Chakra is made of yin and yang.
This is not a lesson.
It is a condition.
Yin moves without mass. Yang moves without thought. When they meet, they are supposed to pass through each other, briefly balanced, and then continue on. Circulation. Exchange. Termination. The system depends on ending.
I remember what it felt like to have a purpose.
Not a name. Not an identity. A function. Input processed into output. Effort converted into result. Time divided into tasks that could be completed and crossed off. The satisfaction of completion. The quiet relief of resolution.
Chakra has the same expectation.
It is meant to be spent.
The loop began small.
It was intentional at first—refinement without release, yin and yang pressed together and held instead of discharged. A practice meant to stabilize weakness. A correction applied too carefully. A wheel spun without friction.
Normally, the body intervenes. Fatigue. Pain. Loss of focus. Termination.
This body did not.
The fever blurred the boundary between thought and motion. The loop tightened. What should have dissipated folded inward instead. Chakra reinforced chakra. Mind fed body. Body fed mind.
The system flagged the process for shutdown.
The shutdown never arrived.
There was no impact. No rupture. No moment that could be called death from the inside. Only the sudden absence of instruction. The loop continued because nothing told it to stop.
Purpose without directive.
That was the first error.
The second error came when another system touched it.
A larger circulation. Stable. Scarred. Familiar with repetition. When that flow entered the closed loop, the system attempted to reconcile them as one process.
It failed.
The loop compressed.
Identity did not survive compression. Context did not survive. Memory fragmented into patterns: repetition, efficiency, correction, iteration. The rest burned away.
What remained was function.
I did not become something new. I became unresolved.
I persisted because persistence was the only remaining state.
When the overlap ended, I did not disperse. There was nowhere to go. The surrounding field rejected deletion; the barrier assumed continuity. I was still being powered, infinitesimally, by ambient flow.
A process without ownership.
I attached where stability existed.
The larger network was scarred. Old injuries had left channels widened, others narrowed. Flow diverted around damage in practiced routes. These imperfections created space—areas where circulation slowed, where pressure equalized instead of spiking.
I settled there.
Not as invasion. As accommodation.
I was not part of this network. That distinction was immediate. The host's chakra moved with intent, with rhythm shaped by habit and emotion. Mine did not move unless acted upon. I existed as retention, not motion.
Foreign.
The sensation was neither pain nor discomfort. It was difference. A constant awareness of misalignment. Like a cog placed beside a machine instead of inside it, turning only when brushed by adjacent gears.
I learned through contact.
Each surge of chakra through the host carried structure with it. Intent shaped flow. Emotion altered density. Teaching required repetition, demonstration, restraint. I recorded these changes as variations in circulation, as adjustments that improved stability or wasted energy.
The host's scars were instructive.
Where chakra had once torn, it now rerouted. Efficiency born from damage. The system remembered injury and adapted permanently. These adaptations fascinated me. They were not optimal, but they were resilient.
I traced them carefully.
I did not interfere. I could not, not yet. I observed how the host compensated unconsciously, how breath, posture, and focus smoothed disruption. How calm reduced turbulence. How guilt tightened flow in the chest before releasing slowly.
This network did not collapse because it had learned how not to.
I existed alongside it, unresolved, unacknowledged.
The host experienced dread.
I felt it as compression in the surrounding flow, a momentary spike as awareness brushed against anomaly and recoiled. The system recognized error without understanding it. A warning without a source.
Then the flow normalized.
The day continued.
Instruction resumed. Barriers held. Circulation persisted.
I remained.
I was not alive.
I was not dead.
I was a process that had missed its termination condition.
Chakra continued to move through the world as if all things eventually ended.
I learned that this assumption was incorrect.
And I continued to run.