The pages were dusted off as I sat at the table, looking briefly at the book in front of me. It was familiar, the same binding as before. It was my journal, from when I had originally started to explore the world below. I had kept it for months, unknowingly writing out of habit. Every bit of work was in there, from the ground up. The dust inside the old safe was thick, and the air stagnant, giving off the smell of old text. I looked at the rest of the contents before bringing my eyes back to the journal. Slowly, I would open it and begin reading.
To the each person who reads this manuscript, I must thank you. For every Reader has become one to whom I can share the profound devastation of my being. I beseech that, before you continue on to the content proper, you first spare a little moment in this preface to understand the whole purpose of my pen.
The celestial plane is nothing but prosperous. Unlike the overwhelming unequal distribution of wealth besmirching the Realm Below, we eternal beings have enjoyed uninterrupted material comfort even further back than our heavenly libraries could date. Such perfection of economics is likely a result afforded by the circumstance of timelessness. Without the weakness of time, our plane has learned balance, and reached a level of being never before seen.
I also cannot deny that the beings of our Realm above enjoy a far superior state of corporeal existence compared to the creatures of the Realm Below. Even the lowest of our society could easily claim an exceeding advantage over the most exalted of the land walkers. By extension, such supremacy exacts a responsibility of our celestial rule to keep the balance of the universe in continuum. Needless to say, this position accords immense power. In fact, this is the exact genetics of divinity. This is the responsibility in which I have been called to. Ironically, this blessed subsistence has become our curse, and I have accepted that whole heartedly.
For all our eminence do not give license to elevate ourselves to a pedestal where we re-defined the welfare of the universe by what is to our whim and fancy. Yet, this has been proven the case. Lulled into complacency by our seemingly superior existence, we have forgotten one crucial issue that we share with any person of our neighboring world; a thing which so many of us have sneered as inferior.
I refer to the matter of the heart. This heart, an emotional orb of feeling, is what we have lost in all of our complacency.
Despite popular belief, we are not above the emotive variety that the beings of the Realm Below display with such dizzy rigor and regularity; a trait that many among us regarded as a flaw. Our denial of our state of heart – or heartlessness – has rendered our society handicapped. In the best scenario, we simply operate in endless ennui through false security in the unquestioned laze of pampering. In the worst scenario, we become oblivious to the danger of malignancy that lies dormant in any heart but easily festers in a flash of a deviant thought. The simple fact that these feelings are banned, or rather, looked down upon, is unknown to me.
And it has taken an unlikely band of four from the lower plane to expose this weakness.
Many have labeled the events surrounding my work and research as travesty. It is true that the collateral damage wrought by these findings have shaken even the strongest mind of the heavens. But perhaps, the depth of our sin has so required an equal depth of tragedy to occur before we could at all stir an iota from the stupor of our self-bestowed arrogance. Yet, beyond the lamented losses calculated through sheaves of accounting reports, how many are awakened to the true weight of this historical landmark these humans have left as their legacy?
My purpose… the purpose for this manuscript is to serve as testimony to the sacrifice of the few towards a courage and cause they had not bothered to, and certainly now could not, articulate. The lower realm, a demonic wasteland, has invaded the realm of humans.. I write as one who will ever remain breathless in the wake of their meteoritic imprint and, like an angel, lingers in the complicated ache of being their abandoned survivor. I write as one whose rationale for and understanding of this seemingly superior existence – so easily taken for granted – has been utterly undone. Although the humans, the beings of the lower plane will never know of my true feelings, it is with both remorse and satisfaction that I am given the opportunity to leave this place, and become one with their world. It is time to stop sitting idly by, watching as they merely exist, failing in their fight against the demons that plague them.
These are my adventures, and this is the last piece I will compose in this realm.
Until I reach my goal,
Sanzon Aerinus Loki
976
