Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 201: The Death I Do Not Accept

Chapter 201: The Death I Do Not Accept

I kept climbing. Again. Still. The body moved forward, obedient, mechanical. But something inside me stopped following. A deeper, more fragile part that no longer found reason, momentum, or breath to go on.

As if, from bearing too much, it had disconnected from the rest. It stayed behind. Or maybe it sank deeper into me. I no longer knew. I only felt that shift — discreet, but real. Like a loss that makes no sound, yet slowly eats everything away.

My feet struck the steps with a muffled violence, as if they wanted to break them, as if each step was a protest, an absurd attempt to shatter the cycle.

My breath tore through the air, ragged, rasping, useless — a breath that no longer nourished anything, that no longer carried, but sawed at my throat with every inhale. I was there, but not really. A machine of flesh and vertigo, continuing in spite of itself.

My legs... were bleeding. I didn’t know when it had started. Or how. There had been no scream, no blow, no warning. But the blood was there. Dark red. Thick.

It flowed slowly, drawing lines between my steps, irregular trails like fragments of memory refusing to close. Every drop seemed to say: you keep going, but you’re losing something. And I no longer knew what. Only that it was leaving. That it was being written on the ground, despite me.

The world did not react. Not a shiver, not a whisper, not a hint of response. It stayed there, impassive, indifferent.

As if it had ceased to exist for anything other than my walk. As if it watched me without truly seeing. Or maybe... it had always been that way: a mute backdrop, witness to collapse, but never moved by pity.

The stairs did not vibrate. No echo, no resonance, as if my steps no longer mattered. As if I no longer had weight. The very matter seemed indifferent to my presence.

And the rain — still falling — kept coming. Warm. Silent. Relentless. It did not refresh. It cleansed nothing. It slid over me like over something already gone, already detached from what it passed through.

Nothing answered. Nothing changed. Everything persisted. Unchanging. Indifferent.

And I... in all this, I became fury. Not an explosion. Not a scream. A slow anger. Glacial. Crawling under the skin, silent, but immense.

A dull fury, directed at everything — at myself, first, for having given in, for having believed, for having allowed. At the world, then, for its silence, for its indifference, for the way it watched without ever acting.

At everything I hadn’t been able to stop. Everything I hadn’t been able to carry. And that rage... didn’t scream. It clenched its teeth. It rose, step after step, like the climb itself. Inevitable.

I limped. Every other step dragged, struck, resisted. My body tilted slightly, as if unbalanced by an old pain that had never truly healed.

Every stride became a compromise. A negotiation between exhaustion and the refusal to collapse. I limped... but I still moved forward.

I was suffering. Mostly mentally. Not a pain you can locate, treat, or name. A broader, duller fatigue. Like a slow poison, distilled thought by thought, until it infected everything inside.

My body still followed, but my head... my head screamed in silence. Every memory, every step, every doubt reopened something. It wasn’t a wound. It was an erosion. An intimate collapse, invisible, carried without knowing how much longer.

I was at the end. Not just tired. Not simply wounded. I was emptied, down to the bone, down to the very idea of continuing.

Nothing stable remained in me — just fragments still held by habit, by inertia, by refusal to completely fall apart. Every thought struggled to be born, every gesture was a battle.

I was there... but not really. Suspended. Exhausted. At the end.

At times, I hallucinated. It wasn’t new. It had even become almost habitual, a background noise in my fractured perception.

But this time... it was different. More frequent. More violent. At first, it came softly, like shivers at the edge of sight, vague impressions easily ignored.

But now, it struck. Hard. Without warning. Like shards of dream flung into full consciousness. And I no longer knew. I no longer knew what was real, what wasn’t, what I saw, what I thought I saw. The world floated, swayed, and I with it.

Then, a blur. A sudden vertigo. A loss of balance, as if the ground had given way without warning, or my body no longer knew how to inhabit space.

And I saw him. The child. In my arms. His head tilted, limp. His arms hanging on each side, slack, lifeless. His legs dangling, inert. And his gaze... wide open.

Not empty. Not absent. Open. Dead. A gaze that no longer saw, but still held the trace of what it had seen. As if death itself hadn’t erased the moment. Only sealed it. And my whole body... froze.

His face was the same. Exactly the same. But frozen. Frozen in an expression of waiting — not fear, not suffering — pure waiting, raw, endless.

As if, at the very moment life left him, he had still hoped for something. A word. A gesture. A breath. And that something had never come.

So his face had remained like that, suspended in the moment, trapped in a hope that nothing would ever fulfill. An eternity of waiting, imprinted in flesh.

I screamed.

A guttural sound. Torn out.

Not a scream of fear. A scream of revolt.

— NOOOOO!!!

My voice tore through the silence, louder than anything this world had ever tolerated.

My arms closed instinctively around him, as if I could bring him back, as if I could keep the cold from seeping in, as if...

— Wake up...

My voice trembled now, lower, more broken.

— You can’t... You don’t have the right...

I shook him, gently at first, then more urgently.

— This isn’t... This isn’t what we agreed. You hear? This isn’t it...

Nothing. Not a breath. Not a shiver on his skin.

I leaned over him, pressed my forehead to his.

— I carried you... You understand? I carried you! I protected you!

The words came in jolts, drowned in breath, in the absurd.

— You were supposed to be the key... You were supposed to take me... not... not vanish.

I held him tight. Too tight.

— You can’t be dead... Not now. Not after this. Not like this...

I placed my hand on his cheek, tapped it, caressed it, hoping for a jolt, a miracle, anything.

— It’s not true. This didn’t happen. You hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?!

I growled.

— ANSWER ME!

I lost balance, fell to my knees, again, still holding him.

He was there. His weight was there. His scent, his residual warmth. But not him anymore.

And everything in me refused.

— This isn’t you. This isn’t your story. You’ll come back. You don’t have the right to leave me with this... not you...

The world around remained mute. Complicit in an abandonment I couldn’t understand.

I closed my eyes, voice cracked, breath short.

— I don’t know what I did... but I’m sorry. Do you hear me? I’m sorry... so come back.

Not for me. For him. For us.

I reached out. Not to save him. Not to cradle him. To throw him away. To finally free myself.

There was in me a fury too old, too full, a burning vertigo screaming at me to rid myself of this weight that had become unbearable — useless, silent, dead.

My arm trembled, tense, ready to drop this burden that had asked for nothing but that I could no longer carry. Not like this. Not in this state.

A part of me wanted to scream that it wasn’t my fault, that I had promised nothing, that I owed nothing to this extinguished silence.

But another... remained there, frozen, unable to finish the gesture.

As if, even in rage, something in me knew that this weight, I had never truly carried it alone.

But at the last moment... my fingers trembled.

A shiver, almost imperceptible, passed through my hand. My palm remained suspended, open, frozen between rejection and recall.

The gesture had broken on its own, before even reaching its goal.

As if something deeper than anger, older than fatigue, had held me back.

It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t forgiveness. Just an instinctive refusal. A weakness maybe... or a truth I wasn’t ready to admit. Not yet.

I knew I couldn’t. Not because he was still alive — I knew, he wasn’t.

But because, even dead, he was still mine.

Not as a possession. Not as a chosen bond. But as a duty. A silent burden, imposed without explanation, without appeal.

Something the world had placed in my arms without asking if I was ready. And that I could no longer abandon.

Because this weight, now, was part of mine. Because there was no longer a clear distinction between what I carried and what I was becoming.