Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 168: Someone

Chapter 168: Someone

Sometimes... I let myself fall. Willingly. Calmly. Absent. Into nothingness. Like one surrenders to a cold bed, without motion, without complaint, simply hoping... not to have to get up again. I didn’t fall to die. I fell to disappear. To slowly fade, without noise, without drama. So that the world, at last, would let me sink into pure oblivion.

But those fucking vines... They came for me. Always. They arrived slowly. Without haste. Without force. Without violence. With that lukewarm insistence. That fluid, persistent vegetal presence. That organic tenderness I wanted to vomit. Because it didn’t judge me. Because it didn’t yield. Because it held me... as if I were still worth it.

Sometimes, I stopped. Without reason. Without trigger. Just... because the void called a little louder than usual. So I looked at the abyss. For a long time. I stared at it. Without challenge. Without fear. Just... eyes open to something that never responded.

And sometimes, I spoke to it. Maybe. In silence. In thoughts. Or maybe it was the abyss speaking to me. And I listened... to myself stay silent.

But what was the point?

What was the point of continuing?What was the point of fighting?What was the point of thinking anymore?

I no longer knew why I was there. No more origin. No more thread. No more story. I no longer knew who I was. Nor what that word even meant. I didn’t know much of anything anymore. Just... that I was still there. And the abyss, it, never answered. But remained.

Time had disintegrated. Dissolved into a formless slowness, without markers, without rhythm. There was no before, no after, just a vague continuation, a pale extension of being. And the abyss... was drawing in my essence. Slowly. Deeply. My being. My memory. My life.

Not with violence. Not with cruelty. But with the quiet constancy of things that know they will win eventually. And I was... glad. Yes. Glad. Not happy. Not saved. Just... relieved. Almost. As if, finally, something vaster than me had understood that I couldn’t take it anymore. And accepted to undo me. Without judgment. Without question. Just... erase me.

Then the voice. Again. Always. That voice one cannot flee, not because it screams, but because it doesn’t come from the outside. Because it’s there, inside. In the chest. In the nape. In the pit of the stomach.

It spoke without sound, without pressure, but it knew where to strike. — Are you going to stay like this? — Yes. — Are you going to let yourself die in this place? — Yes.

Silence. Not an empty silence. A tense silence, inhabited, heavy like a hand placed over the heart. Then... — Are you going to abandon Lysara and Cassandre... again?

I didn’t answer. Not right away. Something closed in me. But not to flee. To contain. My teeth clenched. My hands contracted. And in that withdrawal... something stirred. Something I thought was dead. Fossilized. Dissolved by time. Something I hadn’t allowed to live anymore. But which, at that one question, had lifted its gaze.

Ah...

It’s true.

It’s true.

I was a monster. Not in the sense of fairy tales. Not in the eyes of others. A monster to them. To what I had fled. To what I had broken by disappearing.

I had abandoned them. I had betrayed them. And I knew it. Not with flash. Not with screaming shame. But with the cold calm of truths that can no longer be denied. I deserved this. All of this. The wandering. The forgetting. The silence.

I deserved to wander, without name, without place, without end. To roam in a world without ties, without gazes, without warmth. To be forgotten. Slowly. Definitively. Like a scream that was never let out.

So... I stood up.

So... I stood up. Not with rage. Not with courage. Not like a scream. Not like a rebirth. With an old fatigue. A weariness that cannot be screamed, but that still stands, out of habit, out of memory of movement.

I stood up like one gets up from a floor too familiar to curse anymore. And I walked. Again. I walked. Always. I walked. Not toward anything. Not to fix. Not to believe.

I walked... because I no longer knew how to do anything else. Because the body, even emptied, even ashamed, sometimes retains the reflex to survive. Because it had to go on. Even if it was still to flee. Even if I no longer knew what I was fleeing. Nor for how long.

Then, one day... I saw them.

There, suspended mid-height, between the desaturated islets and the faded sky, at the blurry border between matter and absence. Cocoons. Long. Silent. Large ovoid capsules, floating, pale, like formed of frozen foam or braided mist.

Their surfaces were stratified, layered with thin translucent membranes, almost alive. They vibrated softly. In slow waves. Like taut strings never plucked. Like tuning forks buried in the ether, attuned to a music one couldn’t hear.

And yet... I felt it. Their vibration emitted no sound. But it resonated. Elsewhere. In me.

And yet... I heard them.

Not with my ears. No. With something else. Deeper. Older. I heard them with my bones. With my nerves. With my breath that hesitated to stay. With my stomach, taut like a string. With my soul, or what was left of it.

Each vibration was an incomplete note. An unfinished word. A mouthless call. They resonated like memories one no longer wants to translate. Pains swallowed so hard, so long, they ended up silent... but never vanished.

Like tendernesses one had to kill to survive. That’s what they sang. Not in sounds. In shivers. In absences. And I... understood. Despite myself. I understood too well.

I approached. Slowly. Like one approaches a dream they don’t dare touch, for fear it will vanish. The shells pulsed. Barely. A slow, deep, regular beat. There was no threat. No tension. No shadow ready to pounce.

Nothing but that strange sensation of being awaited. Of being recognized. As if these suspended forms weren’t there to frighten... but to listen. They vibrated for me. I felt it. They sang for me. Even them. Even here.

So I reached out. Trembling. Uncertain. I placed my hand on one of them. And at once... a shiver passed through me. A pure shiver. Raw. Ancient. Devastating.

It wasn’t hostile. But it was too true. It awakened something I wasn’t ready to see again. Something from before. Something of me.

My skin bristled. Suddenly. Without warning. My heart... skipped a beat. Not from emotion. Not from fear. Not from memory. It was something else.

It wasn’t me. It was the world. The world in me. The world against my palm. But I didn’t pull my hand away. No. I stayed there. Motionless. Offered.

Against that soft surface. Against that warm matter, almost alive, almost maternal. Against that frozen dream that vibrated like an ancient promise.

I no longer tried to understand. I wanted... to disappear. To be absorbed. To be diluted. To be dissolved in that vibration so perfect it needed no name, no meaning, no form.

A sonic purity. A will-less wave. And I... I wanted to melt into it. To no longer exist except through it.

And then... she spoke. Again. Softly. Inevitably.

— You seek silence.

A breath. Light. Present.

— But even it... still holds you.

I closed my eyes. Hard. As if to detach, to withdraw from myself. But I only sank deeper.

— You have no right to be here.

The voice was close. Too close. No longer whispering from afar. It breathed inside.

— You are here because you still refuse to listen to yourself.

— Shut up...

— You want to forget yourself...

— But you always choose the places that resemble you most.

I clenched my teeth. Hard. Too hard. My jaw ground. My breath stopped. My fingers... tensed around the cocoon, as if I wanted to cling to it or tear it away.

But deep down, I knew: what I held... held me too.

It vibrated stronger.

Deeper.

Not just beneath my hand, but along my arm, up to my shoulder. My whole arm trembled, seized by a dull, penetrating wave, as if the cocoon’s matter were trying to enter me, to pass through me, to undo me from within.

— It’s just an illusion, I whispered.

— All of it.

— This world.

— You.

— It’s nothing.

— You are nothing.

No response.

But the cocoon... resonated.

Lower.

More intimately.

An echo that descended into my belly, coiled into my loins, pulsed into my hips. It bore no image, no memory. Just a sensation. A lack. A hollow.

A perfectly shaped void. An absent space in my chest, so precise, so bare, that I recognized it at once. An absence of warmth. An absence of presence.

Something I had never known how to name, but which my body, itself, had always carried. A void even rage... had never managed to fill.

The voice... whispered again. Not loud. Not accusatory. Just there. Inevitable. Soft as a warm blade.

— You wanted to be held.— You wanted to be held tight. When you were falling.

I turned away. Slowly. As if my own body no longer wanted to hear it.

— Shut up...— But you’ll never say it.— Because saying it... is admitting it.

And I didn’t answer. I had no more words. Only that raw refusal. That knotted rage.

So I struck the cocoon. Once. Hard. Desperate. Not to break it. Not really. To silence something. To delay the moment.

It swayed. Slowly. Like a bell of mist. No sound. Just that strange oscillation, fluid, full of a silence that didn’t judge... but saw everything.

And a wave escaped from it.

Invisible.

But real.

I didn’t see it. I felt it. It slid under my skin, lifted the air, lifted the astral dust at my feet, that fine, floating dust that reacted like memory. Like breath. Like a memory.

Space itself shivered.

And then... the other cocoons answered.

One by one.

Each with a different tremor, but in harmony. Not a cry. Not an alarm. A rhythm. A call. A mute chord.

A vibration that needed no language, because it spoke directly to the fibers. Inside. To what trembles. To what remembers despite itself.

They sang together. For me. Around me. With me.

And I no longer knew... whether they condemned me, or welcomed me.

My heart... sped up. Suddenly. A warm startle. A new rhythm. Not fear. Not pain. Something else. Something warm. Shameful. Buried. A rising. An inner fire that lit nothing, but consumed everything.

And I collapsed to my knees. Again.

But this time... there were no tears. Nothing to cry. Nothing to expel. Just a vertigo. Brutal. Dull. Deep. An inner abyss spinning in on itself.

I wanted to vomit. Scream. Disappear. Tear myself apart. Rip from this skin that still held too much memory. But nothing came out. Just that breath. That heart. That shame.

But I stayed there.

Immobile. Caught between the world’s vibration and the voice in my skull. Between the cocoons’ dull throbbing and the silence saturated through my own nerves. Between the edge of the abyss... and the memory of absent arms.

And she whispered.

Not loudly. Not harshly. Like a cold caress behind the ear. A murmur sliding under the skin.

— It’s not oblivion you want.

And I stood up.

Slowly. Feebly. Like a puppet without strings, without guide, but who, from a remnant of desire or memory, still tries to dance.

My legs trembled. My arms hung at my sides, emptied of all rage, emptied of all defense. Nothing to raise. Nothing to hide.

And I lifted my head.

Toward the sky. Toward that pale, motionless, unfathomable void. Toward that extinguished ceiling I no longer understood, but which still called me. Not to illuminate me. Just... so I would see it.

So... I spoke.

Not really to someone. Not really to myself. I spoke to the world, to the voice, to the empty space around me, to the vast silence vibrating inside my chest.

I spoke in pure madness, naked, derisory. Raw distress, unrestrained. A child’s scream long stifled. A scream that no longer knew why it screamed, but screamed anyway, because it had nothing else left.

— What do you want from me?!

My voice echoed. Weakly. Like an echo apologizing for existing. It faded almost immediately into the ether, swallowed by the air, by the invisible walls of this frozen world.

— What am I supposed to do?!

A silence heavier than space.

— Please... someone...

My voice broke. It couldn’t hold. It cut on an invisible sob, a rupture of breath.

— Someone!

But no one. Nothing. Silence. More massive than a wall. Vaster than an abyss. Crueler than refusal. A silence that knew. A silence that held.

— Please... tell me. Guide me. I beg you...

I fell to my knees. Again. Not from physical weakness. Not from pain. But from pure supplication. From inner collapse. Like reaching out to something already lost, but calling it anyway, because there is nothing else to do.

— I know I don’t deserve anything.

My voice trembled now. Fragile. Raspy.

— I know... I’m a monster.

A breath. A crushed remnant of pride.

— But please...

My throat tightened. My breath stopped. My lungs refused to go on.

— Please... help me.

And the silence.

Total.

Not a breath. Not a whisper. Not even a heartbeat.

Even she...

Even the voice...

was gone.

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