Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 213: For Lack of Proof

Chapter 213: For Lack of Proof

I took a step. Then another. Not like one moves forward. Not like one conquers. But like one yields. Like one accepts to no longer retreat, even without understanding where one is going, even without expecting anything.

My foot gently struck that strange surface, living membrane more than ground, and in the faint vibration that rose from the sole to the throat, I felt something give way inside me — not a pain, not a fear, but that leftover resistance one keeps by reflex, even though the body knows there’s no longer a battle to fight. I wasn’t walking. I was laying down a trace, fragile, permitted.

It was there, precisely there, in that bare gesture, that step laid without force but without escape, that I understood — not as a constructed thought, but as a diffuse vertigo, a sudden hollow in the sensory space.

Something was missing here. Truly. An absence heavier than weight, more palpable than matter itself. Not an object, not a landmark, not a light.

But something vital. Fundamental. So deeply anchored in every consciousness that we no longer perceive it... so long as it is there. And whose absence, here, struck me all at once, without violence, without cry, but like a breath one waits for and that doesn’t come.

Something every living being shares, no matter their world, their name, their form, their memory. A thing so obvious it becomes invisible — until it disappears. And in that silence, in that suspended walk, I felt its loss like a raw burn.

Sound.

It wasn’t a silence. Not a banal absence. Not that empty peace one feels after chaos, nor that muffled suspension one sometimes calls calm. No. It was something else. A visceral lack. An absence so total it became aggressive, insidious, devouring.

An abnormal void, disturbing down to the flesh, as if my steps, though real, no longer found hold on anything. As if my body moved forward without weight, without friction, without tangible proof of its existence. No impact. No resonance.

Just that disconcerting sensation that I was walking without being there, that my gestures left no imprint, no sound, no response from the world.

As if everything I knew — the simple laws of matter, the minute cues of reality, the shivers, the rustles, the shared breaths — were being taken from me one by one, with cruel gentleness. As if the world was erasing me not to punish, but to make me indistinct to myself.

I stopped then. Instinctively. As if my body, deprived of its anchors, refused to go further into this erasure. My fingers moved, slowly, one by one, searching for contact, friction, proof. I opened my mouth, not to speak, but to feel, to check if the air still vibrated around me. But nothing came. No rustle. No return. No breath.

No proof that I still existed in this world.

And suddenly... a slow panic rose in me. Not a sharp fear, not a jolt. Rather a dull, thick, inner rise, like a fever creeping into the bones. It wasn’t the silence itself that terrified me. It was its permanence. Its absoluteness. This impression, increasingly strong, that there was no way out. No return to sound. Nothing left.

As if this world had forgotten even the idea of noise. Even the very possibility that a breath might, someday, be heard.

My steps, which I continued almost mechanically, I barely felt them. With each contact, something was missing — that tiny feedback, that minimal shock that confirms to the body that it is still connected to the ground, to the world, to reality. But here... nothing. My movements landed without consequence, like swallowed before they had even occurred.

They left nothing.

No trace. No sound. No echo.

Nothing but that soft, indifferent void, absorbing everything without effort, as if my existence slid across a mute skin that refused to respond.

The ground beneath my feet became soft. Suspended. Almost supple.

It no longer held the reassuring firmness of stone, nor the granular texture of earth. It was a stretched vegetal fabric, dense, thick, almost alive — a strange, pulsing material, as if born of a forgotten organic world. A silent carpet, deaf to my steps, absorbing each one without reaction, without trace, without resistance.

I was no longer walking on ground. I was floating. In a world without gravity.

A world that carried me without anchoring me. That accepted me without answering me.

And that... that dissociated me. Slowly. Deeply. As if my body remained there, somewhere, laying feet upon a soft surface, while my consciousness, itself, began to drift — light, trembling, detached from everything that made me a whole shape.

I took a step. Then two. To be sure. To check, once again, this abomination. This torturous, insidious, horrible, unlivable world. A world that didn’t attack by pain, but by erasure. By the absence of all reference points. And of course... still nothing. Not even my breathing.

I no longer heard it.

I placed my hand on my chest, in a trembling, desperately human gesture. My heart was beating. Yes. I felt it pulsing against my fingers, dully, with a near-soothing regularity — but I no longer heard it.

No sound. Not even from within. As if this world was not only erasing me from the outside, but beginning to steal me from the inside.

And then... all I wanted was to scream.

Not out of fear.

But out of refusal.

A raw, visceral, primal refusal. The refusal to disappear. The refusal to be swallowed.

Refusal to let myself be dissolved by this nameless silence, this silence that didn’t even judge, that bore neither threat nor pity. A silence without gaze, without direction, without edge. A total, indifferent, absolute absence — and that was precisely what made it unbearable. It didn’t erase me to punish. It let me erase myself, without saying anything, without holding anything back.

And I couldn’t accept it. Not yet. Not like that.

I opened my mouth.

I knew, immediately, that I shouldn’t. That this simple gesture was a mistake. Not because it was dangerous, but because it was too charged, too fragile. I knew it was the last thing to do — the one that could break everything, or break me, again. An uncertain attempt, a fifty-fifty chance of worsening the dissociation, of sinking deeper into doubt about my own existence.

But I did it anyway.

Because I couldn’t do otherwise.

I tried to speak.

I tried to say those absurd words, meaningless in this place, but essential: — Is anyone there?

It wasn’t a request. Not a prayer. Not even a real question. It wasn’t the meaning that mattered. It was the sound. The vibration. The hoped-for echo.

But then...

The sound... did not come.

My throat vibrated. My breath expelled. My lips moved, forming the word, the question, the call — but the world did not respond.

Nothing.

Not a murmur. Not a breath.

Not even that air shift a breath normally produces. Not even that tiniest vibration a word should leave behind.

Nothing.

Just that suspended matter, that traceless weave, that sky without height, without weight, without direction. And that light...

Diffuse. Pallid. As if filtered through a thousand soft membranes, as if the entire world were swaddled in a veil of damp flesh, and even light no longer dared to assert its presence.

I felt a vertigo. A brutal, sharp inner drift, like a rupture in the axis of my being. Then a fear. A real one. Dull, ancient, reptilian. And then... an anger.

Not against myself.

Against this world.

This world that engulfed me without crashing, that silenced me without even raising a hand, without scream, without wound. This world, perfidious in its gentleness, insidious in its benevolence, had pushed me to accept love like one accepts a sentence — slowly, on one’s knees. It had forced me to unearth what I no longer dared name, to lift every layer of mud, every memory, every fragment of forgotten child. It had made me look. Feel. Carry.

And now... it wanted my good. It erased me softly, like one caresses a wound to soothe it, but with that poisoned gentleness that kills through understanding. This world that destroyed me in loops, again and again, not to punish me, but to repair me. To rebuild me better.

And I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I clenched my fists. Hard. Until I felt my nails dig into my palm, until the skin protested in silence. I tried to make noise. By any means. I struck my arms. My thighs. I activated my abilities, my skills, my remnants of power — everything I still had, everything my body retained as reflex for fight.

But everything remained mute.

Nothing vibrated. Nothing responded.

Each strike, each gesture, each effort disappeared instantly, absorbed, muffled, as if swallowed by the air itself. And then... I understood.

Here, sound is not heard.

It is punished. It is absorbed. It is stifled before it even exists.

The world doesn’t forbid it. It denies it. As if any attempt to exist too loudly was instantly dissolved, digested, erased — not out of hostility, but by nature.

So I fell to my knees.

Not because I was defeated. Not because I gave up. But because I no longer knew. How to prove that I was here.

How to exist other than through silence.

There was no more voice. No more sound. No more marks. Even my gestures seemed weightless, my thoughts without resonance. I did not fall from exhaustion, nor from fear. I fell for lack of proof.

For lack of signs.

As if kneeling was the only remnant of an ancient language — a language without words, without noise, but still saying: I am alive. I am here. I want to be seen.

And in that void... I breathed nonetheless.

At least, I believed so. My chest rose. Air entered, exited, somewhere, as if by reflex. But even that breathing... I no longer heard.

No breath. No friction in the throat. No trace on the air.

Nothing.

And that was perhaps the most frightening thing.

I no longer even knew if I was still breathing. If that movement I vaguely perceived in my chest was not just a survival illusion. A memory of life. An empty reflex.

I doubted my breath.

And in that doubt... I began to lose myself.

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