Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 130: Five Seconds of Eternity

And then, they unleashed.

Five seconds.

Just five seconds.

But in that tiny interstice, the world collapsed, reconfigured by the violence of a tragic love. In five seconds, dozens and dozens of blows were exchanged, so fast, so hard, that no mortal eye could have followed them. Not a single parry. Not a block. A chain of impacts, of flashes, of cries muffled in muscles, in weapons, in bones.

Lysara’s hammer struck relentlessly, in heavy arcs, precise, destructive. It sliced through the air like a fallen star, saturated with gravity, memory, contained rage. Each impact bore the weight of history. Each strike, the anger of a daughter who wanted to understand, but had to hit.

Lukaris responded, not with the claws of a monster, but with a beastly elegance, a style mixing instinct with calculation — each counterattack was fluid, sinuous, almost sensual in its cruelty. He slipped under the blows, slashed, withdrew, returned, pivoted, leapt. His arms were fangs. His legs, blades. He struck at the flank, the chin, the throat, chained three blows, stepped back a breath, then returned like a slap impossible to dodge.

The ground trembled beneath them. At each step, each pivot, the stone cracked, burst, sending up bursts of burning dust. The entire arena seemed to beat to their rhythm, panting, smothered by this miniature storm whose intensity erased everything else.

Bones cracked. Not once. But several times. Ribs, phalanges, clavicles. Lukaris’s body, for the first time, fractured — not because of magic, nor fire, but under the weight of the hammer. Under the impact of this weapon he should have shattered with a glance, but which, wielded by Lysara, became something else. A sentence. A hand extended, disguised as a projectile.

He was breaking.

Literally.

Fragments of bone pierced his skin. His left shoulder dislocated under a backhand. His sternum cracked with a low rumble. His knee gave way for a moment, before reforming. He was no longer invulnerable. He was being caught up. Not by weakness. But by equality.

And she, Lysara, kept striking. Short of breath. Her face soaked, not with blood, but with tears she could no longer hold back. Each blow was a prayer. Each strike, a question no one would answer. Why? Why him? Why now? Why did it have to come to this, to the point of losing everything just to hope to regain something? Each movement of her hammer carried the weight of a heart split in two.

And he, even though he said nothing, even though his eyes remained dead, even though his breath was that of a monster, he received. He endured. He bent. And somewhere, beneath the storm, beneath the hatred, beneath the still-spinning needles, he bled too. Perhaps not from the body. But from elsewhere.

And when the five seconds ended, the world remained suspended, frozen, burned, the arena shaken by an echo that was neither that of victory nor of defeat. But of a fracture. A tear. A bond damaged by war, but not yet broken.

She raised her weapon for one final blow. A total gesture. A strike that was meant to conclude, seal, cut not only the fight, but everything it had represented — the pain, the anger, the absurdity of a world that had forced them to stand against each other. With all her strength, she lifted it above her head, muscles tense, throat tight, eyes burning with tears she still refused to name. It was the final blow. The one she didn’t want to deliver, but had prepared to strike if nothing else worked. A vertical blow. Straight. Devastating. A sentence.

And then, she brought it down. From high to low. A perfect arc. A strike written into the air like a farewell.

Lukaris raised his arms, reflex of a former warrior, gesture of instinct more than will, as if his body refused to believe she would go all the way. He protected himself, ready to take the hit, ready to be shattered — but without fighting back. He awaited the impact. The crash. The fire. The end.

But the blow... never came.

For she let go of her hammer.

She abandoned it mid-flight, in a breath, in a silent cry that passed not through her mouth, but through her entire body. And instead of striking, instead of killing, she threw herself against him.

Into an embrace.

Not a hesitant embrace. Nor calculated. Nor restrained. A total embrace. Wild. Burning. An embrace of shadow and fire, pressed against that carcass that was no longer quite human, but still bore the memory of what he had once been.

She said nothing. She did not scream.

But her gesture spoke for her.

And he, frozen, arms still raised, stayed there. Motionless. Prisoner of a tenderness he no longer understood. Of a warmth he no longer knew how to welcome. The silence between them was heavy, vibrating, like a heart still hesitating to beat.

She didn’t strike him.

She held him.

She simply wanted him to come back.

And then... then, everything became clear. Not in a flash, nor in a scream. But in a deaf, deep certainty, like an ancient whisper I had carried in me from the beginning, without understanding. I understood. At last. What I had tried to flee. What my mind, too exhausted, too cornered by horror, still refused to fully admit. What my memories refused to connect, as if the link was too searing, too absurd to accept.

I saw it in his eyes.

And it was as if the world tilted, not by violence, but by truth.

I recognized that look.

The one I had seen, one day, in the woods. That day. That suspended moment, forgotten, almost unreal, where our paths had brushed without colliding. He had that same look. Exactly the same. A look of a frightened man. Of a wounded creature. Of a monster who no longer knew whether to flee or surrender.

Lost.

As if he didn’t understand what was happening to him. As if everything he had done, everything he had become, had never been a choice, but a fall. A drift too long to remember. And in his eyes — in that raw distress, unmasked, defenseless — I saw, for the first time, not a killer, not a vampire, not a monster... but him. The man. The father. The broken being.

He looked around him. Slowly. As if waking from a dream of ashes. As if the world no longer belonged to him. And all around, the bloodstorm, once alive, roaring, ravenous, was slowly fading, dissolving into the air, in scraps of silence. The needles fell. The winds calmed. The violence retreated — not as defeated, but as weary.

The uproar faded. Nothing remained.

No more screams. No more impacts. Just... a rain.

The blood fell. In crimson rain. Red. Heavy. Thick.

Each drop, like a tear torn from a forgotten god.

It fell in silence.

Not as vengeance.

But like a curtain falling.

And in that silence, in that rain, I understood that something had just died.

And that maybe... something had just been born too.