Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 101: The Gardens of Forgetting: The Shadow Beneath the Light

Chapter 101: The Gardens of Forgetting: The Shadow Beneath the Light

The last day of that month, as the horizon opened once again onto the crystal — immense, distant, bathed in that pale light that always seemed to float around it like an ancient memory — Lysara turned to me.

Her gaze was calm. But not empty.

— When we get there... everything will change, won’t it?

I took a moment before answering. Just a nod, slow, almost imperceptible.

— Yes. The world will resume its rhythm. Its pain. Its demands.

She said nothing at first.

Her eyes were fixed on the horizon, but I felt she wasn’t only looking ahead. She was looking at what we were leaving behind.

Then, in a barely audible breath:

— Then let’s walk slowly.

And that’s what we did.

We walked. More slowly than ever before.

Not out of fatigue. Not out of caution.

But as if to delay the inevitable. As if to anchor ourselves a little more deeply in this world that, in a strange, gentle, and discreet way, had welcomed us. A world that had not judged us. A world that, for a time, had loved us.

So we walked. In silence.

Not toward an ending.

But with the hope — perhaps naïve, perhaps real — that a part of this world would keep walking within us.

The days passed again.

Or maybe they were no longer really days.

Maybe only long, stretched hours, melting one into the next, drawn out by the light, by the scents, by the strange peace of this place that followed none of the world’s rules anymore.

Everything became blurry. Tender. Infinite.

There was no more rhythm.

No more plan.

We no longer counted. We no longer projected anything.

We simply existed. There. Together.

As if time, tired of running, had chosen to sit beside us for a moment and watch with us.

And this world... this world around us, in its deep gentleness, seemed to want to keep us a little longer. As if it understood. As if it already refused to let us go.

As if it had known, long before we did, that something precious had been woven here.

And that we were not done belonging to it.

The hills, little by little, grew softer. Their curves rounded, as if the world itself had chosen to ease, to resist nothing anymore. The air, too, changed. It became warmer. Sweeter. Filled with that subtle scent we never quite know how to name, but always recognize: the scent of places where the heart beats more slowly.

The vegetation no longer obeyed ordinary laws.

The trees had transparent trunks, supple like still-warm glass, within which diffuse glimmers flowed, like living thoughts. The vines, thin and sensitive, quivered as we passed beneath them, weaving shifting arches above our heads, as if the forest sought to cover us, to follow us.

And at night, the meadows lit up.

Not like fireflies. Not like stars.

But with a muted, inner, phosphorescent light, drawing beneath our feet moving constellations, like a sky fallen upside down onto the earth.

Even our thoughts seemed to slow.

As if the place knew. As if it invited us to stay a little longer. To forget a little.

And we liked it.

Truly.

Maybe too much.

One evening, as the night fell without a sound, Lysara slipped her hand into mine as she drifted into sleep.

Her breath was calm, steady, and her voice... barely a whisper, a thread of thought suspended somewhere between dream and reality.

— Do you think... we could stay here?

I didn’t answer right away.

I stared at the mossy ceiling above us, the glowing leaves falling one by one, never the same, and I tried to understand if it was possible... truly possible.

Then, in a nearly absent murmur, I whispered:

— I think that... I could give up everything. For this kind of peace.

She smiled, without opening her eyes. Just a faint quiver at the corner of her lips. Like an old answer she already knew.

— Then let’s stay. We won’t save the world... but we’ll love each other.

And in that moment... I believed it.

With all my heart. With all my body.

I was ready. Ready to leave everything behind.

The war. The blood. The debts and the promises. The role I had taken. The name I bore.

I was ready to forget it all.

For this bed of moss. For this hand in mine. For that single phrase.

Because sometimes, love is enough.

And at that precise moment, I believed it could be enough forever.

But the next morning, something broke the spell.

It wasn’t a sound. Not an event.

Just an image. A thought. A forgotten voice, returning from far away. From very far away.

Cassandre.

The name echoed in my head like a reminder, sharp and clear, where everything had been blurred.

I sat up suddenly.

Heart racing. Mind already elsewhere.

Her face surged forth. Vivid. Precise. Unrelenting.

Her gaze, that night, when she told me not to leave her. That fear in her eyes. That silent need I hadn’t known how to soothe.

And her hands.

Her hands, trembling with life — the day she had pulled me back from the edge, asking for nothing, demanding nothing, just because she believed I was still worth saving.

I saw her again, whole.

And I understood, in a single instant, that something in me had not stayed here.

Not entirely.

And suddenly, everything shifted.

The light around me — beautiful but too gentle — suddenly felt false to me — too perfect, too smooth, like a veil drawn over a reality we no longer wanted to face.

The sweet mist I had loved so much in the days before rose up in my throat. Like a forced sweetness. A foreign caress. An illusion too insistent to be honest.

The colors... those soft, vivid, harmonious tones... they no longer spoke to me.

They seemed to want to lull me to sleep. To smother me gently beneath their beauty.

Everything that had soothed me now felt suspect.

I looked at this world as one realizes they’ve been trapped.

Not by an enemy.

But by a dream.

A dream too beautiful, too calm, too fluid.

And suddenly, I wanted to wake up.

Lysara opened her eyes slowly, surprised, still half-held in the softness of sleep.

— What’s wrong?

I stood up abruptly, breath short, heart beating too fast for such a still landscape.

— We forgot. The crystal. The mission. Cassandre. The world.

She sat up too, still drowsy, eyelids heavy, as if her body refused to leave the dream that, until now, had seemed so real to us.

I placed my hands on her shoulders.

— This place is perfect, Lysara... too perfect. It bewitches us. It slips over our thoughts like warm mist. It makes us forget who we are. Why we walk. What we still have to face.

She blinked several times, as if the very light now blinded her. Then she looked around... and I saw fear emerge, slow and real, in her pupils.

— You’re right... I... I wasn’t thinking about anything. Not the past. Not the future. Just... the moment.

Her voice trembled a little. Not panic. But like a thread breaking inside.

— And that’s where the trap lies, I murmured.

A long silence settled between us.

Like a silent farewell to the place that had held us.

Then she nodded. Jaw clenched. Gaze already turned outward.

— Then let’s run. Before it’s too late.

And we ran.

Reluctantly.

Breaking the sacred slowness of the place. Pushing past the supple branches that tried to hold us back. Crushing the soft moss beneath our feet like we crush a dream we no longer want to fall asleep in.

And the world around us watched us leave.

Without anger. Without sound.

But I think it knew we wouldn’t return.

The wind whistled around us, as if to remind us we were leaving. That we were breaking something. And the songs of the landscape... soft, deep, strangely harmonious... seemed to try to hold us, not with violence, but with the tender insistence of places that know we won’t come back.

The leaves fell in spirals around our steps, slower than before, as if they hesitated to touch the ground.

The flowers closed in on themselves as we passed, slowly, almost sadly.

And the creatures — those that had once approached us without fear — watched us. Without anger. But with a silent sorrow, as if they too understood what we were leaving behind.

Lysara cried.

Silently.

The tears simply flowed. Like breathing. Like accepting.

And I walked.

I was fleeing the dizziness of having wanted to give it all up.

I was fleeing the temptation of happiness.

— Shit... shit... I murmured, throat tight.

Why did I let myself forget?

The trap of Terra Neutralis.

I had read about it, after all. I knew. I knew the words, the warnings, the old stories.

But I had let myself be caught.

By this paradise.

By those fucking Gardens of Forgetting.

And I still felt it, deep down — that bitter taste.

The taste of almost having let myself be loved by a lie.