Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 171: The Silence That Calls

Chapter 171: The Silence That Calls

And at the center...

There was a stele.

A tall, thin slab, slightly leaning forward, as if it had bowed under the weight of silence, or of what it bore. It did not shine. Caught no light. It seemed to have been placed there forever, forgotten by the world, and perhaps even by time. No wind caressed its surface. No breath brushed it. And yet, it was there — upright, enigmatic, alien.

It resembled nothing.

Not stone.

Not metal.

Not a fragment of bone polished by centuries.

It was something else. A material I couldn’t name. That belonged to no memory of a human hand, nor to any mineral lexicon. Something older. Denser. More ancient than the world. A texture that eluded matter itself — as if this thing had been sculpted before matter had learned to exist.

It stood there, without ornament, without apparent symbol, and yet saturated with a meaning I could not understand but that my body, it, could feel. A muffled calling. A contained vertigo. A memory that wasn’t mine but pulsed, there, right at the edge of my nerves.

It wasn’t a stele.

It was a question.

And it was waiting for me.

It shone with a matte glow.

Not a clear light. Not a glimmer one follows. No. A discreet, timid reflection, placed there like a hesitation between shadow and clarity. It was a veiled, uncertain light, like that of a dream one never truly had, but whose trace lingers, somewhere, just behind the eyelids. A glow one doesn’t dare look at too long, for fear it might slip away, vanish, leave us alone before the void.

It wasn’t trying to be seen.

It was waiting to be looked at.

And on its surface... there were symbols.

Ancient. Very ancient. Too much, maybe. Engraved directly into the material as if each stroke had been laid by a hand that knew the pain of worlds. They were deep. Sharp. Without smudge. Without flourish. Their precision had something sacred. Irrevocable. And yet... nothing vibrated.

Nothing moved.

They didn’t glow.

Not even a flicker. Not even a breath of light between the lines. They were there, frozen, mute, offered like a dead language on a tomb never opened. A writing without breath. Without promise.

And that was perhaps what gave them weight.

That total absence of expectation.

That almost conscious inertia.

As if everything they had to say... had already been said.

And yet...

All around me, in the invisible space, in the interval between things, in the taut silence of this place that seemed not to breathe... something trembled.

Not a breath.

Not a sound.

Not the slightest rustle.

And yet... the very air seemed brushed by a subtle quiver, barely perceptible, like a skin of water touched by an absent hand. It wasn’t a wind. It wasn’t a sound vibration. It was deeper. More intimate. A shiver of reality. A silent wave with no identifiable source, but which enveloped everything — me, the stele, the suspended islet, the void around — as if something, somewhere, was holding its breath.

The universe seemed suspended.

Not motionless, but tense.

On hold.

In waiting.

A moment frozen in the before.

And I understood, though no word told me, that this tremor wasn’t caused by me. Nor by what I did. Nor even by what I had become. It had been there long before. It had waited for me. And now... it knew I was here.

I approached.

One step at first. Then another. Slow. Measured. And the closer I got, the more cautious my movements became, restrained, as if the air itself thickened around me, as if each meter crossed cost me a little of what I was.

My steps slowed.

Not out of fear. There was no fear in my belly — not that kind. It wasn’t a survival instinct. It was something else. An older restraint. A slowness woven from respect. From recognition. As if my body, despite myself, knew it was nearing something that could not be struck, nor rushed, nor crossed lightly.

It was instinctive.

Total.

Almost sacred.

My muscles didn’t falter, but they became attentive, silent, as if in prayer. I felt my fingers relax on their own, my shoulders lower with a breath. My breath itself attuned to the place, flattened, almost faded.

And without understanding, I knew.

Not in my head. Not in my memories.

But in my cells.

In what remained alive, in me.

My body had already understood what my consciousness still refused to admit.

This place...

This place was not for me.

I felt it now, deeply, as a slow certainty, irrefutable, not born of reasoning but of a silent evidence, inscribed in the very way the air brushed me, the ground received my steps without guiding them, the silence looked at me without giving anything in return. It wasn’t punishment. Nor hostility. Rather... an absence of place. An absolute neutrality. A place without door, without threshold, without invitation.

I wasn’t made for this stele.

And it wasn’t made for me.

No one, truly, was meant to lay a hand on it. That was obvious now. As obvious as the void surrounding it, the cracked whiteness of its skin, the mute symbols carved in it like wordless warnings.

It wasn’t an altar.

It wasn’t a vessel.

It was a fragment of something ancient, placed there to exist alone, intact, outside the world, beyond touch.

And I understood...

That simply approaching it was already a mistake.

And yet...

It called to me.

Not with words. Not with a voice. Nothing the ear could catch. Nothing that could be translated. Its call had no sound, no direction, no promise. And yet, it was there. Undeniable. Present like a beat in the hollow of the belly. Like an invisible thread pulling gently, slowly, but without relent.

It called to me with silence.

A dense silence, almost inhabited, saturated with a message I did not understand but felt in every fold of my breath. A charged absence. A void stretched like an invisible hand.

It called to me with absence.

The absence of everything. Of noise. Of warmth. Of meaning. An absence so total it became a form of inverted call, a hollow that screamed through lack, a void so deep it drew in all that still stood within me.

It called to me...

With need.

A raw need. Original. From before words. Before roles. Something that did not come from curiosity, nor even desire. But from within. From a place so old, so buried, that I could not tell if it was memory... or fate.

And in that need, I felt my arm move.

Almost against my will.

Then, slowly...

Very slowly...

I let my fingers rise.

Not like one reaches for something to grasp. No. Like one approaches a mystery. Like one enters icy water, millimeter by millimeter, holding one’s breath. My arm no longer entirely belonged to me. It moved through the air as through an invisible, dense, almost living substance.

I wasn’t afraid.

But something in me restrained every gesture, filled it with mute gravity, with subdued solemnity. My hand trembled just slightly — not from doubt, not from fear, but as if the air around it quivered at its contact. As if that single movement already awakened a memory vaster than me.

I knew — if I touched it, something inside me would never return.

And then... my palm brushed the surface.

An infinitesimal contact. A touch without pressure. Barely more than a sigh against the skin of the world. And yet, I felt everything shift.

Not a shock.

Not a light.

But a slow shiver, deep, an ancient breath unfolding somewhere beneath the matter. As if, under that white surface, something opened its eye.

And instantly...

A shiver.

Not a shiver from cold. Not a fear. But something more precise. More interior. A sharp, surgical shiver, that started at my shoulder, slid slowly along my collarbone, seeped into my neck like a warm blade, snaked to my temples in a slow, soundless rise.

It was like a vibration from before nerves.

An electric whisper from a place I did not know.

My heart...

Jolted.

A single beat. Unique. Sharp. Cutting. Like a blow struck on the wall of a hollow drum. It did not echo. It did not linger. It was. Just there. Dry. Perfect. Irrefutable.

And in that beat — in that solitary pulse — I felt something open.

Not in me.

But in the world.

And in that silence...

That heavy silence, inhabited, still vibrating from the single beat it had just swallowed... in that suspended abyss, frozen outside of time, where every thing seemed to have folded its edges, tightened its presence, as if the world itself held its form to make room for something else...

I caught sight of it.

No. I saw her.

Or rather... I felt her.

Like a slow tide beneath the skin. Like a warmth behind closed eyes. Like a memory that had never passed through memory. She was there — not before me, not in space, not outside — but in the air. In the shiver. In that strange tension the stele had carried from the beginning.

She did not need to appear.

It was I who had just reached her.

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