Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 197: The Embrace That Weighs More

Chapter 197: The Embrace That Weighs More

The climb was becoming impossible. Not because of the slope, nor the altitude. But because of the density.

Something was thickening with every step. In the air. In my legs. In my thoughts. As if the world, suddenly, weighed heavier. As if every particle around me had grown denser, saturated with an invisible but real weight — a weight of memory, of truth, of exhaustion.

It was no longer a climb. It was a crossing. A wall of silence, of resistance, that I could neither bypass... nor refuse.

Each step pressed deeper into my belly, like a dull, visceral pressure compressing something older than pain.

A deep backwash pounded in my legs, wave after wave, as if the ground itself was trying to push me back.

My breath scattered. It no longer flowed, it fragmented. Beat after beat, it became erratic, dissolved, fleeing — as if my own body could no longer contain what it was going through.

My arms, they... still held the child. Out of habit. Out of duty. Out of reflex.

But they no longer believed. Faith had retreated from my muscles, leaving only the gesture, emptied of conviction. They held on, yes, but without certainty.

As if my arms continued to carry what they no longer understood. As if, already, a part of me had begun to let go... silently.

The world seemed to have slowed down. Or maybe... it was me. Impossible to tell.

Everything had become slower, thicker, as if suspended in a breath that couldn’t finish. Sounds dragged. Contours vibrated.

Even time seemed hesitant. As if it too no longer knew how to move forward. As if everything around me had started doubting at the same time I did.

The fog was growing heavy. More than a veil, more than just a visual obstacle — it thickened into matter.

It clung. To skin. To eyelids. To thoughts. Even denser, moister, more intimate. Like an imposed second skin, a tepid shroud that could no longer be pushed away.

It no longer hid the world, it invaded it. And me with it.

After what felt like hours, in that hell saturated with mist, fatigue, and silence... she appeared.

No crash. No sudden light. Just a form detaching from the void, slowly, as if she had always been there, lurking in the folds of the world, waiting for the precise moment to show herself.

And in that appearance... something shifted.

A statue. But not motionless. Not frozen in stone as one would expect.

She seemed to breathe with an imperceptible breath, vibrate with a restrained life just beneath the surface. There was in her posture something too supple, too present, to belong to the world of dead things.

She wasn’t waiting. She was watching.

She descended slowly down the spiral steps, step by step, sideways, with that strange, almost unreal gait, like a disjointed puppet left to wander alone in an ancient ballet, forgotten for centuries.

Each movement seemed both mechanical and full of intent, as if something in her wavered between falling and dancing, between collapse and perverted grace.

A silent, hypnotic descent, disturbing to both the eye and the soul.

Her face... eroded by time, by wind, by something unspeakable.

But despite the cracks, despite the material worn down to oblivion, something remained. An outline. A lingering softness.

Feminine. Maternal, even — but of a tired, emptied, dull motherhood.

A face that no longer promised anything, that no longer protected, but still looked on. As if loving had lasted too long, too heavily, and only this expression remained: an exhausted waiting.

She was naked under her sculpted drapes, but there was nothing in her that evoked flesh. No sensuality. No warmth.

Her body was only an outline, a suggestion frozen in stone, where skin had never existed.

What she offered wasn’t a refuge, nor an embrace. It was something else. Older. Colder.

The residual trace of a vanished will — the dead will to comfort.

A fossilized gesture toward a soothing that had never taken place.

She extended her arms. Not suddenly. Not like a threat, nor even like an offering.

Rather like the memory of a gesture. Slowly. With that strange hesitation of things too ancient to still believe in welcome, but too stubborn to entirely give up.

Her arms opened without warmth, without promise, but with a troubling persistence — as if, despite everything, she kept waiting.

— No... not now... please... I can’t bear one more weight, I murmured, barely, like a broken breath in my throat.

And without meaning to, without thinking, I took a step back. A simple step. But it was enough.

As if that movement, however minimal, had triggered something.

An immense weight fell upon me, brutal, crushing, heavier than anything I had carried until then.

It had no shape, no origin, but it was there — total.

My legs buckled instantly, ripped from their fragile balance, and I fell to my knees.

Not out of submission. Out of inability. Out of silent collapse.

She approached. Slowly. Inevitably.

And around me, the platform remained closed, without exit, without edge, without the slightest gap through which to flee — neither by legs, nor by will.

No way out. Not even the illusory one of revolt.

And then, in that closed circle, that suspended place where nothing answered anymore, I gave in. Not with peace. But with that raw, exhausted lucidity that is born when there is no choice left but to accept.

Her arms brushed against me. Barely. But that contact was enough. And everything in me... screamed.

No sharp pain, no torn scream — no. A silent scream, internal, visceral. Of dissolution.

As if her stone skin, cold, dead, devoid of warmth but saturated with oblivion, absorbed what remained of me.

My last strength. The little will still holding me up. My reasons. My goals. My most stubborn resistances.

Everything drained away. Gently. Inexorably.

As if she took nothing... but claimed everything.

I struggled. My body fought, shaken by disordered movements, without coordination, without real strength — but with the raw instinct to survive.

I cried out too. Or at least... I tried.

No sound came out. My throat contracted, burning, mute, incapable of expressing the terror.

It was a cry without voice, without shape, trapped somewhere between belly and breath.

A cry from within, no longer seeking to be heard... just not to die suffocated.

The child in my arms was becoming blurry.

His contours dissolved, wavered, as if erased by an inner mist I no longer controlled.

Or maybe... it was my eyes.

My gaze, clouded, drowned in fatigue, effort, progressive surrender. I no longer knew.

If it was him disappearing, or me ceasing to see. But something, slowly, was being lost.

The statue embraced me for a moment. A heavy, slow, implacable embrace. A tomb’s embrace.

Not a gesture of comfort, but of sealing. As if her arms had never been made to console, only to close. To imprison.

And in that cold, dense contact, frozen outside of time, I felt something close within me. Definitely.

My back gave out. Suddenly. And I screamed.

A twisted cry, torn from the deepest part, a raw, primal, visceral cry.

It wasn’t a cry aimed at her. It wasn’t a revolt against her presence.

It was a cry against what she embodied. Against that kind of love.

The one imposed without asking. The one that demands without understanding. The one that pretends to soothe but requires surrender.

A cry against what she wanted to take from me. Against that trust she expected, silently demanded.

A cry that said: I don’t want to. I can’t. I don’t believe you.

So I pushed. Weakly. Very weakly.

As if every muscle had to wake from a deep numbness, as if the slightest movement required a will I no longer had.

But it was enough. Not a burst. Not a rupture. Just a gesture. Tiny. Trembling. But enough.

Enough to say no. Enough to pull away from her. Not to give in completely.

She stepped back. She faltered, in a movement almost slow, almost uncertain, as if my weakness had been enough to unbalance her.

And I... collapsed. Onto my back. Brutally.

Body struck against the cold ground, tensed in a final jolt, then released entirely.

My arms, they, were empty. Open. Disarmed.

The child had slipped, gently, imperceptibly, out of my embrace. Like a promise one failed to keep.

I looked up. He was there. Sitting, a few steps away. Motionless.

His eyes were looking at me — straight, clear, but without anger.

There was no judgment in his gaze. Just a mute reproach.

An old, contained sorrow, laid there between us without words, without violence.

And then, gently, he began to cry. Not loudly. Not theatrically.

Just a pure sob, broken, from the deepest part of him. A naked pain, that didn’t accuse, but that said: you let me down.

The fog grew thicker, heavier, almost solid.

The rain, too, became denser, tighter, as if each drop weighed more, hammering my skin with insistent slowness.

The smell thickened too — clammy, sticky, heavy with something sweet and rotten, a scent that crept into the throat.

And the steps... they too seemed to change. Their material, their rhythm, their logic.

As if the world, in reaction to what had just broken, decided to twist as well.

It was becoming unbearable. Completely.

Each breath was a struggle, each step a stifled agony.

Air was lacking, sucked away by a creeping anxiety that gnawed at my gut, mixing with the accumulated exhaustion, the repeated efforts, the continuous tension of the past days.

And the environment — that saturated, viscous, oppressive world — finished crushing what remained of clarity.

So, without a cry, without a spectacular fall, my body gave way.

My mind blurred. And I passed out. Simply. Like a flame deprived of oxygen.

When I woke up, something had changed. Nothing spectacular, nothing miraculous — just a bit more clarity.

A slight calm, mental and physical, as if the fall had allowed the body to take back a forgotten breath.

I felt a little better, yes... but I was still exhausted. Deeply.

A stubborn fatigue, rooted, that did not express itself in pain but in weight.

An exhaustion that didn’t call for rest, but for slowness. For survival.

The environment had changed again. Subtly, but undeniably.

The contours were no longer the same, space had slipped, drifted, as if obeying a shifting logic I could no longer follow.

But I paid it only distant attention.

My gaze, it, remained fixed on the child. That was all that mattered. All that still mattered to me.

In that deformed, unbearable world, he had become my only direction, my only urgency, my only priority.

I didn’t know exactly why, or how, but somewhere in me... I felt it.

He was the key. The exit. Or maybe simply... what remained of my humanity.

The child, like the first time, held out his arms to me.

The same gesture, simple, silent, almost ritual.

And without thinking too much, without questioning, I took him against me.

My arms closed around him with the automatism of a memory.

But this time... he was different. Heavier. Denser. Hotter.

His body radiated a vivid warmth, almost painful, as if something in him had thickened, sunk deeper into reality.

It was no longer the same weight. It was a presence. A truth.

A responsibility that, this time, truly weighed.

And I knew. Without explanation, without voice, without vision.

I knew, in every nerve, every vertebra, every held breath.

Every refusal of a trial. Every escape. Every rejection. All would be punished.

Not by pain — that, I already knew.

But by something more insidious. Twice the weight.

An invisible, inevitable burden, that would add itself to the existing one, merge with it, cling to it.

The more one refused, the more one carried. The more one resisted, the harder the world pressed.

It didn’t strike. It weighed down. Until one bent. Until one gave in.

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