Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 167: The Gentle Extinction

Chapter 167: The Gentle Extinction

I walked.

On the edge of the abyss.

One step after another, with the absurd slowness of bodies that no longer know if they’re moving forward or fading away. Nothing pushed me, nothing pulled me, and yet I kept going, as if by inertia. Each movement seemed to cost me more, not in strength, not in breath, but in existence itself. As if each step gnawed at me a little more, crumbled me inside, took away a part of my name, my outline, my flesh. I wasn’t walking to escape. Not to reach anything. I walked... to disappear. Not all at once. Not by falling. But slowly. Silently. As if the world, tired of holding me upright, had decided to undo me grain by grain, in this suspended, fragile walk, where the abyss, too, seemed to wait. Not to swallow me. But to recognize me.

How long had I been there? I couldn’t have said. Time, here, didn’t pass—it stretched, dissolved, folded in on itself until it became texture, weight, fatigue. I was in a world without end, without contours, without edges to bump into, without summit to reach, without exit to seek. A hollow world, but vast. A world too soft to be cruel, but too empty to console. A bottomless abyss, without walls, without sky, where even memories unraveled in the air before falling. And I... walked on, still. How many days had passed? How many nights without night? How many seasons without light? I had stopped counting. It wasn’t the hours that escaped me—it was me. How many versions of myself had I passed through to get here? How many dead skins left behind, without cry, without funeral? Sometimes I felt a part of me collapse without even resisting. A name, a fear, a rage. It extinguished. Just like that. And I continued. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. But I knew... I was still there. Like a residual breath. Like a pain without edges. Like a remnant of myself.

How long had I wandered, aimlessly, without bearings, in this hell of blurred outlines, soft borders, sweet memories? I didn’t know. There was no beginning anymore, no end, no straight line in this labyrinth that twisted to the rhythm of my exhaustion. And it wasn’t a hell of flames, of chains or screams. No. It was worse. A hell of gentleness. A slow hell. Subtle. That doesn’t devour you—it cradles you. That doesn’t burn you—it wraps you. A hell of silence, of suspended gestures, of persistent tenderness, of memories too lukewarm to be erased, but too old to be carried. A hell all the more cruel because it looked like a refuge. And I... walked there. Still. As if my body had ended up believing that I deserved that kind of punishment: to be gently held by what I had never known how to keep.

How many times had I spoken to that hallucination? How many dialogues thrown into the void, without response, without body, without gaze? How many monologues muffled by my own ghosts, their faces trembling, recomposed from lack, rising from nothing but clinging to everything? How many introspections? How many apnea dives into the clammy darkness of my own chest? Digging, scraping, breathing too hard to dislodge something. To find the origin. The epicenter. The sick heart of this buried pain. This nameless pain. This pain that never expresses itself, but remains. That waits. That doesn’t want to end.

HOW LONG?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know anymore.

And maybe... I no longer wanted to know.

And, to be honest... I no longer wanted to know. Not really. No more understanding. No more searching. I just wanted... for it to stop. For it to end. For something, finally, to let go. Not in a scream. Not in a dramatic collapse. Just... gently. Like a candle one no longer has the strength to relight. I just wanted...

To die.

Not out of anger. Not even out of despair. Out of weariness. Out of fatigue. Because continuing... no longer made sense. Because breathing, even that, seemed like too big a gesture for me now.

I wanted to leave in oblivion. Disappear like a mist that refuses the morning, that slowly retreats before the light, not out of fear, but out of fatigue. To fade. To dissolve. To leave nothing behind. No trace. No name. No memory. To no longer cause pain. To no longer feel pain. That nothing touches me anymore. That nothing reaches me anymore. That no one thinks of me. That I no longer think of anyone. Just... to be forgotten. By everyone. By everything. By the world. And above all... by myself. That my own name become blurred in my mouth. That my face blur in my memory. That my memories fade slowly, like mist on a cold window. That their taste leave me, one by one, without violence. And that even the song... that fucking lullaby I know without knowing why... become foreign. A tune I could finally no longer recognize.

I kept walking.

One step after another.

Without conviction. Without expectation. Just that mechanical, irrepressible gesture, like a remnant of reflex too deeply anchored to die with the rest. Each step was slower than the last. More blurred. More hollow. As if the world were emptying beneath me. As if gravity itself hesitated, reversed, gave way. I had the strange feeling of no longer weighing in the right direction. As if I were sliding upward into a void. As if my feet no longer walked on earth, but in an inverted space, soft and treacherous, that no longer wanted me... or that was pulling me elsewhere.

I kept walking.

One step after another.

Without conviction. Without expectation. Just that mechanical, irrepressible gesture, like a remnant of reflex too deeply anchored to die with the rest. Each step was slower than the last. More blurred. More hollow. As if the world were emptying beneath me. As if gravity itself hesitated, reversed, gave way. I had the strange feeling of no longer weighing in the right direction. As if I were sliding upward into a void. As if my feet no longer walked on earth, but in an inverted space, soft and treacherous, that no longer wanted me... or that was pulling me elsewhere.

The world around me... had emptied. Not erased all at once, but gradually deserted, as if all that composed it—matter, color, density—had chosen to drift away, to diminish, to give up. It had become desaturated, like a memory fading from lack of being seen again. The light... it too had changed. It had become bluish, icy, almost unreal. Without source. Without brightness. A dead clarity. A strange reflection, like a dream of an extinguished star. The islets scattered through the space had flattened, stretched into long, thin bands, suspended in the abyss like gray ribs, relics of a dissected cosmic animal, left there, frozen in a sky that was no longer a sky. Nothing moved. The wind didn’t exist. But the air... brushed my arms. Softly. At times. Like a mental breeze. A discarded thought. A memory that doesn’t dare touch, but remains... just at the surface of the skin.

And everything... seemed desaturated. Even the smell, once thick, heavy, almost alive—it had vanished, reduced to a hollow breath, barely perceptible. Even my thoughts. Even they had faded, slowed, eroded by the silence. Even the colors had been drained of their blood. Everything had that strange taste of nothingness. A clean nothingness. Smooth. Without roughness. And it was exactly what I was looking for. I no longer wanted to cry without understanding. I no longer wanted to feel. To vibrate. To respond. I no longer wanted to resist. I wanted to forget myself. Slowly. Definitively. I wanted to erase what was left of me. To erase the memory of the song. To bury that old shiver still moving in my arms. To annihilate even the mute spasm of my tears. To extinguish. Everything. Not out of hatred. Not out of surrender. Just... because I no longer knew how to do anything else.

I wanted...

The warmth to stop.

For it to extinguish. For it to recede. For it to finally give up this soft stubbornness of still wanting to envelop me. I couldn’t stand it anymore. That mute warmth. That invisible presence. This world that, despite everything, kept offering me a place.

I wanted it to look away.

To let me go. To let me sink without witness, without light, without gaze.

I wanted the world to see me no more.

No more as a body. No more as a being. No more as a memory.

I wanted even it... to forget me.

And so... I walked.

On the edge of the abyss.

Each step carried me further from what I had been. Not all at once. Not like a fall. But like an inverted shedding. Each step erased a line. A shape. A trait. A name. Each step... extinguished. Silently extinguished. Without return. And like that, simply... I wandered. In this world of dissolved outlines. Without direction. Without thought. Without immediate memory. Without any will other than to move forward, because to stop would have still been a choice—and I no longer wanted choices. Maybe hours. Maybe days. Maybe months. Maybe years. I couldn’t have said. I no longer counted. Because nothing... mattered anymore.