Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 174: The Breath of Aesvar

Chapter 174: The Breath of Aesvar

She smiled.

And that smile...

It wasn’t a mere movement of the lips. It wasn’t a gesture, nor a code, nor a sign. It wasn’t even human, not really. It was the whole world gently folding into the corner of her mouth. Even the sun itself seemed to lean into it, to bend, as if it recognized there a forgotten origin.

A warmth emanated from it.

Not a warmth that comforts. An ancient warmth. Dense. Alive. A warmth so real, so pure, so bare... that it became almost painful. Like a too-direct light on a still-open wound. It wasn’t trying to soothe. It excused nothing. It simply was.

And that smile...

It was the kind of warmth one only receives once.

Only once.

Maybe at the very beginning. Maybe at the end. The kind of warmth one can’t name, but the whole body instantly recognizes — like a cradle, like a farewell, like a hand resting on the nape just before one falls.

And the worst part is that we know.

That we won’t find it again.

Never.

And we’ll spend the rest of our lives searching for that smile in gazes too pale, in gestures too rushed, in silences too empty.

In vain.

Then she spoke again.

Not like one resumes a speech.

Like one resumes a breath.

Her voice didn’t impose. It settled. Gently. In the silence. In the moment. Like a last rain before exile, like a final gesture before disappearance.

— I wish you courage.

And that word, so often emptied of its meaning, here vibrated with a slowness almost maternal. It didn’t sound like encouragement. But like a prayer. Like a thought entrusted to fire.

— Walk on despite the pain.

Not without pain. Not against it. Despite. With. Inside. Because it will be part of the path. Because it will be the path.

— Walk on despite the antheses.

And that last word... opened in me like a slow flower. A black flower. A blooming of scars. A word that bleeds softly, but doesn’t kill. A word of beauty and loss. Of blooming too soon. Of death at the heart of awakening.

Walk on.

Despite everything.

Because there will be no other direction.

And then...

Everything tore apart.

Without warning. Without transition. All at once.

The vision split like a too-taut canvas torn by bare hands. A silent scream through matter. An irreversible rupture. Not a gentle end. Not a fading. A ripping.

Like a too-perfect dream one refuses to follow.

Because we know there will be no return. Because we know we would leave behind something essential. Something we would never recover.

No more valley.

No more tree.

No more red light bleeding from the heights.

No more lullaby slipping into the flesh.

Everything disappeared.

In a single stroke. As if none of it had ever existed. As if the world, ashamed of having shown itself, had erased everything behind — leaving only raw, intact, cold emptiness. And me, standing in the middle of the silence, breathless, my body still full of what had just passed through me, I remained there.

With the memory of a world I would never see again.

And the soft burn of what it had left in me.

The world...

That infinite world.

The one that had held me, erased me, suspended me. The one that had twisted under the weight of a truth vaster than it, vaster than me. That world... returned to itself.

Like a body closing after a wound.

Like a dream retracting at the moment of awakening.

It closed without a sound. Without a shudder. Without the slightest ceremony.

And I found it again.

Flat.

Silent.

Extinguished.

A frozen set, emptied of all fever, all magic. A space become functional again, neutral, harmless. As if nothing had happened. As if the spark, the burn, the light... had never occurred.

But I knew.

I had seen it.

And now, this silence — this false silence — would never be the same again.

I stayed there.

On the ground.

Back curved. Hands open. Head lowered. Not crushed. Not destroyed. Just... emptied. Reduced to what I was without defense. Alone. Completely alone. But not like before.

Short of breath.

As if my body too was struggling to come down, to find its rhythm again, to return to a world too narrow after what it had contained. Heart in shambles. Beating out of reflex, without order, as if it was still trying to understand what it was supposed to feel.

Dry eyes.

Unable to cry more. But the soul... drenched. Dripping. Saturated with light, with vertigo, with that ancient warmth that kept flowing, there, under my skin, like a tide one no longer knows how to hold back.

I was in shock.

But not just by what I had seen.

By what I had dared to see.

By what I had felt. By what I had let in. By what I had been. By what... had passed. Like a comet. Like an offering. Like a clarity one can never forget — even if it never returns.

And I stayed there.

Motionless.

Because moving would have been a betrayal of that moment.

And inside me...

Nothing was like before.

Something had tipped. Something had torn, then been stitched differently. More fragile, more true perhaps, but irreversibly changed. I was still here. Yes. Same body. Same breath. But it was no longer the same inside.

And I didn’t understand.

What had I just seen...?

What...

I kept asking myself.

Again. Again. And again.

But the question did not seek an answer. It spun on itself, like a spiral of vertigo, like a melody too ancient to be translated. It wasn’t a question.

It was a beat.

A backwash.

A voiceless call, thrown toward something I could no longer name, but which my body, it, would never forget.

And I was there.

Inside that loop.

Without exit.

But with her.

I had already seen a god.

I had even spoken with him. Looked him in the eye. Felt his breath. Experienced his power. I had believed that was the unimaginable. That it was there — the summit. The extreme. The untouchable.

But this...

This...

What was this...?

It wasn’t a god.

No.

It wasn’t an entity. Not a being. Not a form endowed with consciousness. It wasn’t a myth, nor a legend, nor even a well-kept secret.

It was beyond all that.

Far beyond.

It was the raw material of dreams. What dreams draw from but never equal. What throbs behind closed eyelids, when the soul forgets itself and touches, for a moment, something greater than itself.

It was the mother of vertigo.

Not the kind that frightens.

The kind that draws you in. The kind that calls. The kind that makes your neck and hands tremble. The one we try to flee... and beg to return.

It was the beginning and end of everything.

Of tenderness.

Of pain.

Of light.

Of forgetting.

A place, a presence, an origin... that even the gods, perhaps, remember with dread.

Maybe...

Maybe that’s why.

Maybe this time, I wasn’t sheltered. Not wrapped. Not protected by the comforting layers of illusion. Not carried by a dream, by a filter, by those invisible veils that, until now, softened everything. Maybe this time...

I was in my real body.

The only one.

The one that feels. The one that trembles. The one that receives everything without sorting, without turning away. The one that doesn’t lie. The one with no mask, no screen, no armor.

I was naked.

Completely.

Exposed not to the world, but to this. To her. To me.

Present.

Finally.

In the raw truth of what I am, when nothing protects anymore, when nothing hides anymore.

And maybe...

That’s why I felt everything.

Saw everything.

Took everything.

Because, for once...

I was there.

I had gone insane.

Not symbolically. Not a little. Not halfway. Mad, truly. Mad at the simple sight of her. Mad from the moment her gaze met mine. Mad just from listening — or thinking I was listening — when no sound passed through the air. Mad from feeling her warmth brush my bones, my skin, my belly, my breath.

Mad from being seen.

Touched.

Loved.

And I stayed there, trembling inside, not knowing if I wanted to vomit, scream, hit myself, or end everything. Something in me looped endlessly, slammed against the walls of my mind with dull violence, a question without answer, a rage of helplessness.

What the fuck just happened?

I repeated it endlessly.

What the fuck.

Like an absurd mantra hurled at the face of infinity. Like the last refuge of a collapsing mind. Two words. Two slaps. Two bursts of humanity trying, desperately, to gain footing again.

But nothing came.

Nothing.

Because after her...

There was no more ground.

And then...

Who the fuck is Aesvar?

That name.

That name, still vibrating in my throat like a breath too ancient to be mine. A name that didn’t come from me, but seemed to have preceded me. That had been etched somewhere between my bones and memory, like a forgotten scar.

Why had she said I was his envoy?

His envoy.

I hadn’t asked for anything. Signed nothing. Chosen nothing. No pact. No offering. No loyalty. I was just... here. Lost. Broken. Alive by accident.

And now, that name clung to my skin.

Aesvar.

Like a foreign truth tattooed on me without my consent.

Too many questions.

Too many emotions.

Too much vertigo.

Everything was colliding in my head. Everything. Images. Sounds. Silences. The words she hadn’t said. Those she had whispered. And that name, again, always, pounding in my skull like an echo that couldn’t be stopped.

It was like a sea turned upside down.

As if the world had flipped. As if the sky was falling downward. As if everything I thought stable was floating in a space with no up, no down, no anchor.

And me, in the middle of it...

I no longer knew what to do.

And then...

My body said no.

All at once. Without pretense. There was no more strength. No more tension. No more support. Just a soft break, an irrevocable fold. My mind, for its part, screamed stop. But it was an inner scream, a scream without sound, without mouth. A soul’s scream at the end of its course.

And just like that...

I passed out.

Not theatrically. Not in a burst. I fell. Struck down. Folded. Ripped from the world without resistance. Like a rope pulled too tight then suddenly released. Like a breath no longer even trying to be held.

Silence welcomed me.

Not harshly. Not like an end. No. It welcomed me with a treacherous softness. A strange tenderness, almost loving. Like a blanket one no longer wants to leave. Like a warm belly, vast, without contours, ready to engulf me.

And I sank.

Again.

Because it was all I had left to do.

Because I was no longer able to stay awake in that world.

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