Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 172: Where the light bleeds

Chapter 172: Where the light bleeds

Even before I could understand what my eyes were seeing...

My heart folded in two.

Not from shock, nor from fear, but from an older, rawer emotion — like a thread pulled too tight that snaps, clean, all at once. My throat tightened immediately, stifling any possible scream, and my breath, too, escaped. Cut short. Forgotten. Swallowed by what I had just grazed with my gaze.

Because before me...

Opened a valley.

But not a valley of this world. A suspended valley. Literally. An immense space, weightless, hanging between two worlds that nothing seemed to connect, like a dream between two sleeps, like a scar split in the very fabric of reality. A valley of pale shadows, absent lights, impossible curves, placed there, with no origin or end, in a depth my eyes refused to admit.

And I had the feeling that it was there...

That everything had begun.

And that everything would end.

An impossible landscape.

A cosmic dream, spread before me like a soft wound, wide open but without apparent pain — a place that didn’t bleed, but still breathed, slowly, as if the universe itself had laid here its most fragile side. It was an unreal world, cradled in unstable balance, where light and darkness no longer opposed each other, but embraced.

Slowly.

Tenderly.

Like two lovers too tired to keep loving without hurting each other, too entangled to separate, too worn to forgive. Their embrace was neither gentle nor violent — it was what remains when love becomes memory, when hate becomes silence.

The ground beneath my feet was made of white earth.

But not white like marble or snow. White like bare flesh. A living surface, shifting, pulsing, barely stable, as if it too breathed beneath my steps. A skin of the universe. A soft and taut matter that reacted to my mere presence.

Beneath that strange skin, I saw translucent roots.

Thin.

Branched.

They pulsed slowly, like veins, like arteries, like secret hearts scattered beneath the surface. With each pulse, the earth seemed to sigh, beat, live. And I had the sensation — strange, almost painful — that each beat answered mine.

As if this valley...

Already knew me.

Around me...

Giant flowers floated in the air.

They didn’t grow. They drifted. Suspended, free, strangely peaceful, as if gravity itself had ceased to concern them. Their wide petals opened slowly, to the rhythm of an invisible breath, as if each one followed a secret choreography, dictated by a world I could only barely touch with my gaze.

They were half-organic, half-ethereal.

Not entirely alive, not quite immaterial. Their texture hesitated between skin and light. At times, they seemed to throb like beings made of nerves and sap, and the next moment, they shimmered like mirages ready to dissolve at the slightest word.

And from their open hearts...

Escaped a golden dust.

Fine. Light. Inexhaustible. It fell slowly, very slowly, in silent spirals, like a farewell rain. A rain without sadness. A rain of departure, of gentle ending, of memory. Each grain brushed the air with the delicacy of a secret whispered to forgetfulness.

It was beautiful.

Too beautiful, perhaps.

Like a dream that knows it is about to disappear.

At the center...

There was a tree.

No. The tree.

The one that everything in me recognized without ever having seen. Immense, of a stature the eye alone could not contain, too vast to fit in a single thought, too ancient to be named. It stood there, sovereign, impassive, old as silence, as if the universe itself had leaned on it to breathe.

Its roots...

They plunged straight into a gulf of black water, deep, still — a liquid mirror without bottom, without reflection, swallowing light without giving it back, as if the entire world rested on that darkness. And above, its branches rose, long, stretched, almost supple, brushing a starry sky that obeyed no hour.

A strange sky.

A sky where dawn and dusk coexisted in a slow, mute, endless struggle. Two entwined lights that no longer repelled each other but danced together, clinging to the firmament like two rival breaths doomed never to win.

And its leaves...

Its leaves bled.

Not sap. Not rain.

But a glowing, warm, living light — that dripped drop by drop from the tips, like a burning offering. A liquid clarity, almost unbearable, so beautiful it hurt. It did not illuminate. It wounded. It caressed the air like a truth one cannot touch without trembling.

And I stayed there.

Watching that blood of light flow from the heart of a tree the world may have forgotten... but that my body had never stopped waiting for.

All was silence.

A full, living, saturated silence. A silence so dense it became almost a fabric, a matter of its own, stretched between stars and roots, suspended between each heartbeat of that frozen world. Nothing moved. Nothing spoke. Nothing judged.

And yet...

There was the lullaby.

It came from nowhere. It was carried by no wind — for here, the wind did not blow. The air was still, almost liquid, and yet this melody moved forward, slipped in, crept noiselessly into every invisible space. It didn’t pass through my ears. It didn’t vibrate in the air. It vibrated... in me.

Directly.

In my belly. In my chest. In my bones. A soft, deep, round wave that passed through my insides like a hand placed there forever. A song without words. Without voice. And yet... it said everything. Everything I had fled. Everything I had lost. Everything I had never known how to name. It asked me nothing. Promised nothing. It simply was.

And it knew me.

And there...

There, in the heart of that suspended valley, in the middle of a world that no longer dared to breathe, in that universe stretched like a chord of pure emotion, on the edge of collapse...

She.

She was there.

Not appeared. Not summoned. Present. Obvious. As if this entire landscape had been shaped only to contain her, to wait for her, to serve as her silent setting. She didn’t walk. She didn’t stand. She was. Simply. And in her presence... everything I thought I knew cracked.

A woman.

Yes, perhaps. In form. In the tenderness of her gaze. In the terrible softness that emanated from her like a warm mist. But that word wasn’t enough. It was too small. Too earthly.

A goddess.

And still... not a goddess among others. Not an entity from a pantheon. She was beyond. Above. She erased hierarchies by her mere stillness. She demanded nothing. She did not dominate. She transcended.

She was above everything.

Above language — for no word could contain her without betraying her.

Above good, evil, all the polarities I had learned to fear or desire.

Above even reality — for her presence made my certainties waver, bent my bearings, dissolved all borders between illusion, memory, and matter.

She was there.

And the whole world seemed tilted around her.

Her face...

Gentle.

With a gentleness not of this world. An ancient gentleness, burnished by centuries, washed by the tides of time. A beauty so old it erased all comparison, all reference. She resembled no one, and yet, everything in her felt familiar. Like a memory buried in the bones. Like an image carried within without ever truly having seen it.

Her features reminded me of something...

Something I had never known.

An originless emotion. A storyless tenderness. A fragment of light slipped into my memory before I was born. She wasn’t beautiful the way one says of a body, a face, a being. She was beautiful the way one says of silence, of a breath, of forgiveness.

And her beauty...

Didn’t scream.

It didn’t show. It didn’t seduce. It asked for nothing.

It whispered.

It settled.

It looked — in that way of enveloping without enclosing, of reaching without hurting, of existing without imposing. Her gaze was not piercing. It was vast. Infinite. It didn’t pass through: it received.

And in that gaze...

I felt seen.

Completely.

And her eyes...

They changed.

Subtly. Slowly. Without ever blinking. As if they breathed with me. As if their color was not a fixed thing, but an echo, a shifting reflection of what I was. They didn’t just look at me. They responded.

Golden, sometimes.

Golden like life itself, when a breath of longing, a faint desire for warmth or hope passed through me despite everything. It was a soft, deep light, not dazzling — a light from within. A light seen only through tears.

And then, sometimes...

Pearl gray.

A pale gray, almost silver, almost mist, when doubt returned, when loss took hold, when I remembered — or forgot too much. That gray was not cold. It was tender. It was there to say: I know.

And her hair...

Endless.

Truly. There was no end to its fall. It didn’t fall. It floated. Strands of light, supple, undulating, like algae in an invisible sea. They formed a shifting crown, a living veil, a magnetic field around her, vibrating to the rhythm of her silence.

They didn’t touch the ground.

They caressed the void.

And in that slow undulation, I felt like the entire world was breathing through her.

And her body...

It wasn’t naked. Nor was it clothed. It was surrounded by living textures, materials that seemed from another world — flowering vines, supple, caressing, intertwined with diaphanous fabrics, almost transparent, almost liquid, as if the very air had woven around her a cloak of silence and breath.

None of it covered her.

It accompanied her.

And at her feet... the fibers slowly unraveled. They melted into the ground, without rupture, as if she was not placed there, but gently dissolving into this world, offering herself to it, flowing into it. As if she bled her essence just by existing. Not because she was wounded. But because she gave.

Without restraint.

Her presence...

Her warmth...

It wasn’t a warmth that burns. It wasn’t a light that blinds. It was worse. It was a soft warmth, infinite, constant, offered like a cradle in the dark. A warmth that demanded nothing. That expected no return. That didn’t wait to be deserved.

She did not burn.

She loved.

And it was too much.

Far too much.

Too pure to be endured without breaking from the inside. Too right. Too vast. A warmth that melted the soul, not by excess of fire... but by excess of tenderness. A light with no contours, no limit, but that entered everywhere, even where I had tried to close everything.

She asked for nothing.

But she offered everything.

And I wasn’t ready to receive that.