Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 179: The Empty Mirror

Chapter 179: The Empty Mirror

The voice...

As always.

Returned.

Discreet. Infiltrated. Very low, almost erased, as if it too, this time, hesitated to speak, as if it too, in this instant, was afraid of its own truth. It no longer held the tone of provocation, nor that of gentleness — only that of those who know. Those who watch... and speak.

— You’ve won, she murmured.

And I smiled.

A wide smile. Spread across my whole mouth. A grimace that had nothing joyful but everything visceral. A taut smile, too taut, like a rope snapping without sound. A twisted smile, split by tension, by excess, by victory. I felt it distort my face, like the grimace of a child who no longer knows whether it’s joy or pain.

Then I screamed.

Not a cry of rage. Not a call.

A pure scream.

A scream of raw exaltation, of euphoria ripped from the depths of the void, a scream that no longer needed to be contained or justified, a scream that vibrated to the tips of my outstretched arms. I raised my arms toward that inverted sky, arms open, palms offered, the burning glow in my pupils, pride howling from my guts.

— Yes! I roared.

— I won!

And the voice answered.

Still just as calm.

Still just as present.

— You destroyed him, she said.

— The only one in you who could have loved you.

I spat on the ground, with a dry contempt, immediate, almost animal.

— He didn’t exist.

But she didn’t back down. She didn’t fade.

On the contrary, she slid closer. Even closer.

Like a soft blade. Like a hand placed on a wound not to heal, but to point it out. She wasn’t arguing. She wasn’t apologizing. She spoke. Simply.

A truth that no longer needs to shout to be heard.

— You just made him real...

— by killing him.

And silence fell.

Not like forgetfulness.

Like a sentence.

The void spun.

Again.

But this time, it was no longer a simple imbalance, nor a controlled drift — it was a slow, deep, thick rotation, as if all space had begun to spin on itself with the slowness of a sick planet, unable to find its axis, its breath, its center.

Everything rocked.

Everything twisted.

Not violently. But with that disturbing regularity of things too vast, too old, too tired to collapse suddenly.

An inverted gravity.

A world turned in on itself.

A cosmic heart beating backward.

And me, lost in it, suspended in the midst of an unending vertigo, I was falling... without descending.

I drifted in a fall with no origin, no starting point, no memory. A fall that came from nothing, that led nowhere, but that lasted. Indefinitely.

And I...

I felt empty.

But not that painful void, not that moist hollow that still cries in silence, not that lack that reaches out, even unspoken. No. It wasn’t a void that calls. Not a void that begs.

It was graver.

Deeper.

An inner abyss. Steady. Silent. A black opening in me, vast, calm, irreducible — like an eyeless gaze, turned inward.

An abyss... that stares.

That no longer screams. Because it understands screaming is useless. Because it has already screamed all it had to scream.

That no longer hopes. Because there’s nothing left to wait for.

That no longer even judges.

That waits.

Not for something.

Not for someone.

It waits... for me to understand.

Or for me to collapse.

And the voice...

Again.

But weaker than ever.

More fragile than anything before it, as if it were nothing more than a last breath clinging somewhere in the marrow, in the deep fibers, a residual whisper you hear without listening, but that stays, imprinted, etched in the bone.

— You are nothing but a mask...

The word echoed without force, but without evasion.

— But you’re still standing.

And in that fragment of a sentence, there was neither judgment, nor pity, nor consolation. Just a kind of naked truth, placed between exhaustion and stubbornness.

— So... continue.

And I fell.

At last.

Not slowly.

Not like one who surrenders, arms open, eyes closed.

But all at once. In a single motion of ending.

Like a statue collapsing silently. Not because it was struck. But because something, inside, broke. Loosened. Went quiet.

And there was nothing left to hold it up.

In rising again, knees heavy, back stiff as if bearing a century of falling, I knew.

Not a hunch.

Not a premonition.

A naked certainty, sharp, already embedded in my flesh before I could even name it: I would never again be able to look at myself in a mirror.

Never.

Not because I wouldn’t want to.

But because I wouldn’t see anything anymore.

Ever again.

Because from now on, every reflective surface would show me something other than a face. Something more raw. More hollow. More final.

It would be empty.

The mirror.

Truly empty.

Not distorted. Not darkened.

Empty.

No reflection.

No shadow.

No gaze returned to me.

Only space. Silence. Nothingness.

Because what I had become... no longer had a reflection.

But despite that thought, despite that lucid, sharp, irreversible knowledge, a smile...

Slowly stretched across my face.

Not a smile of relief.

Not a smile of forgiveness.

A wide smile, feverish, distorted, disproportionate. A smile of excess, born somewhere between vertigo and void, a smile too large to fit in a human mouth. It rose from the depths, opened like an old wound, finally freed.

Slow.

Wide.

Mad.

— YEEES... I whispered, in a shattered voice.

— That’s what I wanted!

— That’s what I deserved!

And the laugh burst forth.

Not a logical sequence.

Not a reaction.

An effusion.

A melting.

I melted into laughter like one melts into burning metal. A laugh of a beast unchained, of a creature freed, of a monster finally released from waiting, from guilt, from all forms of attachment. A laugh of a cracked mask, of an inverted face, of a me without me. A laugh without heart, but full of shards — shards of voice, of shadow, of inverted light.

And that laugh...

Passed through this world of love.

Split it.

Tore it.

Profaned it.

Like a sacred blasphemy hurled into the face of a god who no longer even condemns. Like a reversed song, played backward, in a forgotten tongue, on a note too high to be human.

And the echo...

Never silenced it.

Never.

It still vibrated, somewhere.

Like a cry of ending turned origin.

Looking around me, eyes still burning from that laugh that hadn’t known how to die, I realized I didn’t know where I had fallen, this time.

Not even a feeling.

Just this empty statement: no landmark, no clue, no memory.

Only a space.

A white space.

But not empty — no, it wasn’t the peaceful absence of nothingness.

It was worse.

It was white.

A white too pure, too bright, too smooth to belong to the real world. A white without flaw, without shade, without shadow, that seemed to deny all the ugliness, all the filth, all the fatigue of the world I still carried on me.

An insulting white.

Mocking.

A white of pretense, of elegant falsehood, of clean erasure.

The kind of white found only in happy dreams — the kind one has when loved, forgiven, comforted.

The kind I had been excluded from.

Forever.

The ground, if there was one, had no texture. It offered me no support, no resistance, no warmth.

And the air, all around me, had no weight.

It carried nothing.

No breath.

No promise.

No presence.

And yet... despite that smooth, motionless, borderless white, I had this persistent, tenacious, almost physical impression that everything around me was pressing against me.

Not violently.

Not like a direct threat or a closing trap.

But with that mute, continuous, invisible insistence of a world that tightens around you without touching you. A diffuse, absolute pressure that came from everywhere at once — from the ground that didn’t exist, from the weightless air, from that too-white light that wasn’t neutral.

Everything pressed on me.

Everything watched me.

Without eyes. Without a face.

But with that calm precision that allows no escape.

And above all... everything judged me.

Not in anger.

Not in contempt.

But in silence.

And gently.

As if this place did not shout. Did not punish.

But simply observed.

As if that very whiteness was a verdict, whispered without voice, transmitted without violence, but all the more crushing for not being spoken aloud.

So I took a step.

Just one.

Slow.

Measured.

Not out of curiosity. Not to advance. Just to verify I still existed. That my legs responded. That the ground, even without texture, still allowed me the right to touch it.

And then... another.

One more step.

Almost identical. Almost useless.

But charged with that strange tension one feels when walking through a sacred — or cursed — place. I wouldn’t have known which. Each step seemed to emit a shiver in the air, a barely perceptible vibration, as if even this silent white judged my every movement.

And yet, I kept going.

Not to flee.

But because standing still would have been worse.

And before me... she appeared.

She.

Not a woman.

Not even a figure.

Nothing one could name, point at, enclose in a form. It was a light. Pure. Suspended in this white space, without root or direction, but terribly present. A light without source, without shadow. Bright. Perfect. And above all... motionless.

Not like the others.

Not like those blurred, trembling, fragile lights one sometimes meets in memories, in dreams, in ecstasies. No. This one didn’t shimmer. It didn’t float. It didn’t breathe like the rest of the world. It didn’t try to move, or touch.

It... radiated.

Simply.

With that dry, uncompromising, silent purity that asks for nothing, forgives nothing, gives nothing — but that is there. Present. Irrefutable.

And in that light, I read something that wasn’t a word.

Something prior to language.

Something absolute.

She was an answer.

But an answer one was not allowed to receive.

An answer unearned, never properly asked for. A silent answer, written in the air, offered not as a gift, but as a truth. A truth too beautiful for the living. Too vast. Too clear. Too unbearable for those who have known the fall.

My eyes burned.

Not like under harsh light, not like one who cries too long.

It was an inner burn, deep, stretched into the nerve of vision itself. A white, acidic pain, as if that clarity before me pierced my pupils, my bones, to cut directly into what remained of my soul.

And yet...

I wanted to look away.

By reflex.

By instinct for survival.

Like one looks away from a god too close, from an answer one doesn’t want to hear, from a love one doesn’t deserve.

But I couldn’t.

Something held me.

Not an external force.

Not a constraint.

It was me.

Or what was left of me.

Something in me knew that one doesn’t look away from a truth like this — even if it burns, even if it destroys.

You look at it.

Because you can’t do anything else.