Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 129: A Prayer in the Storm

Chapter 129: A Prayer in the Storm

The assassins leapt at him, emerging from the shadows like ravenous night-fangs, claws and daggers raised, ready to strike where even light refused to look. But they never reached their target. Because before their momentum could turn into motion, before their weapons could find any grip on flesh, the crimson storm had already judged them.

The needles caught them mid-air, without hesitation, without respite, without a chance to understand what was hitting them. And their bodies — once silent, precise, conditioned for assassination — were torn to shreds in an instant. Nothing remained but scraps of flesh, voiceless screams, streaks of blood shattered through the air like so many broken promises. They were nothing now.

The arrows flew too — swift, taut, carried by hands that still believed in distance, in the logic of the perfect shot, in salvation through motion. But the very air seemed to rise as a rampart around him, twisted by the pressure of his existence. They were swept away like twigs in a hurricane. Broken mid-flight, shredded before they could even approach. Not a single shaft hit. As if space itself had ceased to allow their trajectory.

And the martial artists — those warriors of breath, of rhythm, of embodied strike — were the next to fall. They had approached, thinking they could find a gap in the chaos, an opening, a moment. But they found only claws. His. Blades of regenerated flesh, animated by a superhuman precision, that sliced, disemboweled, shattered. Then the storm did the rest. It carried them away, broke them apart, crushed them, scattered them in a methodical carnage. Nothing was left to them.

And the healers...

Poor souls.

Beings kneeling in the middle of the chaos, trembling hands extended toward already doomed bodies, still chanting the last rites of life like prayers recited for a world already lost. They tried. Still. To heal, to keep upright those who were falling. They united their forces, even among enemy species, forgetting castes and oaths, still believing there might be a way out — a truce, maybe, a breath.

But nothing worked.

Nothing slowed the absolute.

No one survived more than a few seconds. A glance was enough. A step. A breath too far into his shadow. In his presence, everything became trivial. In the face of this force that kept growing, feeding, devouring. In the face of this monster of rising, shifting, insatiable power. There was no tactic. No rescue. No miracle. Only the certainty, in every gesture, that the massacre was nearing its end.

And that this end... bore his name.

And then... something improbable happened. In the midst of this scene devoured by violence, in this arena saturated with blood, muffled screams, and dislocated bodies, an unexpected force yanked my arm back — abrupt, urgent, almost desperate. I turned around, seized by a shock so brutal it wiped away everything else for an instant, as if the carnage had paused just for that gesture. And what I saw quite literally stole my breath.

Her face.

Her face.

She was crying. She, whose attitude until then had always been frighteningly calm, of an almost sovereign silence, as if nothing could ever crack the inner armor she had raised between herself and the world. And yet, her eyes were drowned in tears — not those one tries to hide, but those that can no longer be contained. Real tears. Dense. Desperate.

— Cassandre... I’m going to stop Father, you’ll have to be there for him afterward. You’re the only one who can return his humanity.

Her words echoed in me like a soft slap, incongruous but irrefutable. A mad sentence, rising from a place I didn’t understand, but couldn’t reject. Why me? Why would I be the one able to give him anything back? I didn’t even know him. Not really. Not like she did. I was a stranger to all of this — to the name, the story, the past they seemed to share in silence.

And yet... she continued.

— Can you help me? Give me one of your buffs... please.

Her voice trembled, but it held. A thin, stammered voice, but upright. A sad whisper in the carnage’s din. A child’s plea in the middle of a world too old, too cruel, too broken. And me... I stood there, speechless, unable to react. My mind spinning at full speed, with nothing to anchor to, drowned in the images of the massacre, my friends fallen one by one, hopeless, defenseless, cut down by a single silhouette, a single entity — this father she wanted to rejoin. This monster. This god.

And she, this child with sincere tears, this stranger with naked will, asked me to help her. To give her a chance. To believe, where everything in me screamed the opposite. She called for help. And I didn’t understand why. But her gaze, her eyes, her breath made me listen.

— I’ll explain everything... after the tournament.

Her promise wasn’t enough to calm the fire in my veins, nor to answer the fear burning my throat, but it was there, laid between us like a hand on a wound.

Then suddenly, her cry burst out.

— NOW!

A sharp word, torn from the gut, hurled with the force of pure urgency. She was overwhelmed by emotion, but she didn’t yield. She didn’t retreat. She begged again — not for herself, but for him. For someone I didn’t know... and whom I might have to save despite myself.

I didn’t have time to think, no space to weigh reality, nor the strength to question what was happening within me. Everything was too fast. And yet, everything felt suspended. In the arena, only one other silhouette remained standing. A massive, solid presence, tense like a war statue that even blood hadn’t managed to topple. Elsa.

An angel. A heavy warrior. One of the last who could still stand against a collapsing world. The strongest among us — except for him. She had been there from the start, never faltering, never fleeing. She had fought without pause, with that disciplined fury belonging to beings forged in fire and duty. She had never left the front. She had stood against him alongside each of us, taking the hits, pushing back the inevitable, again and again.

But she had not been able to hold him back.

And she had seen. She had seen what no one should have to witness without breaking. The horror, the betrayal, the end of an era etched into gestures, into muffled cries, into shattered silences. She had seen — helpless — each of our former friends fall, one after the other, without ceremony, without glory, like fragments of memory shredded by a force that no longer listened to anything.

One by one.

Without exception.

And all of this... under the blows of that vampire she had once called comrade. Lukaris. The one who had once walked beside her. The one she had defended, followed, admired perhaps. The one who had become the very heart of the nightmare she still tried, out of sheer loyalty, to contain.

But in her eyes, there was no more faith.

Only the weight of reality. The vertigo of disaster.

Lysara’s silhouette transformed, but it was not a triumphant metamorphosis nor a release of power — it was a disappearance. A progressive erasure of everything that still had shape, warmth, color. Her whole body became a shifting shadow, a trembling black veil amid the chaos, a breach in light saturated with blood. She advanced slowly, so slowly, as if each step had to be torn from the silence. She was no longer a warrior. No longer a noble. No longer an heir. She was... something else. A living wound. An incarnate sorrow.

She entered the crimson storm, into that furious tornado made of blood-needles, now immense, vast like an offering to enraged heavens. Even the wind seemed to recoil before this abomination. And yet, she threw herself in. Willingly. Surrendered defenseless. Not like a martyr. But like a daughter refusing to abandon.

Every stride cost her. You could feel it, even from afar. Not from cries — she let out none — but from the weight her silence carried, from what it held of contained implosions, of sobs that didn’t come out. The needles struck her. Again. Again. Each impact lacerated her shadow, chipped away the magic armor that enveloped her like a last desperate barrier, but she didn’t stop. Never.

I saw her. I felt her bleed. Her body hidden by shadow, yes, but her essence reached me. Broken. She was suffering, and that suffering was not heroic. It was slow, intimate, almost sacred in the way she did not collapse. So, without thinking, guided by an instinct older than reason, I cast my spells. One by one. Precarious heals, weak, pushed by a breath already exhausted. I didn’t know why I was doing it. I didn’t yet understand. But I did it. Because she was no longer alone.

And she kept going. Still. Always. Every step was a mourning, every step a silent confession. And he — Lukaris — didn’t even look at her. He paid her no attention. Perhaps because she gave off nothing that might alert him. No hostility. No cry for revenge. No murderous intent. She didn’t come to defeat him.

She came to reach him.

To touch him not with weapons... but with what remained of herself.

She had become that shadow. That silent pain. That voiceless cry at the heart of carnage. She walked through that sea of blades like a lost prayer, carried not by hope, but by the most tragic love: the kind you can no longer save, but cannot abandon either.

She had reached him. Within range. And without hesitation, without looking away, as if she had already accepted what it would cost, her armor ignited. Not with a pure glow, not with redemptive light. No. A black fire enveloped her — dense, twisted, infernal — a blaze from the depths, born of the forgotten forges where hell itself tempers its weapons. The flames did not dance. They crawled. They devoured. Each plate of armor vibrated under the heat, as if she herself were sacrificing at the heart of the assault. And she struck him.

But nothing.

The blood, that inhuman blood, didn’t react.

It didn’t coagulate.

It didn’t sizzle.

It didn’t even burn.

It just stayed there, flowing, docile, almost serene. A liquid without fear, without rebellion. Each drop seemed to dance around him with perverse discipline, as if they obeyed a law older than matter. Because he controlled them. Down to the temperature. Down to the shiver. Down to the intent. That blood was no longer a fluid: it was an organ. A thought. An extension of his will. His nerves. His veins. His fangs.

Then, he turned.

Simply.

And lunged at her.

At wind-speed. Not running. Descending. Like a principle. Like a curse. His gaze did not shine. It did not scream vengeance. It sought nothing. It was empty. Dead. Cold. A gaze of a forgotten statue, a forsaken god, a soul consumed to oblivion.

And that was when the clash erupted.

Not in a scream.

But in a tear.

An implosion of shadow and fire.

A battle where silence outweighed all the weapons in the world.

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