Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 140: A Light Too Gentle

Chapter 140: A Light Too Gentle

As I made my decision, as my weight imperceptibly shifted forward, as my thoughts began to dissolve into that strange idea of a soft end, a silent and irreversible fall, something changed behind me. At first, just a sensation, a slight shift in the air, a presence that didn’t impose itself but insinuated, with an almost respectful slowness. Little by little, a light emerged, faint but distinct, as if space itself had decided to take form again.

It wasn’t a bright light. Nothing brutal. Nothing transcendent. It wasn’t the revelation one dreads or hopes for at the edge of the cliff. It didn’t really illuminate. It existed. Just there. Stable. Inexplicably present. A timid pulse in the shadow.

I turned around, slowly, still panting, my eyes aching from having stared too long into the void, and I turned my gaze away from the abyss, from the heartbeat, from the nothingness. Back to the void, I discovered what had broken the balance. It wasn’t a shape. Not a voice. Not a silhouette.

It was a flame.

Suspended on nothing, floating in the murky air of this fractured world, it seemed to have settled there without sound, without ambition. It had no wings, no base, no apparent movement. Just a fixed presence, woven of strangeness. A pale, vaguely pearly sphere, whose contours seemed to hesitate between mist and liquid, as if it were made of gravityless water, of a breath frozen between two worlds.

It didn’t shine. It emitted. It was more a pulse than a radiance, a slow and regular light, almost biological, almost organic, vibrating in silent waves, to the rhythm of an alien breath. Its surface rippled gently, like the skin of a lake under the wind, but it didn’t flicker, didn’t fade, as if its nature resisted any form of disappearance.

It vibrated, yes.

It breathed.

Almost.

And the more I stared at it, the more I felt that something in it responded to me. It wasn’t a gaze, not even attention in the human sense. There were no eyes, no pupils, no physical presence at the end of this light. But there was a consciousness. A kind of silent perception, patient, foreign, and yet turned toward me with a disturbing, almost unbearable intensity. It was like being seen without being looked at, as if my entire being, my cracks, my pains, my oldest shadows were being passed through by a presence that did not judge, did not marvel, but understood.

There was in this flame an empathy I had never known. A gentleness that wasn’t human, because no human could contain such acceptance. A tenderness too pure to be comfortable, too bare to be received without pain. It hadn’t come to judge, nor to compel. It had simply come to listen. And that was precisely what made it so terrifying.

I stepped back, almost against my will, fleeing what it revealed more than what it was. My heel struck the edge of the abyss, half-slipped into the void, and a blinding shiver shot through my gut, paralyzed my spine, brought me back in an instant to that dull, primal panic that doesn’t argue, that strikes like a bell. I caught my balance at the last moment, panting, every muscle tensed to the extreme, as if my own body wanted to dissuade me from going any further.

But the flame kept moving. Slowly. Inexorably. And in its movement, the luminous pulses beating through it aligned with those of the world, with those of the abyss, with those of the cosmic silence all around. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. It wasn’t my rhythm. It hadn’t been mine in a long time. It was its rhythm. Or maybe... that of this mad matrix surrounding me, that had created me, that still held me here. A breath of the abyss.

And then I knew. Without words, without message, without voice. I knew what it wanted. What it was waiting for. It asked for a contact. Not a fusion, not a seizure. Just a touch, a recognition. It called for a confession. For a surrender so deep there would be nothing left to defend.

But I couldn’t offer it that.

I didn’t have the strength anymore.

I didn’t have the right anymore.

Because I had nothing left to give.

So I growled, in a split breath, a rasp torn from the depth of my throat like a final remnant of strength, a desperate anger, deformed by pain and exhaustion: — Go away!! It wasn’t an order. Not really. It was a wounded animal’s cry, a cornered beast’s howl, with nothing left but violence to defend its ruins, no longer knowing how to do anything but bite the unknown, even when it didn’t come to kill.

My voice broke in the air, hoarse, dissonant, cracked like my breathing. And with a rough, trembling gesture, I raised my arm. I struck. By instinct. By rejection. By terror. My hand passed through the light without meeting matter. There was no impact, no resistance, no scream. Just that strange shiver at the contact of something that had no body, but a reality more vivid than any skin.

It flickered. Slowly. Like a flame surprised by the wind. It blinked, imperceptibly, as if it hesitated between staying and fleeing. And it almost extinguished, leaving only a pale vibration, a dying glow suspended in what could have been a heartbeat.

Then... it vanished.

Without complaint. Without drama. Just... absent.

It fled.

It too.

Even that thing. Even that gentle, mute, strange entity withdrew in turn. It fled the monster I was, unable to contain it, to understand it, or perhaps simply to endure it.

So, in an absurd, belated, mechanical gesture, I reached out my hand toward it. By reflex. By regret. Not to hold it back — I knew that was impossible — but because my body, despite everything, still refused that sudden emptiness. My palm hung in the air like a poorly worded question. Useless. Unheard.

I stepped forward, once, then again, toward the space it had left, as if some warmth, some scent, some trace of what it had been remained. But there was nothing. And I gave in. My legs buckled under the weight of this new absence, and I fell to my knees, hands buried in the astral dust, breath short, ragged, broken by something I could no longer contain.

The trembling in my chest didn’t come from physical pain. It was something else. An older quake. Barer. And my nails, dug into that ground that wasn’t really a ground, searched for grip, for support, for an anchor in this world without substance.

I cried.

Yes.

Again.

But this time, it wasn’t expelled hatred. It wasn’t rejection of the world, nor an implosion of rage. There was no fury, no judgment. So what was it? Why that hot fire in my eyes, that weight in my throat, that escape of tears I no longer wanted to carry?

No.

No.

I couldn’t cry. I didn’t have the right. I no longer had that luxury.

I deserved all of this.

Every silence. Every loss. Every escape.

And I had to carry them to the end.

I shook my head violently, as if I could shake out the burning, as if that inner fire could be denied by a simple movement of the neck. I growled next, a rough, muffled sound, a moan choked more by anger than pain. Then I struck the ground — with my fist, with my palm, it didn’t matter — a dry, hard gesture, as if to carve my refusal into that astral dust that retained no imprint. It was absurd. But I did it anyway. Because I refused. Because I didn’t want to yield to this emptiness. Because I wouldn’t accept this absence. This flight.

And yet, despite everything, I stood up. Slowly. Legs trembling, knees marked by barely controlled microshakes, as if standing cost more than falling. A strange weight had latched onto my neck, invisible but real, heavy like a chain made of failures and ghosts. My chest, it, was empty. Not hollow — empty. As if something essential had been ripped from me, something that had kept me upright without me knowing, something that, once gone, left a cavity too precise to ignore.

A breath? A song? A truth I would never find again? I didn’t know. But that lack vibrated inside me like an open wound, like an absence beating to the rhythm of the world.

And then, the question formed, slow, insidious, too clear to be driven away: who was I, then... to believe I had the right to desire anything other than an abyss? Who was I to dare hope for peace? For tenderness? For a moment of balance? Who was I, to want to be happy? The very thought disgusted me.

I had to face the truth. There was no escape. No promised light. No hand reaching out beyond the field of vision. I would never be whole. Something would always be missing. I would never be loved. What I inspired would always twist into rejection. I would never be happy. That word would never belong to me.

After all... I was only a beast.

A beast too lucid to still believe in illusions.