I stepped forward. One step, then another, but each slower than the last, as if the world itself were becoming denser around me, or perhaps it was simply my body — emptied, twisted, undone — struggling to respond anymore. It wasn't hesitation. It wasn't fear. There was no more room in me for that kind of resistance.
It was something older. Deeper. A kind of surrender woven under the skin, something creeping, animal, that had supplanted any will to fight or return. I had become this body too heavy for itself, this fatigue piled up like years of rain on ruins. I wasn't moving toward a choice. I was simply going where the ground collapsed with me.
It was something else. A total exhaustion, absolute, almost sacred, as if every cell of my being had understood that this step, that path, called for no more.
My legs had grown heavy, not because of fear — that had long since dissolved — but from pure saturation, from excess tension, effort, resistance worn down to the bone.
