Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 183: This World Does Not Kill… It Sends Back

Chapter 183: This World Does Not Kill... It Sends Back

The voice continued, still in that low, almost whispered tone that seemed to come from an invisible point right next to my ear, as if it had always been lodged there, too close to ignore, too gentle to hate.

— You exhaled... to relieve yourself.

— To kill.

— But this world... does not kill.

— It sends back.

Each word fell with disarming clarity, without threat, without anger, like a truth one had never wanted to articulate. And yet, it now imposed itself in all the space.

I sat up.

Not in a full movement. Not with a start. Just halfway. Back bent, arms trembling, breath still jolted, shattered in my throat. Each inhalation felt like an incomplete attempt, a struggle against the air itself.

And I lifted my eyes.

Slowly.

I looked ahead.

Not to understand.

But because there was no other direction to take.

The cocoon was no longer there.

It hadn’t broken. It hadn’t exploded under the violence of the scream, nor melted slowly like something fading out. It hadn’t disappeared in silence. No. It had simply ceased to be. As if its function were complete. As if its presence had never been meant to last.

And in its place, there wasn’t just an empty space.

There was a hollow.

An active absence.

A sculpted, precise, intended void — like an imprint left in the air itself. A suspended cavity, still floating at the center of the islet, edged with black filaments, thin, nervous, resembling dead roots or severed nerves. The outline was irregular, but contained. It had the shape of a mouth.

Not a mouth opened to speak.

Not a mouth offered for kissing.

A closed mouth.

Closed calmly.

Closed with judgment.

A mouth that, without a word, refused to listen to another lie. Not out of anger. Not out of fatigue. But because it now knew there was nothing left to hear.

I did not exhale again. I made no gesture to rekindle the breath, to reactivate that force that could have shattered everything. I did not reach out, neither to the void, nor to the suspended hollow where the cocoon had lived. I no longer tried to strike, nor to plead, nor even to resist. There was no more anger in me, no more cry, no more inner theater to maintain.

And, perhaps for the first time, something opened — not a door, not a path, but an understanding. A form of clarity. A bare lucidity.

This world...

This strange, reversible, white, living world that I had crossed like a disguised hell — it was not punishing me for my weakness. It did not hate me for my cracks, nor for the surges of rage I had let tear my hands. It did not reject me for my past, nor for my darkness, nor for all the times I had refused to be saved.

No.

It punished me for my lies.

For every time I pretended not to hear.

For every moment I acted as if I didn’t feel.

For every word choked in my own throat, out of fear of loving or yielding.

I stayed there, without trying to get up, without attempting the slightest movement to straighten or move away, simply frozen in that in-between of the body where nothing yields but nothing holds anymore. On my knees, as one falls silently, as one lays oneself down for lack of strength or meaning, I no longer tried to shape my posture. It was what remained of me.

The breath was short, cut off at the throat, as if each inhale had to carve its way through ashes. And my heart... my heart beat askew, with the lopsided regularity of things too damaged to die, but that also refused to heal.

A cracked drum.

A dissonant rhythm.

Something that sounds wrong, but still sounds.

And despite everything... it kept going.

The pain from the cocoon hadn’t faded. It still vibrated, deeply, nestled somewhere between the marrow and the silence, as if my bones themselves had kept the echo of the scream. It wasn’t a sharp pain, not a clear blade nor a blazing fire. It was a slow burn, older, more intimate. A memory of pain, rooted in the very matter of my body, as if the cocoon had left a living imprint in me.

It was a burning memory, yes — but more than a memory. It was a wave. A pulse that persisted despite the absence, despite the void, despite the end. A muffled vibration, stubborn, indestructible, like a buried song that kept repeating, even without voice, even without mouth, even without air.

A song that refused to die.

And I understood, now, that I would carry it with me.

That it would never leave me.

But another pain was rising. Even older, buried so deep I had nearly mistaken it for myself. More muffled, more intimate, more rooted. A pain that didn’t scream, that didn’t strike, but that settled. Gently. Like a blade forgotten beneath the skin — a blade that, through silence, had become part of my movements, my words, my silences. A blade long tolerated, long denied, buried under layers of rage, survival and denial. And that, suddenly, without violence, without panic... reminded me of its presence.

It did not cut.

It tore nothing.

It did not try to make me bend.

It pushed.

With slowness.

With obstinacy.

It advanced in me like a warm, heavy truth, that asked neither for agreement nor for forgiveness. It lodged in the pit of my belly, not like a scream, but like a knot. A slow weight, anchored at the center, an almost maternal murmur, barely perceptible, but so constant it became impossible to ignore.

And I felt, in that insistence, something that did not want my death.

But my gaze.

And around me, without me knowing exactly when it had started, the world had calmed. Not just slowed. Not just softened. It had quieted into a kind of total stillness, a vast and deep silence, devoid of beat, of breath or of echo. Nothing vibrated anymore. Nothing resonated. The air itself seemed suspended, as if every particle held back a movement, a word, a tremor that would never come again.

Everything seemed frozen, but not dead. Suspended, yes, in a strange tension, as if time itself had decided to hold its breath, right here, right now, so as not to disturb what was unfolding in me.

It was not an absence.

It was an attention.

As if, for the first time in a long while, the world had given me a moment.

A pure moment, without constraint, without violence, without any expected answer.

A moment... to listen.

Not to hear.

To truly listen.

What was rising.

What insisted.

What I could no longer push away.

In that silence so vast it seemed to engulf even my thoughts, he appeared before me. Without noise, without announcement, without any rupture in space. Simply there, as if he had always been there, or as if the world itself had gently laid him at that precise spot, at that precise instant, for a reason I didn’t yet understand.

It was one of those beings I had seen at the very beginning — those strange forms, between two ages, between two states, between two truths. Neither child. Nor adult. Nor human. Nor entirely something else. But this time, there was only one. A single one. Isolated. Offered to silence.

Small. Thin. Almost translucent.

He seemed woven from pale light and soft matter, like a figure molded in tender wax, still warm, still fragile, still malleable. He moved toward me in slow, measured steps, and yet... his feet made no sound. No trace. No vibration. As if even the ground refused to contradict him. As if the entire world were still holding its breath so as not to disturb what he was.

And in his silence, he carried something I could not name.

But that I already felt.

He approached slowly, with that particular slowness that comes neither from hesitation nor from caution, but from a silent certainty. He wasn’t trying to impose himself, not trying to explain. He simply came. As if his place, here, had never been in question. As if his appearance had always been inevitable.

He advanced without fear. His body, supple and thin, did not tremble. He wasn’t tense. He wasn’t fragile. He was... serene. Deeply serene.

He had no words.

No gestures.

And above all... he had no face.

Or rather, he wore one, but blurred, shifting, undefined, as if it changed with the rhythm of my breathing, as if my gaze wasn’t yet allowed to fix it. A face one senses, one guesses, but that refuses to exist in a single form.

And yet... he looked at me.

Despite everything, his eyes... his eyes shone. Not with a hard gleam or a reflection from elsewhere, but with an inner light, soft, ancient, almost warm. A light that didn’t try to pierce, nor to convince, nor even to understand. It was there, simple, constant, peaceful.

In that gaze, there was neither judgment nor pity. Nothing of those human postures that dissect, that categorize, that condemn or try to save. Nothing that divides between guilt and forgiveness.

There was only... patience.

And maybe, deep down... it wasn’t the pain I feared the most, but that gaze that judged nothing

A vast, deep patience that weighed nothing but held everything. A waiting without pressure, without condition, as if that gaze could remain there, indefinitely, even if I never changed. Even if I never responded. Even if I kept running away.

And that patience... disarmed me more than all the screams.

I wanted to move. My body, by reflex, by habit, by a worn-out survival instinct, tried to straighten. Flee. Get up. Push away that presence too calm, too bare. Maybe even spit something out — a harsh word, an insult, a burst of anger to protect myself, to hide again. But nothing came. No strength. No cry. And above all... no real desire.

I did nothing.

Not from paralysis.

Not from surrender.

But because, this time, I was simply tired of running. Tired of struggling inside. Tired of repeating the same defensive gestures, the same automatic refusals. Tired of pushing away what wasn’t threatening me.

So I stayed there.

And I let him come.

Without resistance.

Without bravado.

Just... in a quiet, exhausted weariness, but perhaps, deep down, more sincere than anything I had opposed until then.

And he reached out his hand. Slowly. Without hesitation, without solemnity either. Like one reaches out toward something that has always been there, that has never needed to be earned. His fingers, as they approached, seemed cold... but weren’t, really. It wasn’t a glacial cold, not a hostile one. Rather an absence of warmth. A strange neutrality, almost soothing. As if his skin was neither flesh, nor matter, but memory.

He didn’t caress.

He forced nothing.

He didn’t guide my body, nor my breath, nor my thoughts.

He simply placed his palm, open, calm, at the center of my chest — right there, on the spot where my heart still beat askew, like a drum searching for its own rhythm.

And then...

Something changed.

Not outside.

Inside.

An infinitesimal shift, but irrevocable. As if that simple contact had moved a line, a fault, an ancient lock. As if the world, too, had held back a shiver.

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