Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 137: A Thank You to Hell

Chapter 137: A Thank You to Hell

The minutes passed.

Or the hours.

Or misshapen eternities.

Time, here, no longer had a skeleton. It didn’t flow — it stagnated, it rotted in place. Each second seemed to stretch to the point of implosion, to deform like a droplet suspended in infinity, ready to fall but never quite. There was no rhythm. No marker. Nothing to say whether the moment was moving forward or whether I was looping, frozen in a dead supplication.

Maybe I wasn’t really here anymore.

Maybe I wasn’t even me anymore.

Maybe I had become that in-between: that body stranded on memoryless ash, that scream turned into breath, that gaze emptied of intention.

A heartbeat without a heart.

A breath without flesh.

A remnant.

My weeping continued.

Without strength. Without defense. A dirty, exhausted trickle, more reflex than pain. I didn’t cry like a man anymore. I cried because it was all there was left to do. Because my body hadn’t yet understood that there was nothing left to wait for.

My sobs scraped my throat until it bled. Each hiccup opened a wound. Each breath was a burn. I no longer uttered words. No more prayers. No more pleas.

My requests...

Extinguished.

One by one.

Like candles blown out in an empty cathedral. There was only me left. Me, and that silence laden with the weight of everything I no longer said.

Then...

I heard it again.

— BOOM.

A thump. Muffled. Distant. A pulse through the thickness of this erased world.

— BOOM.

Closer.

As if the void had a breath. As if that heart I had tried to silence was slowly reclaiming its place. Its sovereignty.

— BOOOM.

Deeper. Wider. Older.

My hands, resting on the ground, vibrated. It wasn’t a tremor. Not a warning. It was an echo. A call.

And it wasn’t cold.

Nor fear.

It was... a shiver.

A primitive shiver. One that didn’t come from the skin, but from the bone. From what lies beneath. From what flesh covers but never truly contains.

An ancient shiver.

Nameless.

As if something... recognized me.

As if something... was calling me.

And it wasn’t a sound.

It was an intention.

A return.

So I rose.

Slowly.

Not out of will. Not out of strength. Out of obscure necessity. Out of calling. A mute pull from the center of the bones, from that ancient shiver with no name. I didn’t want to stand. But something in me — or around me — refused to let me stay on my knees.

Each movement was a battle.

My body protested. Not from pain, but from inertia. A cosmic heaviness pinned my limbs to the ground, as if standing in this place was heresy. As if the air itself thickened around me to hold me back. To say no.

But I kept going.

One knee. Then the other. Torso bent. Spine cracking. Breath cut off. Slowly, I took back human shape. Slowly, I became a silhouette in a world that didn’t want shape. Didn’t want elevation. Didn’t want tension.

I disturbed the balance.

The balance of the void.

And I felt it react.

As if my mere rising bent the tacit laws of this place. As if standing here... was awakening something.

Something that had called me.

And that now... was waiting.

And I saw.

The world around me...

But it wasn’t a world.

It was a womb.

An inverted uterus, a desecrated sanctuary, a dismantled matrix. Something primitive, biological, immense — but emptied, gutted, left to wander.

Floating islands drifted in the void. Not lands, but scraps of continents. Torn, dismembered, dissected pieces. They floated aimlessly, slowly, like remnants of a dream that couldn’t be stitched back together. Between them... torn umbilical cords, frozen in the ether. Dead roots, cut raw, twisted on themselves like heartless veins.

Fragments of wood.

Eviscerated cradles.

Rattles frozen in space, suspended by air currents that didn’t exist. And those sounds... those sounds you couldn’t hear but that the soul felt: children’s cries, muffled, abandoned, dissolved in silence.

A cemetery of innocence.

A uterine abyss.

And above me...

An inverted dome.

Not a sky. Not a celestial vault. But a cosmic cradle, closed, concave, like the skull of a dead god.

Black.

Compact.

Studded with extinguished stars. Dead lights, hanging like empty pupils in an infinite orbit. Nothing sparkled. Nothing shone. Everything was there to remind that the universe had stopped breathing.

I stared at it.

For a long time.

Breath held. Stomach knotted, twisted like a rag soaked in fear. And the more I looked, the more I understood.

It wasn’t a sky.

It was a mouth.

A mouth.

Colossal. Silent. Present.

An open mouth. Ready to swallow me. Not with violence. Not with rage. But with the indifference of a conscious void. A void that knows. A void that thinks. A cosmos hungry for anything that still dares to exist.

And I...

I was nothing.

Nothing but a scream in its throat.

So, in a final spasm of distorted hope...

I raised my arms.

Upward.

Toward that dome, toward that mouth hanging above me like a promise of an end. Toward that cosmic jaw, immense, black, ready to devour what remained. Not to punish, but to absorb. To erase.

Every muscle protested.

Every tendon groaned. Every bone screamed its limit, as if my own skeleton refused to take part in that plea.

But I screamed.

I SCREAMED LIKE A MADMAN.

— YES!!!

— TAKE ME!!

— TAKE ME FOR ETERNITY!!

— MAKE ME...

— A THING THAT DOESN’T THINK!!!

My howl tore through the shadows.

It split the space.

It was ripped from my throat like a tawny lightning bolt, a raw ray thrown at the void’s mouth. It rose, carried by rage, by exhaustion, by the need not to be. It soared up to the reverse of the sky, up to that cosmic mouth ready, perhaps, to close its jaws.

And...

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

No shiver. No light. No breath of response.

Nothing changed.

Nothing moved.

The world stayed still. The void... stared at me.

And chose to ignore me.

With that perfect cruelty of what is too vast to hate, too ancient to answer, too aware to pity.

And that’s when I understood.

There would be no end.

No respite.

Just... me.

Still here.

Still alive.

Still too much.

— FUCK THIS SHIT WORLD!!! I screamed.

My voice shot out, raw, broken, hurled like a projectile with no target, no restraint, no dignity. It cut through the air that carried nothing. It pierced the silence like an insult hurled at God himself.

— Fuck... Fuck... FUCK!!!

I wasn’t speaking anymore.

I was spitting my words.

Like shards of glass torn from my gut. Like splinters lodged in my throat, expelled one by one in a spray of impure rage. Each syllable was a spasm. A slap. A refusal.

I was in Hell.

Not the Hell drawn in holy books. Not the one with flames and chains. Not the one where you pay for your sins. No. A dirtier Hell. A colder one. A more intimate one.

I was in Hell because I was still here.

And I was sure of it.

Absolutely.

Unequivocally.

It wasn’t a metaphor.

It was a geography. A fact. A rugged truth like a stone lodged in the chest.

A place that didn’t want to kill me.

A place that wanted me to stay.

What the fuck was this?

What was this grotesque theater, this twisted staging of the abyss into which I had been thrown? This decor without logic, without law, without exit — this disemboweled world breathing like a dead beast?

But no.

No...

It wasn’t a mistake.

It wasn’t an injustice.

It was fair.

I deserved it.

I owed it.

Every step, every gasp, every tear turned against me, all of it was owed. It wasn’t a punishment inflicted. It was a debt finally being collected. A truth the world spat back in my face without filter.

I had to suffer.

Not to change.

Not to atone.

But because it was my place.

I had to move forward.

Drag myself. Crawl if necessary. Smash myself against every burning stone of this eternity, like a convict too aware to dream anymore. Shatter my knees, my elbows, my forehead against the sharp ridges of a time that would never end.

I had to.

Because I had nothing else.

And suffering... had become my direction.

This world...

It didn’t want me to leave.

It didn’t want me to give in to the fall, to surrender to the void as a mere escape. It refused surrender. It pulled me from the depths only to force me to face it.

It wanted me to live.

And to suffer.

But not like a coward.

Like a cursed one.

Like a survivor that nothing saved. Like a convict no one claims. It wanted me to carry. To drag my sins like a carcass tied to my skin. To walk with my dead on my shoulders. To serve as an altar to all I destroyed.

And I knew it.

I knew it.

That was the real sentence. Not the end. Not the forgetting. The persistence. The weight. The impossible continuation.

So I raised my head.

My eyelids stuck with salt, blood, ash. My neck twisted under the weight of what I had just understood. But I raised it. Because there was no other choice. Because I had to look the void in the face.

The tears kept flowing. Silent. Thick. Red.

They no longer flowed from emotion, but from mechanism. An inner rain. A slow purge. Each drop traced a burning line on my cheeks as a reminder: you’re still here.

And then...

A twisted smile slowly stretched on my lips.

Not a real smile. Not peace. A rictus. A burst of acid. A living scar. A silent reply to a world that thought it had broken me.

I wasn’t standing.

But I wasn’t dead.

And that... was already an insult.

My arms, still raised, trembling, finally fell.

Slowly.

Like two charred branches too long stretched toward a mute sky. They fell under the weight of everything I had just admitted. Not suddenly. Not violently. Just... like that. By gravity. By weariness. By organic resignation.

And I fell to my knees.

Again.

But this time, it wasn’t an implosion. It wasn’t an escape. It was a posture of recognition. Of humility perhaps. Of surrender certainly. I was no longer fighting. I was in acceptance.

And in that cosmic void...

I whispered:

— Thank you...

My voice was low. Burned. But clear. Stripped of rage. It vibrated with a strange calm, almost peaceful. Like a sigh after a fire.

— I understand now.

— I deserve all this.

— I deserve... everything.

And then, there was a sound.

A laugh. Dry. Discordant. Almost ridiculous. Almost... relieved. Like a nerve snapping one last time after too much tension.

— Thank you. Really.

— AHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!

It wasn’t a laugh of joy. Not a laugh of deliverance. It was a laugh of ending. A laugh of acceptance.

A laugh of a condemned man who’s finished screaming, who no longer has strength to beg, nor hatred to curse. A hollow laugh, but whole. Lucid. Sharp.

A laugh... of rebirth.

Not that of heroes.

Not that of the chosen.

That of the damned.