Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 160: The Ember That Refuses to Die

Chapter 160: The Ember That Refuses to Die

My panic surged, brutal, immediate, like a monster curled inside my ribs that, without warning, shattered its cage and climbed in a single leap up my throat, spreading its claws into my temples.

My heart raced, not in a surge of life, but in a disordered spasm, too fast, too out of sync, as if it beat against the rhythm of the world, as if it rejected the slow pace of this frozen place.

I could feel my fingers tremble, my phalanges tighten without logic, my arms stiffen in a defensive reflex I no longer controlled. My jaw had already locked — too hard, too fast — as if my entire skull was trying to stop what was rising from the center, from the core of something far older than fear.

My chest was closing in. Not gently. Not cautiously. But like a trapdoor slammed shut from the inside, a brutal compression of vital space, a clamp of flesh tightening around a breath that could no longer pass.

I fought to breathe — not like one drowns, but like one begs the air to become again what it no longer was. It didn’t enter. Or rather, it entered poorly. In jerks. In crumbs. As if even the molecules refused to cross this body too filled with cracks to still believe itself alive.

And there, precisely there, a pain. Sharp. Dry. Irregular. Not an imagined pain, not a memory. A real one. Localized. Burning. Nestled just beneath the bones, right where I thought I had extinguished everything.

Right where, after all this path, this abyss, this wandering through the impossible tenderness of a sick world, there should be nothing left. Not here. Not now. Not in this suspended place, frozen between the beats of time, after the collapse, after the screams, after the fall.

And yet...

And yet, it came back, slow as a tide whose cycle had been forgotten, relentless as a memory too long buried under layers of silence, denial, feigned forgetfulness.

It rose, insidious, from the oldest folds of my body, from the very roots of my organic memory. The pain. The anxiety. Not a theatrical anxiety, not an explosive panic — no. A presence. A faithful companion.

A gray silhouette seated in a corner of my ribcage, hidden in the shadows, patient, always there when everything else fades.

It had never truly left me. It had only gone silent, sometimes, while I screamed. While I destroyed. While I fell. But it had never disappeared.

It had waited for me. Watched me. Known me. It knew how to reclaim me. How to twist me. How to embrace me in a familiar grip, almost comforting in its constancy.

That old friend, yes. The one that existed long before the soft-fleshed nightmares, long before the sneering god, long before the ghost-memories and the fields of whispers.

It was there before the fall. Before the world. Before me, maybe. It preceded me. Defined me. As if I had been born from it, or it had been carved from my own shape.

I was only finding it again, each time. At every end. At every bottom.

It came back.

So... as always, as I had always done, without thinking, without deciding, simply because there was nothing else to do, I sat down.

Slowly. Like one surrenders. Like one curls into oneself to avoid imploding. Gently, with the fragile caution of bodies that know a single abrupt move can shatter everything again.

My back bent by itself, my shoulders fell inward, and my hands settled, almost religiously, on my knees. Palms open. Fingers trembling. As if I were praying to a god I hated.

My gaze... was blurry. Not from emotion. Not from tears. Blurry as if my eyes refused to see this world, or no longer had the energy to render it real.

My nerves, for their part, tensed silently, like bows drawn too long and no longer knowing whether to shoot or to snap.

And I breathed.

Not well. Not deeply. But willingly. One breath. Hesitant. Another. Less painful. Then another.

I tried. I tried to convince myself. I tried to pull myself together. Not to heal. Not to rise. Just to stay. To not fall apart again.

It’s only in your head.

It’s only in your head.

The phrase returned. Automatic. A mental survival reflex, etched in flesh. I recited it softly. Like a worn-out mantra. Like a fragile spell against collapse.

— Calm down, Anthony...

The inner voice broke on my name. That name I no longer wanted to say. That name I no longer recognized. But it was him I was calling, deep down.

It was to him I spoke. To that former self. To that lost self. To that self I hated, but still begged to come back.

One breath.

Another.

A beat.

Another.

And in that fragile rhythm, in that tiny attempt not to give in... something chimed. Faintly. Like a thread still taut. Like a remnant. Proof that, despite everything, I was still here.

My inner voice whispered, not to lift me, not to save me, but simply to anchor me, to hold me back by a word, a breath, a battered syllable in the wavering reality.

It had nothing glorious, nothing heroic. It wasn’t an incantation, not a prayer, just a strand of thought, a worn rope thrown at the edge of the void — not to pull me up, no, just to stop me from falling even further.

And little by little... almost in spite of myself... I breathed.

Not better. Not well. But more gently. More slowly. Thin breaths, inhalations clinging to the marrow like threads of survival.

The fire in my chest — that blaze of brutal anxiety, that organic furnace — stopped biting.

It did not extinguish. It did not surrender. It withdrew. Barely. But enough to loosen its fangs, enough to ease the pressure on my ribs, on my throat, on my temples.

It became lower. Warmer. More insidious, like an ember waiting its turn, hidden in the ash of my breath.

— Fucking anxiety...

The thought burst out unfiltered, unstructured. Tired. Bitter. Worn out. But honest.

Still there. Still lurking.

It never really left me. It changed shape, face, rhythm, but it stayed. Faithful. It inhabited my bones, curled beneath my skin, rose through my lungs with every beat too strong, too wrong, too human.

I got up.

Not in a sharp gesture, not in a furious jolt, not with that raw energy we associate with the living — but in a shiver, a slow rising, inherited not from will but from that painful inertia developed by endlessly falling.

There was no more momentum, no more faith in movement. Just that primary, base, almost animal need not to remain lying down, not to let dust soak into the skin too long, not to accept, even without hope, even without meaning, the position of one who has definitively collapsed.

And I walked.

Not fast. Not straight. Not strong. But I walked.

Not towards something. Not even to flee. But because standing still would have meant yielding to that warm, insidious softness creeping onto my shoulder blades like a promise one no longer wants to hear.

Because deep down, I had nothing left to break, nothing left to offer the void except this tired body, and that hoarse inner voice whispering that even rage had abandoned me.

It no longer pushed my steps. It no longer carried me. It no longer roared inside my temples like a storm of bones.

It had dissipated, softly, like an ancient rain evaporating from stone after centuries of tempest — not erased, no, but absorbed, digested, turned into something else.

It had curled up somewhere, deep inside, in the folds of my muscles, in the marrow of my nerves, in that exact space between my throat and my heart I no longer wanted to name.

It was no longer anger.

It was an ember.

A low heat, almost shameful, gray, stuck to my organs like inner soot, unable to ignite anything, but still too warm to die completely.

It no longer justified my fangs. It no longer made my hands tremble.

But it still kept me from freezing.

And that was enough.

Enough to keep moving. Enough not to collapse again. Enough for each step not to be a fall, but a refusal — a discreet, damaged, silent refusal, but real.

A refusal to surrender.

So I started moving again.

Not by will. Not by courage. Not even by resignation.

Simply because there was nothing else left to do.

Because my body, despite the exhaustion, despite the soul’s wear, despite that sticky feeling of loneliness embedded in every gesture, still knew this one language: moving forward.

I wasn’t walking toward a goal. I wasn’t looking for anything. I was no longer fleeing.

There was no more direction, no more identifiable threat, no more heroic drive.

There was only this movement without reason, inherited from a past too ancient to still throb — this movement inscribed in the bones, in the spine, in the feet, like a primitive memory nothing could erase.

It was that or fall. And falling... I had done too much of that already.

So I walked.

Because I didn’t know how to do otherwise. Because I no longer knew how to be otherwise. Because staying still meant accepting to exist without friction, without breath, without counterbalance.

And this world... this world too soft, too warm, too insidiously patient, asked only that.

But me, I was still moving.

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