Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 190: Neither Above, Nor Below

Chapter 190: Neither Above, Nor Below

I looked up... or perhaps it was the sky, vast and mute, that bent down toward me, as if it had been watching me in silence all along, waiting for me to finally notice it.

A staircase emerged from the mist, sinuous and spectral, like an endless spine, twisted by centuries of waiting, translucent, floating between worlds.

It rose — or perhaps sank — into a kind of cosmic milk, a substance both dense and soft, white to the point of oblivion, alive like a dream you brush against without ever grasping.

It was impossible to say whether it led upward, inward, or simply... elsewhere. To a place that language cannot name. To a place that obeys no direction anymore.

My foot reached the first step. It was warm. Not warm like a sun-heated stone, nor like living flesh — a strange warmth, enveloping, almost intimate. Its substance was neither hard nor soft.

It resisted without pushing back. Yielded without collapsing. As if it belonged to an in-between I could not name, a state that nothing in the world before could truly explain. And yet... it accepted me. Unconditionally.

A contact was established. Between shell and skin. Between memory and silence.

Each step became a link. Beneath my sole, the frosted glass crackled softly, as if it held an ancient tension, a contained, fragile energy.

With each pressure, a vibration rose, faint but real, as if my feet brushed the strings of a forgotten instrument. As if each step awakened, one by one, the notes of a long-buried song.

And this song... didn’t need words to pass through me.

Around me, a rain began to form. Discreetly. Without noise.

It fell soundlessly, endlessly, as if it had always been there, waiting for a gesture or a breath to dare descend. Translucent. Slow.

Each drop seemed suspended in the world before settling, with a tenderness almost shy. It wasn’t a downpour. It was a shower of sighs. A trickling of light souls. As if the sky itself were crying without sadness, simply to accompany.

Each drop burst on my skin like a tear that wasn’t mine — an emotion from elsewhere, soft, silent, offered without violence, as if the world cried in my place what I no longer knew how to let flow.

Despite this new landscape — this silent rain, this borderless sky, this light that seemed to erase everything — despite the doubts that continued to haunt me like loyal shadows clinging to my heels, I began to climb again. Not out of defiance. Not out of certainty. But because, deep down, something in me had decided. Silently. Slowly. That I could no longer retreat.

I had to move forward, from now on, without detour, without escape.

I had to do it for Lysara, for Cassandre, for those two souls I had wounded too long through absence, through fear, through hatred of myself. I had to become the strongest being in this world — not to dominate, not to rise, but to protect.

And this time, I had no time to lose. Not here. Not anywhere.

So I climbed. Step by step. The stairs followed one another, tirelessly, all alike, and yet... all differently blurred, as if the universe itself hesitated to give them a clear outline, as if matter waited for me to pass through to choose its form. Nothing was stable. Nothing was defined.

It was an ascent into the world’s indecision, into that murky zone where reality blends with dream, where each step became a creation. And I continued, not knowing where I was going, but knowing I could no longer stop.

Hours passed. Or what I believed were hours. Time itself seemed to have dissolved into the walking, into the milky air, into the bottomless silence of this suspended place. And then, gradually, something appeared. Subtly at first. Like a visual quiver, a hesitation in the void.

Some kind of flowers now floated all around me — scattered, slow, countless — as if space had germinated within its own silence. They didn’t grow on anything. They drifted. Pale blue. Luminous. Motionless.

Yet... they looked like eyes. Sleepwalking eyes, half-closed, floating without gaze, but not without presence. They seemed to observe me without awareness, or perhaps dream of me without knowing it.

They demanded something from me — I felt it, vaguely, in the way they floated around me, motionless yet tense, as if suspended in an expectation I didn’t yet understand.

Something in them was probing me without eyes, sounding me without language, and what they were asking... I didn’t yet know what it was. But I knew I would have to give it to them. Sooner or later.

Then came a smell. Soft. Unexpected.

The scent of washed sheets, still warm from the sun or some ancient breath. Of an empty shell, light, abandoned without pain. Of a first breath curled in on itself, fragile, unfinished.

A scent of childhood without memories — without images, without precise scenes — but which still pulsed in the belly like a forgotten trace.

A scent of love without source. Without face. Without voice. But present. Whole. As if the world, for a moment, breathed in my place to remind me of what I had always searched for without knowing it.

I wavered. Not abruptly. Not like one falls. A strange, elusive sensation. It wasn’t a fall. Nothing gave way beneath my feet. But something tipped, inside.

As if my own center of gravity shifted. Not just in place. In century.

As if a part of me — older, deeper — suddenly reclaimed its place in the body.

That silent shift was enough to tremble the balance. A slow wave. Internal. Irreversible.

I was used to it. Inner vertigo wasn’t unfamiliar to me.

For a long time, it had been part of the path. So, despite this strange oscillation, despite this sensation of motionless displacement, I forced myself to move forward.

One step after the other. Slowly.

I held myself upright, as best I could, not to face the world, but to avoid dislocation.

I strove to remain serene. Or at least... to appear so. Because deep down, it was always that: containing the collapse. Taming it without stopping it. Walking in spite of it.

But I felt it. A crack had opened. Not in the ground. Not in space. Under my tongue. Behind my teeth. In that obscure zone of the body where words wait, in silence, to be torn out or forgiven.

Something wanted to come out. A word. A name. A cry maybe. I didn’t know which yet. But it was there. Pressing. Vibrating. Like a core of fire lodged just at the edge of breath.

My whole being tightened to hold it back... or to let it through.

I suspected it came from them. The flowers. Those floating, silent presences, but not harmless. Something in their silence pushed me, hollowed me.

I gently cleared my throat, as if to loosen that knot, that stuck thing wanting to burst out uninvited. Then I bit my lip, a reflexive gesture, to hold back, to channel, to anchor.

I drew a deep breath, hoping to center myself, to calm down. It was a mistake.

The air was saturated. Heavy. It carried the memory of the flowers, their suspended expectation, their silent song. I inhaled too deeply. Too far. And what it contained... entered me.

The scent of the flowers grew denser. Thicker. Almost sticky. It no longer floated around me — it seeped in. Through every pore. Every shiver.

It no longer just wrapped me: it penetrated me. Slowly. Silently.

I felt my strength slip away, fray beneath my skin, as if drawn out by an insidious sweetness. This perfume... didn’t seduce me. It called me. But not toward a place. Not toward a direction.

It called me to the reverse of myself. Toward that bare and troubled zone I no longer dared descend into. Where the names I’d forgotten still slept, burning, voiceless.

So, without really deciding, my foot moved back. One step. One stair. I descended... or ascended. What did it matter. Meaning was fading. Only the movement mattered, that subtle shift of the body backward or perhaps inward.

It wasn’t flight. Nor impulse. It was a response. A soft inflection. Something in me said no — or maybe not yet — without anger, without fear. Just... a curve. A suspension. A breath within the ascent.

But I needed more. Much more. A simple dizziness, a too-dense scent, a greedy flower draining my strength — none of that could stop me now.

Not after what I’d been through. Not after what I’d left behind.

The spinning could cling to my temples, the air grow heavier, my legs falter... I would go on. Because there was no other way. Because each step, even blurred, brought me closer to what I had to face.

So I resumed the ascent. Silent. Alone. On this endless staircase, where each step was not a conquest... but a fidelity.

I left their mystical gaze without turning my head. Not out of defiance. But because I no longer needed to.

Their presence still slid down my back, suspended in the air like a thought one doesn’t forget, but stops carrying.

I went on, straight ahead, without looking back, because this time... I had nothing to flee.

Yet... I felt it. They were still there. Hovering at my back, like slow shadows, motionless, but full.

Like thoughts one doesn’t dare relive, thinks overcome, but that remain there, crouched, silent, ready to tremble at the slightest memory.

They no longer touched my body, but they still weighed on my neck, on my spine, like a wordless memory, like a gaze no longer seen but which continues... to know.

I knew it.

Once again, I had entered a place with no return. One of those places that don’t close behind you with a slam, but swallow you in silence, by the simple fact that you never quite come back from them.

A place that defied all the logic I knew. Bent them, warped them, rendered them obsolete. Here, time obeyed nothing. Space itself seemed to breathe differently.

And I... was there, at the heart of this strangeness, without key, without bearings, but with that mute certainty that I could no longer go back.

A world of milk, of nacre, and of unspilled blood. A world motionless in appearance, but full of invisible pulses.

A world soft on the surface — too soft — like a prolonged caress at the edge of suffocation. Here, light rocked the shapes like a silent sea. Here, nothing screamed. But everything judged. This world did not break.

It punished. Gently. Slowly. Tenderly. To the point of strangulation. Without apparent violence. As if weakness here was not a fault... but a target.

Each step, now, would be one more refusal... or one less acceptance. A mute negotiation between what I let go and what I was not yet ready to receive. One more step into the night of myself, where advancing no longer meant growing... but choosing what to abandon.