Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 138: The Nameless Child

Chapter 138: The Nameless Child

I stood up.

Not in a burst of willpower, nor in a heroic surge, but with the painful slowness of a being that even gravity hesitates to carry. Every movement, every recovered joint was a tiny victory over the internal collapse. I straightened my back with the caution of a broken old man, or a condemned soul who, against all odds, still rises to walk toward what comes next — even if he doesn’t want to.

Slowly, almost out of sync, I placed one foot in front of the other.

One foot in front of the other.

Always.

Like a rhythm without music, like a march imposed by something larger than will. I wasn’t walking to reach a place. I was walking because standing still had become impossible. Because something, in the ground or within me, was pushing me to keep going.

The ground... rippled.

Or maybe it was my mind. An imperceptible wave briefly deformed the horizon, a silent fold in the matter, or in my perception. But the distinction between what I was seeing and what I was becoming had grown uncertain. The reference points were vanishing. The very idea of reality was dissolving into an inner fog I no longer tried to dissipate.

The difference was blurry now.

Diluted. Useless.

So I walked. Step by step.

Not like a man driven by intention. But like one floats in a slow drowning. A vertical drift in an invisible ocean, where each movement seems to endure the water more than cut through it. My feet touched the ground, yes, but without conviction. As if I were sinking into a soft matter made of absence and poorly digested memories.

I walked.

Still.

Walking, walking, walking...

And with each step, each slow vibration in my strained legs, the memories resurfaced. They didn’t burst out. They flowed. Drop by drop. Like a slow poison injected into my memory by my own muscles.

The horrors.

The deformed faces.

The twisted bodies. The scattered limbs. The skins split open under blows, spells, irreparable gestures. The corpses. Not blurry silhouettes. No. Clear details. Frozen stares, still open, still there, as if death hadn’t fully digested them.

The eyes.

Those eyes.

Always open. Always accusing. Always silent.

And the screams.

Those that couldn’t come out. Those that were torn away before being heard. Muffled screams, swallowed by violence too swift.

And the blood.

Everywhere.

Not like a stain.

Like a climate.

A sticky ether that covered everything. The world. My skin. My breath.

Each step awakened it. Each step accepted it.

Me... a Great Varkhyr? That title sounds today like a bad role that was forced upon me, a label too noble for a being like me. And what next... a lover? Able to love without hurting, to exist in softness without everything twisting around me? A father, really? One who protects, raises, passes on — when all I ever knew how to do was push away, destroy, contaminate what I wanted to preserve?

No.

I was none of those things. Maybe I convinced myself for a time, maybe I wanted to believe I could be them, but those words no longer hold. They collapse like the rest. They’re not identities anymore. They’re dead fictions.

What I am... I see it now without filter, without detour. A monster. A creature shaped by violence, born to kill, to survive by sacrificing everything. A being forged in the blood of others, educated in the fall, fed by fear. I didn’t slip. I wasn’t broken. I was built this way.

And there’s nothing left to save in what I’ve become.

An abomination — not in the symbolic sense, not in the mouths of judges or executioners. Just in the raw truth of my actions. A thing that deserves nothing. Neither forgiveness. Nor love. Nor rest. What I gave the world, I took from others. What I was, I imposed. And now that everything is silent, that nothing answers me anymore... I finally understand.

I deserve this pain.

Not a passing pain. Not a slap of conscience or a dizzy spell of guilt. An infinite suffering. Ongoing. A painful breath every moment. A memory active in the bones, in the nerves, in the flesh.

Not to atone. Not to fix. But because it’s all I have left. And maybe... all that still fits me.

My thoughts were brutally interrupted when my shoulder hit something invisible but real, as if the void itself had decided to solidify for a moment to force a pause, a confrontation. My body, barely still anchored in this blurry reality, stepped back uncertainly, and I slowly lifted my eyes, with the dull apprehension of someone who already knows they don’t want to understand what they’re about to see.

Floating in front of me was a cradle. It resembled nothing hostile, nor even sacred, but its presence chilled the air around it. It was simple, geometric, a dull, matte white, without ornaments, without any trace of life. Too pure to be innocent, too neutral to be ignored. It hovered there, without support, without logic, as if it had grown into the space itself, as if it had been formed by the mute will of this sick world, placed right there for me, for this precise moment. It looked like an offering, or a trap. Perhaps both.

And inside... there was a body. Tiny. Curled up like an embryo frozen in a frozen dream. Arms pulled against the chest, neck bent, skin of an almost translucent paleness, barely vibrating. My breath halted without my deciding it, because this body, this silhouette... it looked like Lysara. Terribly. Strangely. Too much to be a coincidence. But not enough for me to really call her by name. Something in her, in her stillness, in her silence, rejected all certainty.

Her eyes were open, fixed, excessively wide as if no human reflex had ever animated them. There were no pupils, only this white glow, blind, internal, pulsing slowly in their sockets. It was a light without warmth, without direction, a contained clarity that did not diffuse. And this gaze, if one could call it that, was not set upon me. It passed through me. It ignored my shape, my breath, my very presence. It wasn’t trying to understand me. It was absorbing me.

I felt my jaw clench violently, a grimace twisting my lips despite myself, like an animal reflex. My fangs grated against my teeth in a dry, unpleasant, metallic sound that vibrated up to my temples. I knew what this body evoked. I knew what my heart wanted to believe. But I also knew what my guts were silently screaming, what every fiber of my memory refused to admit: it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Lysara. It wasn’t even a memory. It was an imitation. A presence. An entity woven in her outline, but emptied of what she had been. And I was alone to face it.

But then... why had my heart stopped the very moment my eyes landed on her? Why that precise, sharp pinch in my left side, as if an invisible hand had slowly and cruelly squeezed my organ? It wasn’t just tension, nor a sudden emotion. It was a painful beat, a spasm deeply embedded in my flesh, as if my own body were reminding me that, despite clarity, despite horror, a part of me... still believed.

I stepped back, slowly at first, with tense caution, as if moving away too quickly might break something in the air. One step. Then a second. I expected the cradle to stay there, suspended in its silence, still like the condemnation it embodied. But it began to slide.

Slowly.

Toward me.

Without jolts, without noise, without explanation. It floated, carried by nothing, driven by a foreign will, inhuman, almost affectionate in its slowness. It wasn’t an attack. It was an approach. Intimate. Fatal.

I staggered backward, my heels struggling to find footing on the astral ground that lightly rippled under my fleeing steps, as if reacting to my panic. My claws scraped the surface in a dry, desperate screech, and my throat suddenly contracted in a violent spasm. I was suffocating, unable to fully catch my breath, as if the air itself refused to follow me into this terror.

— Aaarggrh... no... no, leave me... please...

My voice broke in a hoarse breath, without authority, without strength, like that of a child exhausted in a never-ending nightmare.

— Please!!! I beg you!!!

I backed away again, erratically, my legs searching for balance while my eyes remained locked on it, on that cradle that advanced with implacable patience, certain of its right, sure of its power.

It was following me.

Or rather... it knew I couldn’t escape it.

— NO... no! Please! I beg you!!

I was screaming without thinking, without logic, as if begging an object could change its course, as if my words could slow down a cosmic mechanism already set in motion. My body was shaking, my nerves vibrating, my very bones seemed ready to flee before me.

And then an instinct older than everything, more brutal than thought, screamed in my nape.

A raw signal.

A bestial shiver.

A pure survival command.

Run.

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