Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 164: The Stone Cradle

Chapter 164: The Stone Cradle

At the center... there was a base. Not a raised pedestal, not a placed altar, nor even a constructed object. No. It had always been there.

Carved directly from the rock, sculpted into the very material of the ground, like a logical excrescence of the place, a slow thrust of the world toward a fixed point. It did not stand out. It did not disturb. It was part of the whole.

Melded into the mass, embedded in the geological memory of the sanctuary, it was neither ornament nor symbol. It was. Simply. Present. Offered.

And yet... in its absolute muteness, something vibrated. An expectation. A mute recognition. As if this base, this fragment of truth in the middle of silence, had waited for me. As if it had never been meant for anything else. As if it had always known I would come.

On this base... lay an object.

And instantly, my whole body tensed. I refused to name it. To give it a shape, a function, a weight. I did not look at it yet — not directly. Not frankly.

But I knew. I felt. Something in the air had frozen, as if even the dust held its breath. A shiver ran through me, icy and precise, an acid bite in my neck, an invisible line running down my spine like a truth too fine to be voiced.

It was a cradle. Not a cradle like those you hang, weave, load with memories or tales. No. A cradle carved from stone. Massive. Solid. Cold. Inert.

And yet... terribly exact.

There was no decoration. No ornament. Nothing to soften its contours. Just a cavity hollowed at its center, a sculpted absence, a precise hollow, designed, shaped not to contain an object, but to welcome... a life. Or its ghost.

It was not a relic. It was not a monument. It was a receptacle. An imprint. The exact place of what once was. Or of what should have been.

An offering, perhaps. But an abandoned offering. As if the one who left it there had never had the strength to return.

I didn’t want to approach it.

I felt it, deeply, viscerally. Everything in me resisted. My thoughts pulled back, my muscles tensed, even my shadow seemed to want to detach from me and flee in another direction. It was a no. A total refusal. A primitive rejection.

But my steps... my steps no longer listened to me. They didn’t really belong to me anymore. They had broken free of me.

And one by one, slow, obstinate, silent, they advanced. As if they followed another call. A path older than me. Older than refusal. Deeper than fear. Stronger than instinct.

They obeyed neither reason, nor will, nor even memory. They obeyed something else. Something buried. Something I had never named. But that waited for me there.

And the world around... went silent. All at once. Completely.

Not a hollow silence. Not a fleeting calm. A real silence. Deep. Massive. Irreversible. The kind of silence that leaves no room for even a breath.

No more wind. No more pulsation in the air.

Even that warm, sweet, maternal scent that had followed me like a whisper until now... it too had withdrawn. Vanished. Erased.

As if the place, in its entirety, had suspended its breath. As if everything that still lived had chosen, in silent agreement, to make no more noise.

And I remained there, on the edge of something, surrounded by a silence so dense it seemed alive. As if the world itself... were listening.

Here, everything smelled of dust.

Not living dust, the kind that still shifts underfoot, but the kind that sleeps, long since settled in a fine layer upon the memory of things.

Even the stone seemed extinguished, emptied of warmth, polished by waiting.

And the cold... the cold wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t the cold of solitude, nor the cold of threat. It was a gentle cold. An enveloping cold. A silent cold, almost maternal in its way of not wounding.

A resting cold. Like that of a well-kept tomb. Not an abandoned crypt, no. But a place one does not disturb. One no longer disturbs. Because someone, somewhere, still watches. Without noise. Without presence. But watches.

I reached out. Slowly. Like one walking through a dream they’re not sure they want to end.

And my fingers, almost reluctantly, rested on the edge of the cradle.

The surface... wasn’t cold. It was warm. But not a living warmth. Not as if the sun had touched it. Not as if an inner heat still lingered, keeping vigil beneath the stone.

No. It was something else. A foreign warmth. Retained. Transmitted.

As if the material itself had retained, without understanding, the trace of a past warmth.

As if it had remembered.

A memory of warmth. An imprint that no longer burns, but refuses to disappear. A dead tenderness. A remanence. A memory of contact.

I leaned in. Slowly. Like one leans toward a truth they are not ready to see.

And there...

My heart. Stopped.

It’s not an image. Not a metaphor.

It stopped. Truly. For a moment. A stolen beat. Torn from time.

As if something within me had been suddenly ripped from the present.

Because he was there. Me. Again. Once more. That baby again. That fragment from before, which I thought I had fled, lost, broken... and who lay there.

Lying down. Peaceful. The face asleep, relaxed, untouched.

A breath so slight barely lifted his chest, as if the air itself had learned not to make noise around him.

His hands, tiny, too small to hold anything, rested gently on a polished stone blanket — polished like frozen velvet, as if the harshness of the world had, for once, agreed to become tender.

Just for him. Just for that. For that fragile body. For that impossible image.

And this time... he wasn’t alone.

Something enveloped him. Arms. Immense. Blurred. Unnameable. Not human arms. Not arms of flesh or memory.

Arms of something else. Of a being I couldn’t name, couldn’t even conceive. And yet, they were there. Around him. Around that small fragile body, lying peacefully in the stone.

There was no face. No voice. No name. But a presence. An obviousness. An undeniable force, bare, silent.

A soft warmth, almost imperceptible, like a warm veil in the air. Not burning. Not overwhelming. Not demonstrative. But there. Present.

A warmth that surrounded. That rocked without gesture. That protected without setting conditions. An old warmth, instinctive, without origin or promise — but absolute.

And in that stone cradle... it wasn’t the child who was sacred.

It was the love around. The love no voice pronounced. But which held.

Arms closed around him. Closed, but without tension. Without confinement. Just... closed. Like a promise whispered into the heart of silence.

And that tenderness... that tenderness struck me.

A tenderness I didn’t want to see. Not here. Not now. Not in this frozen, lost, erased place.

A tenderness I refused to name. To understand. To believe in.

It was too bare. Too vast. Too intact.

I didn’t want to believe in it. I didn’t want to admit it was possible.

Not for me. Not for him. Not in that world.

So I withdrew. Inwardly.

Like a wounded animal that feels love is worse than pain, because it forces you to live.

I recoiled.

In a leap.

No... not a leap. A spasm. A wrenching. A jolt from within, as if something inside me had suddenly refused, without warning, without negotiation.

A shudder ran through my chest, sharp, electric, brutal.

Violent. Instinctive. Painful.

Not a deliberate movement. Not a decision.

A pure rejection. As if my body couldn’t bear what it had seen.

As if that tenderness — that image — had touched a nerve too raw, too old, too poorly healed.

And I pulled back. Not to flee. But because staying... would have meant admitting.

I felt... split.

Not broken. Not yet. Not collapsed either.

But split. Like a slow, silent fault line that runs through rock without breaking it.

As if my spine had opened in two, without scream, without fracture, but with that painful precision of things that yield without falling.

As if my skin, suddenly, held nothing anymore. No form. No weight. No identity.

And all that I had tried to hold back — all that I had locked, sealed, bolted under years of screams, of fangs, of shame — had begun to slide.

Softly. Outward. Like a black river finally finding its slope.

And I remained there, open, unable to close again.

And the voice... returned.

Not loud. Not abrupt. Not imposed.

But there. Present. Silently insistent. Inevitable. Irreversible.

A voice that didn’t try to convince. Just to say.

— Do you remember the smell?

I gasped. A breath escaped me, torn from my lungs like a pain I hadn’t prepared for.

A broken breath. A breath too full.

I was filled with lack.

— No, I said.

But my voice... trembled.

And she replied, calmly.

— Yes. — You’re still lying.

I closed my eyes. Hard.

As if the violence of the gesture could extinguish what had returned.

As if my eyelids could block what had pierced through me.

But no. The image did not leave.

It stayed. There. Inscribed. Engraved behind the retina, sewn into the damp blackness of my eye sockets, painted in red-hot iron into the fabric of my nerves.

It had returned.

And it didn’t want to leave again.

— She held you like that, you know... — Every time you cried for no reason. — She held you. — She rocked you. — Without a word.

— STOP!

My voice cracked. Dry. Sharp. A thunderclap against the stone walls.

But hers didn’t waver.

It stayed there. Steady. Calm. Cruel in its gentleness.

— You didn’t cry from pain. — Nor from hunger. — You cried... — Because you already knew.

— I was just a baby! — A FUCKING BABY!

— Exactly.

I screamed without moving.

And my hands, suddenly, rose to my temples.

I pressed them. Hard. Too hard.

As if I wanted to drive them in. As if I could crush what was rising.

Crush memory. Explode thought. Shatter images.

But nothing gave way. Everything held. Everything stayed.

Memory wasn’t in the head.

It was everywhere.

And my hands... could do nothing against that.

And around me... the world turned.

Slowly at first. Then faster.

Like a spiral too soft to be a nightmare, but too irregular to be real.

The room spun. The floor stretched, expanded under my palms, hollowed in places, swelled in others.

The walls retreated. Or approached. Or both at once.

I no longer knew. I had no center. No anchor.

Everything breathed in reverse.

Even the air seemed to inhale when I wanted to exhale.

And I understood, somewhere, without words, without logic: the world... was spitting me out. It was rejecting me. Or rather: it was giving me back. To something. To myself.

And I collapsed.

My knees struck the stone.

My palms followed.

I touched the ground. The warm stone. The full stone. The living stone.

And I refused to lift my eyes.

I refused to look. To see what was there. What I knew. What I felt.

I refused. Still.

As if that refusal alone could still stand in my place.

But the sensation... it remained.

Stubborn. Inexplicable.

It didn’t fade. It didn’t withdraw. It seeped in. Persisted.

Like an invisible presence one wishes to deny, but that clings to the skin.

That embrace. Those arms. That hollow of love I didn’t want. That I refused to want.

Those arms I didn’t want to feel. That I never wanted to feel again.

But that my body... recognized.

Despite myself. Despite everything.

I felt it. It was there.

In my shoulder blades, tense as if still seeking a vanished contact.

In my nape, shivering, offered without wanting to be.

In my ribs, clenched by a too-familiar emptiness.

Everywhere. Everywhere.

As if my flesh, even mutilated, remembered.

As if my body retained in memory... what it had never dared to call tenderness.