Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 169: The Bottom, Without the Fall

Chapter 169: The Bottom, Without the Fall

In that total void... that void without eyes, without form, without refuge, a void vaster than the sky, more suffocating than hell, a void without judgment, without anger, without echo — just that blind nothingness, stretched around me like an impalpable cage, deaf and bare, I opened my mouth again.

And I screamed.

Not like one screams to break the silence, nor like one begs in hope of a miracle. I screamed with a broken breath, split, hoarse — a rattle of a child left too long in the shadows, a deep, veiled, almost guttural cry, a sob covered in ash.

— WHAT SHOULD I DO?!

My voice trembled. Not in the air — in me. It split my belly before collapsing into silence, like a blade too soft to wound the world but too sharp to spare me. I lowered my head. Short of breath. My forehead burning. My lips still trembling from the scream.

— What should I do...

It was no longer a question.

It was an admission.

A collapsed confession in the form of a word. I was no longer expecting an answer. Just... something. A shiver. A whisper. A trace of breath in the ether. But nothing came.

The world didn’t answer.

And that was worse than being cursed.

Because I felt, deep down, that this silence wasn’t forgetfulness. Nor absence. It was an invisible gaze. A diffuse consciousness. A waiting, cold, suspended, as if the universe itself... wanted to see how far I’d go before falling.

Because the world was waiting.

Attentive. Silent. Motionless.

Like a mute god refusing to judge, but who never stopped watching.

And me...

Me, I couldn’t take it anymore.

Not in a spectacular way, not in some grand theatrical outburst. Just... no more. Worn to the bone, gnawed by waiting, drained from walking endlessly through a corridor that led nowhere — I was saturated with wandering through the void, talking to walls that didn’t even have the decency to echo back, begging silences too vast to contain me, reaching out to something that would never come.

I was emptied of hope.

Tired of pretending I still believed. Exhausted from offering fragments of myself to a world that didn’t even know how to receive them. Disgusted with hearing my own voice loop endlessly in the void, like a dead refrain, a prayer with no address.

Fed up.

That word beat inside me, slowly, heavily, like a burst drum still being struck without reason.

Fed up with waiting.

Fed up with the void.

Fed up with the gentleness of the darkness that pretended to console me while slowly killing me, in the hollow of a nightmare that didn’t even want to frighten me outright, that kept me just there, suspended, in a tepid, nauseating, sticky slowness.

I was tired of being tired.

A fatigue that no longer tenses, that no longer complains, but settles, like a slow poison in the muscles, a rasping weariness in the veins, a weight in the nape of the neck. My heart had turned. My breath flat. My soul nauseous. I couldn’t take this obscene theater anymore where I was watched writhing, without ever quite breaking. I was ready to beg for someone to finish me off.

And yet, nothing.

Nothing but that suspended cocoon, that world-womb without walls, those vibrating filaments in the shadows, that light without warmth that caressed the skin like an absence disguised as a promise.

So at the edge... yes, at the edge of that abyss that didn’t even want to swallow me, on my knees in that void that didn’t bite, that didn’t judge, but that kept existing despite me — I wanted to blow everything up.

Reduce everything to silence.

But not a soothing silence. Not an after-silence. No. An absolute silence. An abolition. A clean void. Without memories. Without pain. Without me.

Even me, yes.

I wanted even that to be erased.

For my voice to die before leaving my throat, for my name to disappear from its depths, for my own consciousness to forget itself. I wanted to break from the inside, like tearing a page that will never be used again.

Just...

end.

I stayed there.

Lying on my back, without strength, without tension, simply sprawled like a body too worn to even curl in on itself, offered to the void like a prayer without faith, like an offering no one would want. Beneath me, the warm ground gave off that strange heat, almost animal, a warmth without origin, without source, as if the world itself breathed slowly beneath my carcass — not to carry me, but to let me fall gently, in polite indifference.

My arms were open.

Not in a cross. Not in supplication. Just open, sprawled, emptied, as if they were no longer mine. My palms held nothing. Asked for nothing. They barely touched the ground, brushed the surface like wings folded too long. And my eyes... my eyes were open. But there was nothing for them to take in. Nothing to look at. Nothing to focus on. Just a blurry immensity, without stars, without outline, a pale canvas suspended above me that gave back no sign.

I could have closed them.

But I didn’t want to.

Because closing my eyes was still making a choice. Was still allowing myself to want something. And I didn’t want anything anymore.

So I stayed there.

Breathing without thinking. Existing without weight. Feeling time stretch within me like a slow root. It passed, I know it. It flowed. It moved through me. But I didn’t move. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t waiting. I no longer hoped.

I was just there.

Much longer than I should have.

And maybe that’s what the bottom is. The real one. Not a fall. Not a scream. Not a final gesture. Just that moment when you no longer even fall.

Because you’re already too far.

But the truth is, I didn’t have the strength anymore.

No momentum. No inner drive, the one that lifts a finger, that sparks a thought, that provokes resistance, however small, however useless. I didn’t have the desire either. Not the real kind — the one that burns, that strikes, that refuses. Everything had fallen flat. Flattened. Dissolved. I had nothing left to oppose. Not the void. Not myself. Not that suspended world that continued, slowly, without seeing me.

So I let myself slip.

Not in a gesture. Not in a goodbye. Just... extinguished. Here. Without drama. Without tears. Like an ember dying in the dark, too tired to even become ash. It wasn’t death, no. Not yet. But it was no longer life. It was a blurry, porous in-between, a no man’s land within where even thoughts seemed hesitant to be born.

I floated.

Not in the air. In me. In that invisible fold where the body still breathes but no longer demands. Where the heart beats, yes, but with that sluggish pace that feels more like forgetting than rhythm. Each breath was a margin. An echo. A dull pulse. As if I had become a memory of myself, faded but still warm, beating without conviction in the hollow of a forgetfulness greater than all.

I was no more.

But I hadn’t left either.

And that ambiguity held me.

Like a slow tide. Like a surrender without a fall.

I was thinking.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I was just watching — without really seeing — the images return, pile up, distort inside me like fragments too old to be clear, too heavy to be ignored. It wasn’t reflection. Not reasoning. Just... a procession. Slow. Obscure. Disordered. A reel that something in me was rewinding blindly, in the dark, without knowing why, or toward what.

The memories came back in reverse.

As if my memory itself was trying to flee the present by starting from the end, by scraping the back of the film to escape what I had become. They passed. One by one. Without voice. Without color. But with that opaque density that memories take when they’re not really summoned.

Terra Neutralis...

That name vibrated in my head like a burst drum. No longer a place, no longer a war, no longer meaning — just a dull vibration, saturated with echoes. A scar turned into territory.

Zagnaroth...

A shadow. A maw. A divinity one no longer dares to name entirely, but whose syllables still stick in the throat like an ancient threat.

Kharz’Gorath...

A colder breath. Another summit. Another weight. A puzzle piece. One more step in the descent.

The tutorial...

An absurd word. Out of place. A joke lost in horror. And yet, there. Present. Like a first stone. Like the memory of trampled innocence.

The endless world...

And that expression lingered longer in my mouth. Like a taste. A aftertaste. An irony. That world I had fallen into, and that still refused to let me out. Not out of cruelty. Out of inertia. Like a shoreless sea.

Everything replayed.

In reverse. Without me.

And I, in the middle, didn’t even know if I was the one remembering... or the one being remembered.

And then...

My life on Earth.

My life on Earth? The word rang like a disjointed echo, distant, almost foreign. Earth... really? I doubted. I felt dizzy. A hint of consciousness rubbing against a memory too old. Why did that word sound so hollow, so blurry, so deflated? Why did that life, supposedly mine, suddenly feel so empty, so devoid of substance, like an old photo faded by dampness?

I couldn’t find anything clear. Nothing sharp. Nothing warm. Just... a few rare flashes, disjointed, like crumbs of existence fallen into a bottomless well. Shapes remained, yes. Lights. A ceiling. A bedroom. But everything seemed detached from me, as if I had lived there by proxy. As if all that past was no more than a draft — badly written, badly kept, badly loved.

Why was that all that remained? Fragments. Orphaned pieces. Frozen instants, without sound, without aftermath. Why was my memory thinning like that, keeping only the muffled silence of closed walls? And above all... why, in all those memories, was I always alone? Alone. Locked up. Trapped between my walls, my thoughts, my shadows.

I saw myself walking... maybe. Sitting... often. But surrounded? Never. There was only me. And that faithful and cruel companion, lurking under the skin: anxiety. That deaf thing that held my hand when no one else did. That invisible voice that weighed on my shoulders with every breath.

And I didn’t understand.

Why... even that... even that life I was supposed to have known, lived, carried... I couldn’t see clearly anymore? As if it too, in the end, had only ever been a dream — or a forgetfulness disguised as memory.

And so I sank even further.

Before that.

Even before the screams, the flight, the blood, the invocations, the pacts, the fractures. Before Terra Neutralis. Before the fall. Before the fire. Before the tearing.

What was there?

Before all of that...

What was I, before I fell?

And that question... froze me.

Because I no longer had the answer.

Because maybe it no longer existed.

Or worse: because maybe it never had.