Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 214: I Was Becoming Silence

Chapter 214: I Was Becoming Silence

I shouldn’t have insisted.

But I did.

Again. One more time. One too many, perhaps.

I tightened my throat. As if forcing the breath would return its density, its impact. I exhaled harder, until I felt my chest strain, my muscles vibrate under the useless effort. And this time... I whispered.

— I’m here.

A simple phrase. Absurd adornment in this mute world. But it wasn’t to be heard.

It was for me.

To try to convince myself that I still existed. That my voice, somewhere, was vibrating. That these words, even muffled, even dissolved, were real.

I wanted to believe that this breath carried something. Even something tiny. Even for nothing.

Still no sound.

Nothing vibrated. Nothing responded. The world remained deaf. But this time... to my great surprise, it was enough.

Enough for something to react.

Not suddenly. Not violently. Not like an alert or a sanction. But... living.

The matter beneath my knees tensed. Slowly. Almost timidly. Like a deep, contained shiver rising under the skin before showing itself.

A dull, organic tremor, imperceptible to the eye but palpable in the bones’ hollows. As if the ground itself had contracted — not to eject me, nor to engulf me, but to feel me. To recognize me.

As if my mute word had been enough.

As if the mere fact of having whispered, of having affirmed my existence in the silence... finally awakened something.

Then, on the horizon — or at least what passed for one in this suspended world, without clear direction or anchor line — a vibration.

Almost nothing, at first. A disturbance in the light. A discreet ripple, like a sigh folded into itself.

But it rose.

In the walls. In the veils. In the soft fibers that made up this world.

It slid everywhere, silent and slow, then intensified.

And everything began to tremble from within.

Not like an earthquake. Not like anger. But like an organ awakened too fast.

A body memory too abruptly pulled from sleep. Every surface, every fold of that reality throbbed with barely-contained unease — as if the world, until then frozen in perfect silence, suddenly remembered it had a heart.

And that it was still beating.

And suddenly... it appeared.

Not from the ground. Not from the air.

It didn’t come from anywhere. It seemed to arise from the silence itself, like a fragment of absence become form, a direct outgrowth of this suspended world.

A thing. Crawling. Elongated. Disjointed.

It undulated slowly between the soft arches, never really touching them, as if it slid through a parallel space, carried by the void itself. Its skin was stretched, translucent, barely defined, as if braided from frozen mist, from a material somewhere between flesh and vapor.

It had no eyes. No mouth.

But openings.

Multiple. Spread along its neck, flanks, elbows, like bellows of foreign respiration. Holes that opened and closed to the rhythm of the vibrations, in a disturbing, inhuman cadence, almost... breathing.

Each pulse seemed to absorb a bit more of the world.

A bit more of me.

But the worst...

It wasn’t its form. It wasn’t its lack of features, nor its skin braided with silence, nor those openings that pulsed like conscious wounds.

The worst... was the direction.

It was coming toward me.

Not violently. Not in haste. But with that inescapable, unbearably calm slowness, which leaves no room for hope.

It wasn’t tracking. It wasn’t hunting. It was advancing.

Simply.

As if the entire world was tightening, gradually, around this single point: me.

And I knew, without yet understanding, that I wouldn’t be able to step back.

I stood up. In a sudden movement, almost instinctive. I backed away, without thinking, guided by a mute fear, a visceral flight impulse.

But it... continued.

Just as slowly. Just as surely.

And I understood.

Each time I moved, it reacted.

But it wasn’t my gestures it followed. It wasn’t the matter it tracked. It was... something else.

It reacted to sound itself.

Or rather to its absence. To its intention. To what, within me, wanted to resonate. Even thoughts too sharp, too loud, seemed to make it shiver.

As if it sensed the echo before it existed. As if the mere desire to make noise was enough to disturb it.

And in this world without sound... thinking too loudly was like shouting.

I closed my mouth. Instinctively. As if the simple act of breathing became one too many. I held my breath.

And it slowed.

Its movement, until then relentless, became slower, more hesitant.

Then I took a step. Discreet. Without thought. Without intention. Just a bare glide, almost empty.

It wavered.

Hesitated.

As if the world around it suddenly lost its axis, as if the total absence of vibration disoriented it.

But when I tensed, when, despite myself, my breath grew stronger, more present, more strained...

It leapt.

Not toward me.

Toward the sound.

Toward the space my breath had just barely displaced. As if that shiver of air had been enough to draw a target. As if the invisible had become flesh.

And for the first time... I understood that in this world, it wasn’t me it was chasing.

It was my voice.

I ran.

Not with noise, not in scattered, hurried footsteps. I ran silently, like one flees in a dream, suspended on the edge of erasure. But within me, everything was beating. My heart pounded so hard it seemed ready to betray me, to scream in my place, to pierce the silence with its panicked pulses.

And every time I thought too loudly of fleeing, every time that thought was charged with an invisible cry — the urge to scream, to call, to warn, to tear through this mute world — it emerged.

Relentless.

Almost a perfect mirror of my panic, as if my own fear shaped its contours, summoned it unwillingly. It appeared at the exact moment the emotion overflowed, when thought became vibration, even mute.

And I understood. Slowly. Fully.

This world doesn’t punish noise.

This world punishes the scream. The one you think too hard. The one you no longer even emit, but which still exists, deep in the chest, at the edge of breath. This world punishes the attempt to exist too intensely.

This world...

It is not made for speech.

Not for connection. Not for calling out.

It does not welcome the voice — it extinguishes it. It doesn’t respond to sound — it attacks it.

It devours everything that vibrates, everything that seeks to come out, everything that tries, even faintly, to say: I am here. It doesn’t need to understand. It doesn’t need to judge. It senses. It absorbs. It suffocates.

It is not hostile. It is allergic to sonic presence. As if each breath carried heresy within it. As if the slightest word became a wound, a rupture in the balance of this womb-like silence.

And those who speak... do not survive it.

And it, that thing...

It wasn’t a monster.

It had nothing of those abominations one flees by instinct, nothing of those nightmare figures imagined in the darkness of another world. No.

It was something else.

A guardian.

A guardian of silence.

Not a creature of hate or hunt, but a function. A presence woven to maintain the mute order of this place. It didn’t pursue. It recalled. It absorbed. It silenced.

So... I fell silent.

Truly.

Even in my mind. Even in that mental territory where, until now, I had never stopped screaming.

I let my thoughts flatten, merge, gently extinguish, until they formed nothing but harmless curves, inner gestures without word, without tension.

And the silence, for the first time... no longer scared me.

It accepted me.

I felt my body become absence.

Not disappear. But fade gently, edge by edge, like a drawing dipped in water. The contours relaxed. The boundaries dissolved. I no longer really had skin, no longer really an inside, no longer really weight.

And for the first time...

Already...

It lost me.

Not because I was fleeing. Not because I was resisting. But because I slipped out of everything. Out of it. Out of me.

I was no longer a target.

I was becoming silence.

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