Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 196: A Promise Turned Reproach

Chapter 196: A Promise Turned Reproach

The closet. Always the same. Dark. Dusty. Saturated with a silence that clung to the throat.

But this time, something had changed. A light passed under the door — thin, pale, almost timid, but bright enough to cut through the shadows. It drew a line on the floor, sharp, unreal, like a wound in the darkness.

And in that light... something maybe moved. Or it was me trembling.

I could see only it. That pale line, almost unreal, like a fresh scar on the skin of the world. My gaze stayed locked on it, unable to move, fascinated by its sharpness.

There was something too precise there, too pure, that had no place in this broken world. And yet, it shone. As if it were calling me. As if it knew.

I saw legs. Outstretched. Twisted as after a fall. A body, no doubt. A fallen body.

And with it, the sound. A dull noise, muted, muffled by distance and walls, yet real. True. Undeniable. It wasn’t a clear memory, nor a reconstructed image — it was a sensation. That of an impact one doesn’t want to hear but that the body, itself, never forgets.

There had been, I believe, that smell. A mixture of dust, old wood, and something else. Something wetter. Redder.

And that metallic taste, at the back of the tongue, that rose like a threat. I had wanted to breathe less strongly, but the air itself had already understood.

And me... always me. Crouched behind the partition. Tiny. Ridiculously small in a world too big, too loud, too violent for what I was back then.

Hands pressed over my mouth, not to keep silent — but to disappear.

Eyes wide open, burning, incapable of blinking, absorbing every detail as if not seeing would have been a betrayal.

And my heart... it no longer beat. It had retracted. Contracted so tightly it seemed to want to hide too, to be forgotten, like a creature too fragile one locks deep inside to not lose it.

I no longer quite knew if it was me trembling or the entire world. My limbs still belonged to me, in theory, but their weight, their inertia, their silence, felt foreign.

As if I had become a spectator. Prisoner of a body too small to flee, too wide to hide.

A cry rose. Not in the memory. In me.

Brutal, instinctive, from the belly, from that place where fear never asks permission.

It wanted to escape, break the air, tear the silence. But I crushed it. With all my strength. I held it inside, like one holds back a sob at the edge of the abyss, like one smothers a cry known to be useless.

It still trembled under my skin, but I didn’t let it pass. Because if it got out... something in me might never recover.

My throat burned. My jaw had clenched so tightly my teeth ground against each other.

And in my belly, the cry had curled in on itself like a wounded beast, searching for a corner to die without a sound.

I stepped back. Fleeing. Despite all my resolutions, despite the will I thought I had sealed within me.

My body had decided otherwise. A single step, but charged with everything I didn’t dare face yet.

And at that instant the vision faded. Not suddenly, but like a tide receding, without noise, without explanation — leaving behind it emptiness and the chill of having seen too clearly, too soon.

I stayed there, motionless. Unable to know if the scene had truly disappeared or if it was me who had faded.

There were no more images. Just a vibrating silence. A suspended waiting in the air, as if the world was holding its breath with me.

The child on my chest stirred slightly. Just a quiver. Not to protest. Not to weigh heavier. Just to remind me of his presence.

An infinitesimal movement, almost involuntary, but full of meaning. Like a thought slipping under the skin. Like a silent breath whispering: I am here. I haven’t disappeared. I haven’t forgotten you.

I winced. An involuntary crease crossed my face, as if the pain — or maybe the shame — suddenly resurfaced.

It wasn’t a cry. Not even a refusal. Just a tension. A discreet crumpling of skin and soul, where everything in me was still trying to hold on.

I wanted to strike myself. Tear off that face that trembles without speaking. Silence that too-sensitive skin, that too-cowardly heart.

I didn’t have the right. Not now. Not in front of him.

The filaments were already fading. Slowly, gently, as if their light had only ever been there for a moment.

A breath. A fragile parenthesis in the thickness of the world.

Their glow receded like a discreet tide, erasing behind it all proof, all trace, leaving only the doubt of having dreamed.

The sap had soothed my nerves, relaxed my limbs, eased my pain like a slow warmth that seeps deeply into the body.

But it had erased nothing. Hadn’t touched the memory.

It had calmed the cry, yes, but not the source.

The memory, it, remained — intact, still there, curled somewhere beneath the temples, beneath the skin, beneath the heart. Present. Silent. Unshakable.

Sometimes, it pulsed. Like a fever. Like a badly closed scar touched by accident and reopening without warning.

It didn’t speak. It waited. And I pretended not to hear it.

The taste in my mouth... it had changed. Slowly, slyly, without my realizing it at first.

It was no longer sweet. No longer soothing. It had turned. Become bitter. Acrid, almost metallic.

Like medicine swallowed too late, when the body has already given in and the remedy becomes only a painful reminder of what one failed to prevent.

A promise of relief turned reproach.

A part of me wanted to stay there. Not move anymore. Sink into that tepid earth, become silence among silences.

But the child still breathed. And his presence gently pulled me forward, despite everything.

I set off again. One step, then another. A little more hunched than before, as if something in me had sagged without a sound.

Each step tore me a bit more, but with that pain came a clarity I had never known.

A bare clarity, voiceless, that showed me what I had fled for too long.

A little emptier too, relieved of an illusion, or perhaps of a strength I would not find again.

But above all... a little closer to the truth.

The one that doesn’t impose itself all at once, but gnaws slowly, as one moves forward. The one we don’t want to name, but feel settle, in the pit of the belly, in the depth of silences.

And this time... I felt it. With each step, heavier, more fragile, more bare.

The truth, like the world around me, would no longer spare me. No more respite. No more half-measures.

Each step would be a tearing. Each breath, a trial. There would be no more veil, no more shelter.

Just me, facing what was coming — and I knew, without being able to explain it, that what was coming would make no detour.

And yet, despite the fear, despite the fatigue, I kept going.

Because I knew turning back would be useless.

Because what was coming... was already there. Very close. Lurking in the mist. And it might be carrying my name.

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