Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 192: A Refused Softness

Chapter 192: A Refused Softness

My steps were no longer mine.

I could feel it with every movement. Every step. They had changed in nature. They still obeyed, yes, but without flexibility, without warmth.

As if they belonged to someone else. Someone stiffer. Drier. Emptier. A being on standby, on automatic, whose body moved more out of habit than will.

I was still there, somewhere beneath the skin, but it was as if my gestures no longer had a center, no true momentum. Just a line to follow. A weight to drag.

Someone who no longer wanted to sit. Not because he was doing well. But precisely because he couldn’t anymore. Because he knew that sitting meant risking collapse.

It meant accepting the dizziness, letting rise what burned beneath the surface. So he stayed standing. He moved forward. Out of refusal more than strength. Out of fear of what stillness might have revealed.

Far ahead of me, something was changing. Subtly. But enough to break the silent rhythm of this looping staircase. A variation in the light, a quiver in the air, an almost imperceptible shift in the texture of the steps.

It wasn’t yet a shape. Not yet an apparition. Just a slippage. As if the world, tired of repeating, finally allowed itself an inflection.

A shadow, first. Floating. Undefined. Barely distinguishable from the rest, like a fold in the light. But it began to take shape. Slowly. Inexorably.

As I approached, its outlines took form, hesitant but persistent, as if my walking revealed it, as if it only existed because I kept moving forward. It didn’t move. It waited for me. Or maybe... it was emerging from me.

It was a creature. Suspended on the side of the staircase, between two spirals of mist, like a shard of shadow torn from an unfinished dream.

It rested on nothing. It floated, unmoving, incomplete, almost faded. As if it wasn’t quite born yet, or not quite here. A body without weight, without anchor, suspended in waiting. It wasn’t watching me.

But it knew I saw it.

It had a barely drawn body. Transparent. Vibrant. Like traced in fine ink on a surface of water.

Its silhouette seemed to ripple with every beat of the silence, uncertain, but present.

Its eyes... they took up almost its entire face. Huge. Deep. Like two lakes of ink, diluted in warm milk — dark, but soft, with no sharp contours, like thoughts melted into ancient warmth. They weren’t staring at me. They held me.

The creature didn’t speak. Its lips, if it had any, didn’t move.

And yet... I heard something. Not a voice. Not words. A sound. An old air, broken, scraped by time.

Something between a restrained moan and a forgotten kiss. A song without consonants, without any identifiable language, but not without direction. It wasn’t thrown into space. It came toward me. Viscerally.

As if it had been composed for my skin, for my memory, for the precise hollow of my name.

It was singing me something I had forgotten... to forget.

A melody too ancient to be recognized, but familiar enough to disturb.

Something buried so deep even forgetting itself had looked away. And yet, in that moment, it was returning. Slowly. Like a dull pain. Or an unbearable tenderness.

I stepped back instinctively. A reflexive gesture, inherited from another me, older, lower.

The one who had fled too long in the lower world.

The one who had grown used to stepping back before understanding, to tearing away before listening.

My body hadn’t yet learned that this world didn’t attack. It showed. It sang. Even if sometimes, that was worse.

My neck tensed, all at once, as if something had grabbed me from behind, invisible but real.

My throat closed slowly, like a door slammed shut from the inside without sound. My breath turned sharp, dry, too fast, as if it wanted to come in and go out at once.

Each inhale cut deeper inside, hollowed a void too narrow to hold what was rising.

— No, Anthony, I murmured to myself, without truly deciding to speak. The word had come out alone, raw, sharp, like a blade of refusal springing from deep in the throat — more reflex than thought, an instinctive tear to avoid falling back in.

I could feel it. Something was wrong. Not outside. Inside me. A discreet but deep crack had opened. I didn’t yet know where. But it was tipping. Slowly.

As if a part of me was slipping to the side, losing its axis, its weight, its shape. A soft disorientation, almost imperceptible, but real enough for everything I was to start vibrating askew.

Then, without giving me time to understand, it moved. Barely. Just a little. But toward me. In my direction.

The creature didn’t walk. It glided. Effortlessly. Without friction. As if the air itself had flattened to let it pass. As if space had no more roughness, no more density, no more laws.

Its presence moved forward soundlessly, without violence... but with that icy precision of inevitable things.

Its song grew closer. More intimate. Too much, perhaps. Too dense. Too direct.

It slipped into the hollows of my ears, my bones, my memories. It no longer passed through the air. It passed through me. It resonated inside, as if it had always been there, waiting, curled up in a forgotten chamber.

And suddenly, everything became too much. Too sharp. Too close. Too real.

I felt a tear. But not on my cheek. Not where emotions are shown. It was born lower. In my throat.

A strangled tear, stuck there for years, knotted in a fold of silence too old to have a name. It didn’t fall. It weighed. Like a truth never spoken. Like a call always refused.

I no longer understood. Anything. My thoughts scattered, shattered into unlinked fragments.

There was no logic left, no reason, no shelter in the mind.

And my hand... my hand moved. Slowly. Abruptly.

I didn’t know. But it wasn’t me.

It had moved on its own, like an animal detached from me, driven by an ancient instinct, raw, untouched by my will.

A gesture without master. As if something inside had decided to act in my place.

It lifted. Tensed. And struck. A sharp, clean blow, devoid of thought. An animal movement, a cornered beast that seeks not to win but to repel, to survive the instant.

My palm passed through the creature like one passes through a dream — without resistance, without flesh, like through warm, inhabited mist. But it wavered. A slight imbalance, an imperceptible shiver in the substance of its body.

Its eyes, vast and liquid, clouded. A new opacity slipped in. And its song... was cut. Like a note broken in the middle of a breath.

Then I felt... the void. Immense. Hollowed out all at once in my chest. A brutal, irrational lack, as if something had been torn out without me knowing what.

As if, by striking, I had broken a bond I didn’t yet know. Something fragile. Invisible. But alive.

And in that gesture, in that reflex... I had become a beast again. A frightened beast. Fleeing. One that repels what it doesn’t understand. That destroys to defend. Out of panic.

That panic — I still felt it, lodged just beneath my ribs.

I dropped to my knees. Not from weakness. My body still held.

But because something inside had capsized. A deep dizziness, without height, without abyss. Just a loss of axis, a sudden break in the balance I thought I had.

My legs buckled like one lays down arms — not to the world, but to oneself.

I hated myself. So much. For fleeing. Again. For letting fear reclaim its place, for falling back into my old reflexes, the ones I thought I’d left behind. A quiet, cruel fall. A defeat without cries.

I who had sworn to move forward, to hold on, to no longer give in... I had already relapsed. As if resolution never weighed enough against wear. As if wanting was never enough to become.

So I did... what a normal person would do. Or at least, what I imagined a normal person would do.

I lowered my head. My gaze fell on the step’s floor, unable to rise. I didn’t dare look at her. My voice, though, came out despite me, low, cracked, carried by an old shame.

— I’m sorry... really... really sorry...

I didn’t speak loudly. I didn’t even beg. I implored. Without strength. Without dignity. Just with what I had left: the painful awareness of having hurt what I didn’t yet understand.

In that silence, I felt rejected. Not brutally. Not with hatred. But with that distant softness that hurts even more — like a gaze that turns away without crash, because it has stopped hoping.

I felt... like a nothing. A being fallen too often, forgiven too often, now invisible even to the eyes of the world that, until then, had carried me.

That world so gentle, so patient, so silently compassionate... had, for a second, forgotten me. Or perhaps simply... stopped believing in me.

The creature didn’t flee. It didn’t back away. It stayed there, motionless, suspended in the air like a thought no longer dared.

Silent.

Its eyes fixed on me, without reproach. Without fear. Without judgment. Nothing but infinite patience. Calm. Present. Unalterable.

And that gaze... that gaze wasn’t that of an adversary. Not even that of a witness. It was the gaze of a presence that had been rejected too soon.

An old tenderness, turned away at the threshold before it could enter. A softness I had denied, by reflex, by defense, by fatigue. And which, nevertheless, had remained. Waiting.

I hated myself. To death. But I could do nothing now. The harm was done. The crack already open.

So, gracelessly, without courage, I got up. With difficulty.

Each movement was an effort, as if the world itself weighed against my bones. My legs were mine again, yes... but heavy. As if emptied of momentum. Of innocence. They still bore me.

But it wasn’t the same body anymore. It wasn’t the same man.

I resolved, once again, to move forward. Not from certainty. But because staying there... would’ve been worse.

I had failed, again, and I knew it. Nothing would erase it. Nothing would fully forgive me. But maybe... maybe I could still try. Not to redeem myself. Not to redeem. But to become better. Not perfect. Just... a little less broken than the day before.

And when I resumed my climb... I understood that something had changed. I was no longer alone. Not really.

Even the silence was no longer the same. It had taken on a new density. It followed me, step by step, like a formless shadow. It waited for me too, always a little higher, as if it knew what came next better than I did.

Most of all... it weighed on me. Not like an enemy, but like a witness. Like a memory that said nothing, but never forgot.

Behind me... she was still there. The creature. Motionless. Unchanged.

But her song had resumed. Faintly. Without mouth. Without breath.

And yet, it reached me. It passed through air, through space, like an invisible thread stretched between her and me.

It didn’t call me. It didn’t hold me back. It followed me.

A song without words, without form, but filled with a meaning only my body seemed able to hear. And I knew it was for me. Only for me.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.