Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 135: A Beast Named Me

Chapter 135: A Beast Named Me

I fell.

But there was no ground. Nothing. Not even that instinctive promise of an impact to come, not that painful anticipation of the moment when the fall meets its end. Nothing. No wall, no ceiling, no reference point. No echo to bounce back my presence. No limit to confirm that I still existed. Only this void. This silence. This absence suspended like a too-heavy sheet over a memory laid too bare.

And yet... I was falling. Falling without speed, without motion, without sound. A fall that no longer fell. A drift frozen in the absolute of a boundless nothingness. As if the world had stopped spinning around me, but continued to suck me in, piece by piece, fiber by fiber, until nothing identifiable was left. There was no light. No shadow. Only this strange texture, this soft density that touched nothing but still weighed. A matrix without weight, without shape, without name. A place that refused to be a place. A reality that refused to be conceived.

And then... it was my body that spoke first. Not with a word. With a cry muffled in the marrow. A voiceless moan threading between my bones, like a nerve memory unwilling to be erased. I felt my joints tense — not to resist, but to beg. Every second tugged at my tendons like glass hooks, stretching them, rending them, slowly unraveling them like a ball of flesh decomposing in silence. I didn’t feel pain. Not yet. But the discomfort rose, creeping, internal, sharpened.

The slowness... became torture.

Not a clear, identifiable, graspable suffering — but that blurry torment that insinuates itself into duration, that infiltrates time like a blade into memory. That sensation of having not what you are ripped from you... but what you believe yourself to be.

Then, another pain seeped in.

Duller. Sharper. More real than the void itself. It needed no shape. It needed no cry. It slipped inside me like an ancient truth, denied too long, pushed away by instinct but always lurking somewhere, just there, between two heartbeats. And it pulsed. It pulsed in a precise spot — a living, burning knot, too sharp to be merely a muscle, too alive to be just an organ. It came from the heart. Yes. But not the one you examine. Not the one you heal. The one you betray. The one you abandon. The one you forget too late.

So I gripped it.

Hard.

Harder.

My fingers, wandering in this void of falling, closed over my chest with the mechanical brutality of gestures you no longer control. They dug in. Truly. Like fangs. Like tools. Like desperate blades. My nails clawed at the skin, tore through the upper layers, plowed the flesh in search of meaning, of an anchor point, of a reason to keep feeling something. And I dug. I clawed. I gasped.

The blood burst out.

Not in lines. Not in streams. In waves. In erratic, chaotic, trembling sprays. A sudden heat, almost violent, exploded against my palm, streamed between my fingers, ran down my arm like a living tongue. And the smell... that fucking smell... returned.

Metallic. Heavy. Sticky.

Like a memory. Like a ghost. Like a beast come back to sniff me, invade me, claim me. It soaked the space that didn’t exist, colonized my nostrils, my lungs, my memory. It lodged in my throat. It weighed on my eyes. It coursed through me like a certainty impossible to deny.

It was there.

Present. Inevitable. A mark. A seal. A truth.

And that’s when... I understood.

I wasn’t falling.

I was finding myself again.

— AAAAAAHHHHH...

The scream burst forth. Brutal. Vomited. Ripped out. A scream of organ, a scream of flesh, a scream so deep it didn’t seem to come from the throat, but from somewhere older, more primal — a place language never learned to name. It was the scream of a beast. A gutted, confused, reopened beast. A scream that split the absence, clawed the void, searched for something to collide with.

And in the wake of that scream... something rose.

I remembered.

Not all at once. Not like a vision. Like a fever. Like mist dissipating in waves, in fits, in aches. Little by little. Slowly. Too slowly.

They returned.

The faces.

Blurry at first, disjointed, incomplete. Then clearer. More vivid. Too vivid.

I saw their bodies.

Their absurd presence in this void. Their skins, their postures, their gestures etched into my retina like fresh burns. I saw the silences again. The ones you don’t forgive. The ones you never explain. The silences that fall after the screams. The ones that say: it’s over.

And the more I saw them, the more I understood.

Not what had happened.

But what I had done.

What I had become.

What I had destroyed.

Little by little... meaning returned. Not in phrases. But in pains. Each memory was a nerve relit raw. Each name, a fracture. Each look, a wound. There was no chronology. No order. Just a red tide covering me again, slowly, inexorably. A saturated memory. A warped lucidity.

And in the middle of it all... Me. Still here. Still alive.

A hoarse, distorted, raspy, inhuman howl exploded from my gut like a discharge impossible to contain. It shredded my vocal cords, scraped my throat from the inside, tore through my belly like a white-hot blade — and burst from the void with that brute force you no longer control.

— WHAT HAD I DONE?!

The scream hissed, slashed the darkness, bounced off nothing, burst in the void like an echo refusing to die.

— WHAT THE FUCK HAD I DONE?!

There was no answer. Just this question. This fucking question stuck crosswise in my skull. Like an auger. Like a rusted nail driven deeper with each heartbeat.

Had I killed my companions?

Was it me? Me? And I didn’t even remember it?! Not a cry. Not a look. Not a tear. Just the void. Just... nothing.

But it was me.

IT WAS ME.

A tremor. A dissonance. And the laughter rose.

Dry at first. Nervous. An exhale too long, too tense, that chokes in the throat and bursts out anyway — a brief chuckle, almost ridiculous.

Then a giggle.

Then... a burst.

— HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I laughed.

Oh, I laughed.

Like the damned, yes. But not noble damned, not a lost soul with aesthetic regrets. No. I laughed like a broken puppet, a heap of nerves and rotted memories thrown into a still-warm body. I laughed until my throat cracked, until my jaws broke, until I spat out bits of teeth.

My hands... my hands no longer obeyed me. They clawed at my chest, my neck, my face, as if trying to dig all the way down, to the root, to the exact origin of what I had become. My nails dug in. Slashed. Tore off strips of skin in an absurd, desperate dance, without music.

I didn’t want to cry.

So I laughed.

And that laugh... that laugh kept swallowing me.

— Get out.

— GET OUT OF ME!!

My voice burst in the void, hoarse, fractured, like a groan twisted with chains. It wasn’t calling. It was ordering. It was begging. It screamed with that raw rage that no longer seeks to convince, only to survive inside.

I tore at my skin.

Truly. Not carefully. Not restrained. I ripped it like a filthy garment refused washing. I clawed my arms until I saw bone, until I felt my nerves scream in shock, until my nails scraped white. I slapped myself. Again. Again. I slammed my head against the void — a void that didn’t even resist, but that I bashed like a mirror I wanted to shatter from the inside.

I wanted to destroy myself.

Not symbolically. Not for attention. I wanted every part of me to collapse. Every fragment to fall silent. For this lying body, liar, liar, to finally stop pretending it existed.

But nothing stopped.

The blood.

The blood.

THE BLOOD!!!

I clawed my thighs, my knees, my hips. I tore the flesh with my own nails, in repeated, convulsive strokes, until pain was no longer pain, just background noise, a red gurgling. Until I no longer knew what was skin, what was muscle, what was me. There were no limits anymore. No surface. No barrier. Just matter. Just meat. Just a sack of suffering laughing.

And I laughed.

Again.

— HAHAHAHAHAHA! FUCK! HAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!

A burst of throat. A dissociated fit of laughter. A spasm of hatred hurled at the void like a filthy offering. I laughed because everything screamed. I laughed because I no longer knew how to cry. I laughed because nothing else was left.

I was a beast.

Not a symbolic creature.

A real beast. One you slaughter in the mud, one you break with chains, dress up with words like "man," "forgiveness," "love." A disguised beast. A fucking rabid beast made up as a person. And who, today, was waking up.

Finally.

And I saw them.

All of them.

There. Scattered around me. Extinguished. Broken. Offered to silence like fragments of a world trampled without thought of lifting them. Their eyes — those eyes that once saw me, loved me, maybe — were empty. Dead. Their faces shattered, twisted, rendered unrecognizable by atrocity. There were no more names. No more stories. Just remains. Just bodies. Just... them.

And among them...

Cassandre.

Cassandre, standing. Cassandre, witness. Cassandre, alive. But it wasn’t her breath I felt.

It was her gaze.

That gaze.

The one you never return. The one you drive like a stake into the heart of someone you no longer recognize. The one reserved for tragedies. For plagues. For natural disasters. The one you place on what defies understanding. On what must be stopped.

She no longer saw a man.

She saw a monster.

And I... I knew it.

I had known it for a long time. Before her. Before them. Even before that fucking arena. I was never a man. I had never been one. Not really. I NEVER WAS.

I let out a cry.

And my hands — oh, my hands — threw themselves at my own face with that raw rage that spares nothing. I clawed my cheeks, gouged my skin until I felt muscles twist under my nails, until the flesh gave way, until blood flooded my cheekbones like a black river. I tore off my lips. The whole arc of my mouth, torn, hung in shreds. I wanted to fall silent. I wanted to erase every word spoken by that unworthy mouth.

But I screamed.

I screamed again. Until the throat split. Until sound came out only in burning vibrations. Until my voice was just a rasp. A tear.

A scream that said: I deserve nothing anymore.

Not even to exist.

And Lysara...

My daughter.

My light.

The only thing that, despite everything, despite me, held on. The one who had looked at me without flinching, who had faced me, carried me, defied me — loved me maybe. And I... I had hurt her. I had destroyed her. I had pushed her away. Like one rejects a hand extended in a fire. Like one crushes a too-soft memory on the still-red embers of one’s own shame.

— NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!

The cry split my skull from the inside. I had no more voice. No more control. I pounded my head with my fists, with hatred, with regrets too heavy. Again. And again. As if each blow could crush what I had done. As if pain could rewrite the moment. As if blood could wash what was already written.

The shock rang in my head, in my bones, in my shattered thoughts. Each impact brought me a little closer to the abyss — but not to relief. Never.

Blood gushed out.

From my ears. From my eyes. From my mouth. I felt it run, hot, thick, inescapable. It no longer ran: it overflowed. I was no longer a body. I was a torrent. A red flood. A tide of horror and excess, a monstrosity too full of itself to still contain the idea of the human.

I wanted to go out.

Fuck, I wanted to go out. For it all to stop. For the light to snap. For the void to finally swallow me, without ceremony, without words, without forgiveness.

But I only burned.

Burned in a fire that purified nothing. Burned like an infection. Burned like a curse no longer nameable except by its ashes.

And in that slow, infernal combustion, there was nothing left to save.

And all that remained, there, in that formless, edgeless, merciless void, was the sound of a vampire regenerating too fast to die, too strong to fall, too long to be silenced. A body refusing collapse. A curse still beating despite everything, despite him. And that sound... it wasn’t a scream.

It was a laugh.

— Haaaaaaaaaaaaahahaha...

— HAAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

A distorted laugh. A cracked laugh. A laugh soaked in blood, in bones, in reboiled horror. A laugh that no longer laughed at anything — except the void. Except itself. Except that absurd survival it never asked for.

I writhed.

Like a puppet without strings. I convulsed. My arms closed around me like poorly welded iron clamps, my legs beat the nonexistent ground as if to flee a land that was no longer there. I choked on laughter, on blood, on spasms. Everything blended. The fluids. The suffocations. The hiccups. The taste of metal. The taste of shame.

I laughed... and drowned in that laugh.

And in that inner cacophony, in that carnival of shattered nerves, of contaminated memories, there was nothing left. Nothing that held. Nothing that spoke. Nothing that reminded.

No more man.

No more father.

No more name.

Only...

Him.

The monster.

The one you no longer stop. The one who no longer begs. The one no longer wept for. The one who looks at the world with the eyes of an abyss.