Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 199: A Spark of Grace

Chapter 199: A Spark of Grace

I kept climbing. Tirelessly. Not by choice, not really. But because stopping would have been worse.

Because the ascent, however absurd it may have been, had become my only possible direction. A dull, mechanical movement, worn by exhaustion, but driven by something deeper: the refusal to yield.

Nothing vibrated outside anymore. The world had gone silent. A total, thick, almost sacred silence.

Not a shiver. Not a breath. As if everything — the wind, the rain, even the mist — had held its breath.

As if the entire universe had frozen to leave me alone with what remained. Me. My weight. And that which, in silence, kept growing heavier.

The stairs no longer echoed. My steps fell without resonance, as if swallowed by a floor with no memory.

Even the rain had lost its smell, its rhythm, its sound — it was falling, yes, but without touching, without wetting, without marking.

Everything seemed there, without being there. Present but hollow. A set drained of substance.

As if the world was slowly fading around me, leaving a bare, suspended space where nothing responded anymore.

The world was testing me differently, this time. No more screams, no more shocks, no more open pain. No.

It tested me through emptiness. Through absence. Through that slow, insidious way of depriving me of landmarks, of sounds, of shapes, until even my thoughts collided with nothing.

It no longer struck me. It erased me. Gradually. To see if, in the end, there would still be something left of me.

And in that emptiness... I was getting lost. Bit by bit. Not all at once. But through progressive fading.

Like a color being diluted. Like a voice slowly smothered under layers of silence.

I wasn’t falling — I was dispersing. Fragment after fragment, I became blurry, indistinct, almost translucent.

I could feel my own center dissolving, swallowed by this calm, patient void that needed nothing but time to make me disappear.

But that’s when she appeared. A silhouette. Floating. Blurry. Yet familiar.

I had seen her before — or thought I had. The first creature I had met.

Not exactly the same, no. But similar. Like a variation of the same nightmare.

A shadow sister. A distorted reminiscence.

She stood there, at the edge of the void, as if she had always known I would eventually return to her.

Her body floated on the edge of a spiral. Translucent. Vaporous. Barely tangible, like woven from mist and memory.

She didn’t move. She didn’t weigh anything. She was simply there, calmer than the sky itself, more motionless than the frozen air around.

A presence that imposed nothing, but whose simple balance defied all surrounding chaos.

As if her serenity wasn’t an absence of violence... but an older form of it, more silent, more absolute.

Her eyes... so vast one could get lost in them without even falling.

There was no bottom, no edge, no light to hold on to. Just that mute immensity, welcoming like a dead sea, where everything could vanish without a sound.

They didn’t stare. They absorbed. They waited. As if they already knew what I was going to leave behind.

She didn’t speak, as she had the first time.

She sang. One phrase. Two notes. Simple. Pure. Unsettling in their softness.

As if the world, for a moment, had aligned on a forgotten frequency.

It wasn’t a language. It was a call. An ancient, fragile song, soft enough to make the mist shiver.

I understood instinctively. That song, those two notes suspended in the frozen air, were a proposal.

A help. A relief. Not a miracle, not a grand promise — just an invisible hand, extended without a sound.

A breath. Something tiny but real, that would carry the child with me in this world emptied of everything.

A discreet presence, almost imperceptible, but strong enough to lighten the path. So I wouldn’t fall alone.

But... in exchange. I had to stop. To yield.

I had to sit, there, without understanding, without arguing.

The ground was warm, strange, almost alive beneath me.

The child had curled up on my legs, still just as warm, still just as silent.

He wasn’t sleeping, he wasn’t moving — he was waiting, resting against me like a peaceful offering, or a pact already sealed.

And me, there, motionless, I could feel something binding... gently. Irrevocably.

The creature waited. Still. Silent.

But her eyes, they enveloped me. Not violently. Not to dominate.

They didn’t force anything. They asked. Simply.

And I felt it, deep inside me — in that inner fold even fatigue had not yet consumed.

Every being here, every creature I encountered, carried in them something mystical, ancient, vaster than speech.

They didn’t speak like we do. They asked. They made us feel. They made us understand, without explanation, without detour.

Their purpose imposed itself by presence. And this one... was still watching me.

As if it waited for me to say yes. Not with my mouth, but with what soul I had left.

So, without making it wait any longer. Without fleeing once more. Without pushing away the inevitable, nor looking for an escape that no longer existed.

I yielded. I did what she wanted of me.

Not out of submission. Not even out of faith.

But because everything in me knew that resisting no longer made sense. That this moment, whatever it was, had to happen.

And that I had to welcome it. Even if it changed me. Even if it broke me.

I sang. An articulated murmur, barely more than a breath.

Just loud enough to exist. Just faint enough not to crush me.

— I... I never wanted to be a savior.

My voice trembled.

It carried more than a doubt — a naked truth.

It wasn’t an excuse. Not an escape. It was a fact. Raw. Unmovable.

— I didn’t ask to be there when it happened.

I sang without melody. Without rhythm.

Just with my heart, heavy, beating, split. Phrase after phrase.

Not to convince. Not to defend myself. But because it had to be said.

And the creature, in front of me, didn’t judge. She listened. Fully.

As if, for once, my words were allowed to exist as they were — fragile, imperfect, but true.

And then... she came closer.

Very slowly. Without a sound. Without threat.

Like a memory returning without being called.

Her movement had nothing human, nothing mechanical — it belonged to another rhythm, older, vaster.

She extended an arm, vaporous, almost translucent, and it wasn’t me she touched... but the air all around.

She brushed the void. Leaving in her wake a vibration, a light warmth, as if she simply acknowledged my presence.

As if she said: I heard you.

For a moment — just one — I felt that I was no longer carrying it alone.

Something, someone, shared. Not all. Not the core. But a fragment. A breath.

And then, without abruptness, my eyes filled with tears.

No pain. No revelation. No drama.

Just this: a tiny rest. A calm offered in silence, in exchange for a naked truth, spoken without defense.

And that little respite... was worth more than a thousand pardons.

The creature withdrew. Without a word, without a gesture of farewell.

She asked for nothing more.

And, deep within me, just as she had already made me understand everything else — without words, without pressure, just through her presence — I knew she would not return.

It was a gift. Unique. Unrepeatable.

One of those silent gestures we never really understand in the moment, but whose mark remains, long after.

A spark of grace. Strange. And precious.

I got back up. Not with a leap, not with a start — slowly.

My breath a little calmer, as if the air had stopped strangling me.

My gaze a little less blurry, as if the world around had regained a few lines, a few contours.

Nothing was truly settled. Nothing was erased.

But something... had lightened.

A little. Just enough to walk again.

And I climbed. Or descended. I no longer knew.

The movement mattered less than the continuity.

I kept moving. Not healed. Not saved.

Nothing spectacular had happened.

But I had been heard.

And in this world where everything weighed, where each step carried the echo of a fault or a silence, being heard... was enough, sometimes, not to fall.