Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 165: A Song Without Words

Chapter 165: A Song Without Words

— You don’t need to remember the name, whispered the voice.

— Your body, though...

— has never forgotten.

And I stayed there.For a long time.I couldn’t say how long. Seconds? Hours? Maybe an entire lifetime, condensed into that silence. I no longer counted. I no longer really breathed. I was... frozen. Not broken. Not yet. Not soothed either. Nothing had given way. Nothing had been rebuilt. I was just... traversed. Like a bridge of flesh stretched between two worlds. Like a vulnerable channel through which something passes, without noise, without cry, but with that ancient weight one does not name. An inhabited being. Occupied. By a pain too gentle to reject. Too intimate to hate. A pain... alive.

And, slowly... very slowly... I stood up. It was not a heroic gesture. Not a surge of will. Just a movement. Born of silence. Born of what had been crossed. Every muscle vibrated, yes, but it wasn’t from fatigue. It wasn’t the exhaustion of a fight. It was something else. A kind of release. A wave. Like after a storm one has held back too long. As if my body, from holding on so much, no longer knew how to be itself again. I didn’t look one last time. I didn’t have the courage. Nor the strength. Nor the space. I had no gaze left to offer. Everything in me had already left. Or stayed. I no longer knew.

I left the sanctuary. Without noise. Without elevation. Just... in silence. My fists trembling. Not from rage, but from aftershock. As if something had etched itself into my very knuckles. My breath short, choppy, irregular — not from effort, but from this overflow of nothing, this overflow of everything. And my stomach... knotted. Knotted like a shoelace pulled too tight around a void beating inside me. A strange void. Organic. Vibrant. Like a reserve heart. A heart that pumped nothing anymore... but still beat. Just to remind that there had been something. That there was still... that lack.

And behind me... as I walked away, slowly, in muffled steps, almost backward without daring to turn around... I thought I heard something. A thread. A vibration. A note. A lullaby. Very soft. Very far. Too far to be sure. Too precise to be imagined. As if someone... was still singing. For me. Not loudly. Not to call me. Just... so I would hear. So that breath would never quite leave me. As if, despite everything... I was still being rocked. A little longer. Just enough for the absence to stay alive.

I walked. Without purpose. Without direction. Without reason. My steps followed an old, stripped rhythm, like an echo tired of itself. My throat... had no more voice. It had screamed too long. Into the void. Against walls. Against absences. It had spat out truths no one wanted to hear, screamed against a silence vaster than death, begged without ever receiving anything but the echo of its own distress. And now... it was empty. Mute. Burned out. My thoughts... had no more questions. They had exhausted all the whys, scratched all the walls of forgetting, banged against every door of a world too deaf to answer. There was nothing left to search for. Nothing left to understand. And my heart... had no more desire. It no longer demanded. It no longer dreamed. It no longer hoped. It moved forward out of habit. Out of fatigue. Out of inertia. From wandering too much. From surviving too much. From existing inside a dream that didn’t want to end... and which, perhaps, would never end.

Each step felt identical. Not similar. Identical. As if copied from the previous one, without even the effort of pretending novelty. Each islet... felt familiar. Too much so. A disturbing kind of familiar. Like a face seen too often in a dream. As if the world itself, out of weariness or gentle malice, rewrote itself under my feet with each breath, each heartbeat, replaying the same places, the same walls, the same memories — but with just enough variation to fool me a little more. To give me the illusion of movement. Of progress. Of elsewhere. I was going in circles. I knew it. I felt it. I lived it. In a twisted dream. In a conscious loop. In a memory trapped in a body that refused to be silent. A body that kept walking... even when nothing carried it anymore.

I was tired. But not like one is after a run, not that kind of fatigue that burns and fades. I was weary. But not like one is after a fall, not that weariness mixed with pain you know how to heal. I was exhausted. But it wasn’t in the muscles, nor in the skin, nor in visible flesh. It was deeper. More buried. A bone-deep exhaustion. A blood exhaustion. An ancient emptiness, crouched somewhere between the marrow and the memory. Something heavy, calm, hollow, pulsing dully between silences. Not between my own heartbeats. No. Between the beats of this place. As if the world itself had stopped wanting — and I was nothing but the echo of that fatigue.

BOOM.BOOM.

That sound. Still there. Regular. Useless. The beating. That damn beating. Even it, now, no longer angered me. I had gotten used to it. In time. In time carrying it. Hearing it. Living with it in the hollows of silence. I no longer hated it. I no longer feared it. It no longer carried anything. No threat. No mystery. It was there. Like me. Just there. A remnant of life. A remnant of world. A noise that continues. For nothing. But continues. Because it doesn’t know how to stop.

And me... I had no strength left. Nothing left to offer. Nothing left to defend. Nothing left to shout. Nothing left to give. I was emptied. Scraped down to the bone. And yet... I kept going. One step. Then another. Not out of hope. Hope had long since left. Not out of faith. There was no name left to believe in. Not even out of will. I no longer chose. I continued... out of habit. Out of instinct. From that raw, silent drive that belongs neither to courage nor to survival, but to that primal gesture that is breathing. Because sometimes... breathing is all we have left. So we go on. Not to live. But because we don’t yet know how to die.

The world kept softening. Slowly. Insidiously. Too much. As if it guessed. As if it felt my exhaustion, my slow fading, my hollow march. As if it wanted... to help me. But not for me. Not to save me. Not out of compassion. For itself. For its own peace. As if my exhaustion, my slow fall, my inner nakedness... had become precious. Offered. As if my fatigue itself had gained a form of sacredness. A weight. A dignity. A value I hadn’t chosen. And the world, around me, seemed to wrap itself around me not to carry... but to receive my fall.

Around me, the islets had become covered in tall plants. Thin. Swaying. Their pale green, almost translucent stems vibrated gently in the light. Each strand was lined with small, soft white hairs, quivering at the slightest breath, like sensitive skin, exposed to the air. They moved as I passed. Not from fear. Not in retreat. They bent. Rose again. Sometimes even coiled slightly, in a slow collective movement, fluid, undulating. Ferns, maybe. But not quite. Something else. More alive. More conscious. They vibrated in unison. Not like wind. Like breathing. Shared breathing. As if they breathed together. As if they felt me. As if... they loved me. Without demand. Without words. Just a bare, offered gentleness. And in that vegetal caress, there was neither trap nor salvation. Only a world... that still wanted to surround me.

I stopped.

And I listened.

Not a sound. Not a breath. Not even the rustle of wind among the stems. The world seemed to hold its breath. Everything was still. Attentive. Present. And yet... something. A trace. A fine line. A barely distinct vibration. A melody. Faint. Almost erased. Almost dreamed. Like a memory of sound. Like a lullaby not heard for centuries but that the body, itself, continues to hum in secret. It was there. Fragile. Trembling. But there.

It vibrated. Subtly. But everywhere. In the air. Under my skin. In my bones. As if it didn’t come from the outside... but from me. As if it was my own body that was humming it, without remembering. A song from within. A song without words. Or maybe... maybe the words still existed, somewhere, but I no longer knew how to hear them. Or no longer knew how to understand them. Maybe the words had stayed behind me, inside the cradle. And I stepped back. Instinctively. Like one recoils from a caress they didn’t ask for. From a gentleness... they no longer know how to receive.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.