Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 150: Keep Lying

Chapter 150: Keep Lying

That something — that mouthless whisper, that formless word — crept into my body with the delicacy of an unsuspected blade, sliding between two heartbeats, between two sighs, between two fibers too tired to resist anymore. It wasn’t a thought. Not a memory. It was a raw truth, bare, embedded in the unconscious like a sacred splinter one never quite manages to extract. A vibration placed under the tongue, in the hollow of the heart, beneath the sternum, in the marrow — everywhere one never dares to look.

It didn’t command me. It didn’t caress me. It didn’t judge.

It acknowledged.

And that acknowledgment struck through me like an ancient certainty: you’re still here. Not whole, not worthy, not strong — but here. You cry, therefore you breathe. You collapse, therefore you exist. You reject love, therefore it still lives somewhere. You say you want to die... but you scream to be heard.

And in that tiny, almost shameful spark, something lit up.

Not a light.

A remnant.

A glimmer.

A refusal to disappear, no matter how miserable, how painful, how weak.

An instinct, perhaps. The kind wounded beasts have. The one that survives despite itself. The one that breathes still, even when the air burns.

A murmur of unknown origin but of certain destination, as if it had always known where to lodge itself, how to find me, how to slip between the layers of pain, between the crumpled membranes of what I thought was my silence. It wasn’t trying to be heard. It didn’t fight the noise of my sobs or the weight of my collapsed body. It settled. Inside me. Like a buried breath that had never stopped beating, hiding beneath the screams, beneath the blows, beneath the shattered memories.

And it beat.

Not loud. Not big. But with the constancy of a heart that remembers.

Each syllable wasn’t a word but a palpitation. A tremor. An exudation. It wasn’t a message. It was a presence. An extra organ I’d never been told I carried. A primitive consciousness, soft as an eggshell membrane. Warm as ancient blood. Heavy as a memory buried in the muscles.

It didn’t say: "Get up."

It didn’t say: "You can."

It didn’t even say: "I’m here."

It was.

And in that simple presence, in that organic continuity, in that tender moisture running through my nerves, I felt that the world was no longer trying to make me speak, nor even to make me live.

It simply wanted to contain me.

To keep me.

Like a womb keeps the child.

And I didn’t know what to answer.

Not because I disagreed.

But because I knew.

I knew that murmur spoke the truth.

It didn’t hunt me with the fury of a judge or the violence of an executioner. It didn’t try to force me, to tear me open, to strip away my defenses. No. It spoke like one whispers to a long-lost friend, like one extends a hand to someone once loved, but who has destroyed himself again and again, until he can no longer welcome anything but his own ruin.

— You keep lying...

That word, that breath, that trace of awareness twisted me from the inside, not out of fear of being found out, but from the exhaustion of having always known. Because yes... I had lied. Not to them. Not to the world. Not to the gods.

To myself.

Again.

Always.

I had told myself stories, hid behind hatred, pain, loss, the curse. I had waved guilt like a flag, like a noble excuse to refuse healing. I had screamed that I wanted to die — but I had never jumped. Not really. I had called for the end, begged for death, spat in the face of love... and yet, I had kept walking. Kept talking. Kept screaming.

I was a survivor refusing to admit he still wanted to live.

And that murmur... it knew.

It said it without violence. Without flare. Like you’d say to a brother: "I saw you." Like you’d say to a son: "I waited for you."

And that was the most unbearable thing.

Not the judgment.

The patience.

And I stayed there, motionless, as if frozen in a rage that no longer found release, standing at the center of a world beating too slowly for my fury, upright like a condemned man too proud to fall, stiff like a statue of broken pride, arms hanging limply at my sides, useless, almost foreign, breath caught at the edge of a scream that refused to be born, and my jaw clenched so tightly that a metallic taste filled my mouth, as if my own tongue were bleeding under the pressure of my refusal.

I wanted to explode, to tear myself apart from the inside, to punch open my chest until I felt nothing, to scream a cry so thick, so vast, so full of abandonment and hate that it would shake the foundations of this world, that it would crack the floating isles like empty shells, that even the gods would flee. I wanted to vomit that truth rotting in my throat: that I was not a child, that I had never asked for any of this — not life, not a body, not emotions, not the role they’d grafted onto me like an infection.

I wanted to scream that I had never chosen this flesh, this pain, this identity forced upon me at birth like a fate, like a cosmic insult. That all of this — the world, the beating, the light disguised as mercy — was a trap, a trap strung with threads of tenderness and tainted love meant to drag me down, to lock me inside this illusion of hope that made me want to scream even louder. I wanted to spit in the face of that deceitful clemency, of that too-sweet dream that only existed to destroy me slowly, to bring me back to my knees at the heart of a truth I refused to accept: I was still here.

And this world... was waiting for me.

But... I said nothing. Not out of choice. Not out of defiance. But because something had closed inside me, without noise, without drama, like a slow hand resting on a wound to smother it. My throat tightened — not like one stifles a sob, but like one closes a door for good. The words drowned in that inner sea I thought had long since evaporated, that ancient, dry stretch I’d trampled too many times and which, still, bubbled quietly beneath the surface. My vocal cords tensed, taut like nerves, ready to snap at the slightest tremor, and refused to carry me. My mouth, open for a moment, became a mausoleum, sealed tomb of a voice I could no longer bear to release.

I no longer cried. No tears, no screams. Nothing came out. Even the pain had gone quiet, as if my body itself had understood there was no more room, no more space, no more meaning. The overflow hadn’t spilled. It had frozen. It had congealed there, inside me, like a black lake beneath ice. And I... I just stayed there. Motionless. Mutilated by an emotion I was no longer capable of living.