Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 145: The Possibility I Flee

Chapter 145: The Possibility I Flee

I was still there, on the ground, lying in the dust of a world that no longer wanted me, or that I no longer wanted to cross. My breath came in spasms, choppy, torn out with each spasm of pain as if breathing, now, required an effort I no longer deserved. My chest barely rose, as if emptied of oxygen, as if even the air had deserted my lungs. My body, emptied of everything — of strength, of tension, of identity — was nothing more than a heap of exhaustion, a sack of torn nerves struggling to belong to itself.

My throat was raw, scraped by the screams I hadn’t been able to release or that I had screamed too much. And my heart... my heart still beat, yes, but in an absurd, erratic way, like a drum struck without rhythm, without music, without purpose — a dull, repetitive, almost insulting sound that reminded me I was still alive, even if nothing truly lived in me anymore.

In this heavy stillness, in this dull tremor that follows screams too long held, in that suspended moment after where even pain seems hesitant to remain, the air around me began to change. Slowly. Silently. It didn’t move, no. It thickened.

Not like a storm. Not like a slap. But like a slow, insidious tide, an invisible fluid rising centimeter by centimeter, seeping through the cracks of the world, through the smallest interstices of reality. It didn’t impose itself. It infiltrated.

And soon, it became almost tangible.

A substance. A presence.

Sticky, thick, clammy. A new density that slowed everything: breath, thoughts, memory. An improbable texture, between cotton wool and forgetting, between tenderness and erasure. It was soft, yes. With a suspicious velvet. With a cotton too silky. But this softness carried something insidious. A foreign fatigue. A programmed torpor.

And then, an image imposed itself, like a memory that didn’t belong to me: that of a blanket being slowly, gently, almost affectionately... pulled over the face of an infant. Not to lull it to sleep.

To extinguish it.

Just a little too long.

And in this new thickness, in this mass of air become almost flesh, almost memory, almost silence, something appeared. Slowly. Without suddenness. Without brightness. A light. Weak, floating, timid in its birth. It did not invade. It suggested. Barely perceptible at the edge of my field of vision, like a reminiscence returning from an old dream, from a dream one had deliberately repressed, denied too long for it to dare knock again.

It formed there, in the mists of a world that no longer belonged to me: a small pale sphere, of a murky white, wavering, almost translucent, barely vibrating. It was no larger than a child’s heart, and it swayed gently, as if rocked by a forgotten melody, a song no one had the courage to hum anymore. It cast no shadow. It gave off no heat. It was simply there, suspended, waiting, without demanding, without invading.

It was not alive. Not really. But it wasn’t dead either. It escaped that dichotomy. It was neither thing, nor being, nor entity, nor divine presence. It was not a threat. Not a promise. Not a call. Just... an existence placed there. Pure. Motionless.

A witness.

And that witness was observing me.

Not with eyes. Not with gestures. Not with words. But with such a bare intensity that it became unbearable. A simple presence, intact, without projection or judgment. A bare presence, that asked nothing but existed, and in that mute existence, carried a weight. A weight I was not able to bear. A weight too ancient, too vast, too luminous.

It did not judge. It did not point.

It hoped.

And that was the worst part.

Because I had nothing left to give it.

And it still believed in me.

I sprang up, as if pushed by a shock, as if my body, despite the fatigue, despite the absolute exhaustion, found in urgency a last reserve of energy, a final impulse of defense. My claws burst forth at once, with the nervous precision of a survival instinct, my muscles contracted in a violent tension, and my breath, until then chaotic and weary, became sharp, slicing, ready to bite the air.

— DON’T COME CLOSER!!!

My voice split the space like a poorly forged blade, twisted with fear and mixed rage, the cry of a cornered animal, a beast that knows it won’t win but refuses to be reached without screaming. It had nothing noble. Nothing heroic. It vibrated, raw, split, spat from a place even I no longer controlled.

But it... did not move.

It didn’t retreat. Didn’t tremble.

It remained there. Floating.

Suspended in that sky without sky, in that soft and empty matter, weightless yet immovable. It did not threaten. Did not challenge. It persisted, like a memory one has no right to erase, like a possibility that refuses to disappear. Harmless. And yet unbearable.

Unalterable.

But its light pulsed. Barely. Gently. Regularly. Like a discreet, stubborn heart, a rhythm that did not try to be heard but imposed itself nonetheless, by its mere persistence.

And in each pulsation, I felt a word. A word never spoken, never formed, never released by a mouth. An ancient word, buried, forbidden — but which my heart recognized despite itself, which my nerves fled like a burn, which my tongue refused to pronounce so much it carried something inconceivable.

A simple word.

A word that burned.

A word that flayed everything it touched.

Love.

And that word struck me from within.

So I stepped back. One step. Then another. Like one steps back from a flame too close, a heat one has no right to extinguish but can no longer let approach.

It was instinctive.

Animal.

And it... it came closer.

Not abruptly. Not violently. Like a breath. Like nothing. An infinitesimal glide through the air, an almost invisible translation. But it crossed a boundary. It approached. And this time — I did not strike.

Not by choice.

Not by mercy.

By incapacity. By absence. By fundamental exhaustion. As if even the act of rejecting had been taken from me. As if striking this thing, this light, this incarnated word, would have been like striking the very idea of gentleness. And I no longer could.

So I turned my back.

Not to flee.

To not see.

Because the light, at that moment, hurt more than the darkness.

I leapt, without thinking, without looking back, launched toward the next islet, toward a blurry elsewhere, without name, without contour, without promise. The ground beneath my feet, if it could still be called that, compressed at impact, as if welcoming my weight with an unhealthy softness — a supple, soft, absorbent, almost warm matter. A sensation of belly. As if I landed on a patient organism, on a world breathing beneath me, ready to swallow me or cradle me. I no longer knew.

And even in the flight, even in dry panic, everything here seemed to want to wrap me, hold me back, slow me down not to stop me... but to cushion me. To make me believe in a form of protection. A caress disguised as a trap.

I jumped to the next islet. Then another. Each one slightly higher, slightly farther, as if they rose as I moved away from it, from him, from that — from that light that wanted to offer me a word I could no longer carry. And yet... something in me knew that it wasn’t really me jumping. Not quite. The world helped me. Or pushed me. As if it wanted me to believe in an escape. As if it maintained, with a silent perversity, the illusion that I was still capable of fleeing something.

The void, behind me, licked at my heels.

Cold. Mocking.

But it never claimed me.

It let me run.

And I ran.

Lungs on fire, throat raw as if I had swallowed sand, legs stretched to the extreme, rage planted deep in the belly, curled like a hungry beast that had only instinct left to remember it was still alive.

But deep down, I already knew: I wasn’t fleeing a creature. There were no claws behind me, no fangs, no thirsty shadow ready to tear me apart. It wasn’t an external threat. What I was fleeing... was a possibility. A simple possibility. And that was exactly what made the escape so absurd. So desperate. So terribly useless.

Because deep inside me, without a sound, something had opened.

Not a spectacular chasm.

Not a raw wound.

A crack.

Silent.

Slow.

Deeply rooted.

An almost invisible line that snaked through me from the moment that light pulsed, from that word it hadn’t said, but that my heart had understood. And in that new fissure, there was something unknown. Something dangerous.

And I was afraid.

Not of it.

Not of a monster rising from the darkness.

I was afraid... that one day, without warning, without a fight, I might fall into it. That I might slip. That I might yield. That this fissure might become more than that. That it might become a choice.

And that this choice... might change me.