Before the lesson began, a presence stirred.
It was not movement in any physical sense, nor awakening as mortals understood it. It was closer to alignment—a coherence of intent assembling itself from silence. Time had long ceased to apply to him, yet habit remained. And habit, when repeated for centuries, became purpose.
Once, he would have introduced himself.
Once, he had been a king—an immortal one—born of a dimension that had long since stopped existing. Its skies had collapsed inward, its stars extinguished without ceremony. Its laws, once absolute, were now meaningless abstractions. Even memory itself had failed to preserve it.
How he survived was irrelevant. What his name had been no longer mattered. Names were anchors for the living, and he had not been alive for longer than most civilizations had endured.
What mattered was what he had become.
He existed now as a thought—persistent, uninterrupted, and unyielding—embedded within the mortal dimension like a scar in reality. His flesh had long since perished; only ashes had marked its end, scattered across a world that no longer remembered why it had once trembled.
Yet the mind endured.
Stripped of form, deprived of sensation, denied rest, it remained—bound not by body, but by continuity.
Thus he occupied an absolute state: unable to act, unable to intervene, unable even to be perceived. He could only think. And those thoughts, by accident or design, reached the minds of the young.
They did not hear a voice. They did not feel a presence. They merely found ideas forming—uninvited, unclaimed—lodging themselves where certainty once resided.
They never knew he existed.
And until the day he could stand among them once more—if such a day was even possible—he would continue this ritual. Reviewing the remnants of knowledge left behind by a decaying world. Educating the next generation not with commands, but with reflections.
Not as a god.Not as a ruler.But as a witness burdened by memory.
And so, today's rambling lesson began.
There had once lived a philosopher.
A man whose mind cut deeper than any blade, whose ideas unsettled entire generations. He had walked the surface of the Earth briefly—briefly, yet long enough to leave scars upon thought itself.
Friedrich Nietzsche.
"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends."
To love one's enemies.
At first, the idea repelled the untrained mind. Love was mistaken for softness, for surrender, for weakness. But this was ignorance.
Love between enemies was not born of affection. It was forged through respect.
Enemies served as mirrors far more honest than allies. They revealed limits, sharpened resolve, and exposed contradictions long before comfort ever did. Where friends reassured, enemies refined.
Thus, enemies were not to be collected carelessly.
They must be chosen.
And once chosen, they must be respected—not because of admiration, nor indifference, but because selection itself was acknowledgment. To declare someone an enemy was to admit they mattered.
It was, ultimately, respect offered inward—an admission of one's own seriousness.
Some created enemies by accident. Some inherited them through governments, ideologies, and banners they barely understood. Others—fools most of all—declared the entire world their enemy, mistaking isolation for strength.
Whether such individuals ever succeeded was a story rarely concluded.
Yet the most dangerous enemies were not external.
They were born within.
Anger. Pride. Lust. Envy. Jealousy. And countless subtler distortions that disguised themselves as virtue. These were the true adversaries.
A physical enemy tormented only when summoned to battle. Inner enemies required no invitation. They whispered constantly—every day, every second. Left unattended, they struck precisely when vigilance waned.
Even when defeated, they returned refined by failure. Their ambush was cleaner, sharper, deadlier—more lethal than the venom of the most poisonous creatures the Immortal King had encountered across lifetimes.
How, then, were such enemies defeated?
Even he—the greatest of immortal kings—had failed.
Perhaps his fall had been partly due to them. Or perhaps that thought itself was merely a remnant of guilt, drifting without proof. Time had eroded certainty, and memory no longer guaranteed truth.
He could not remember.
And so, the lesson shifted.
From enemies—to friends.
Friendship was an ancient construct, older than thrones and borders. What defined a friend was not proximity, nor convenience, but trust—trust forged through shared exposure.
Yet this truth endured:
The greatest betrayals never came from enemies. Their intent was visible. Their blades expected.
Betrayal came from friends—the ones entrusted with guarding one's back.
A back offered in trust was a back left open.
Thus, friends had to be chosen with greater care than enemies.
A neutral perspective was not cynicism—it was survival. To hate a friend might cost companionship, but it also armored the soul against devastation.
Should one then avoid friendship entirely?
No. Isolation bred weakness, and opportunity favored connection.
Make friends. Trust their actions—but doubt their intentions. Balance, not blindness, ensured protection.
Remember: hatred required courage. To hate was to risk corruption, for the act reshaped the mind and nourished inner demons. Hatred, unchecked, was self-destruction masquerading as strength.
Hate actions, not individuals. Today's friends could become tomorrow's enemies, and the inverse was equally true.
Learning from those you despised was difficult—but a successful individual evolved by learning from enemies as readily as from allies.
Thus, love your enemies. Love made observation easier. But never soften before them—they would not hesitate to destroy you when timing favored them.
And learn the art of hating your friends. Some of their actions would inevitably conflict with your own. In those moments, affection clouded judgment.
For the greater good—yours and theirs—act in your own interest. What preserved you would, in time, preserve both.
With that, the lesson concluded.
The thought receded. The Immortal King drifted once more into dormancy—whether until tomorrow or some distant age, even he could not say.
Yet unknown to him, a change had begun.
Somewhere—another universe, another dimension, or perhaps merely another possibility—a fragment of him was forming.
In one such place, a small boy stood before a statue. He nodded slowly, taking notes, absorbing principles never spoken aloud.
From afar, another boy watched. He nodded too, mimicking understanding, yet the thoughts never reached him as they had the first.
To learn from others, one must step down from one's pedestal and abandon arrogance.
But that boy did not.