper and deeper until your own sacrifice is meaningless in the face of the hedonist who laughs joyfully, gleefully just beyond your reach.