Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 217: You Made Noise

Chapter 217: You Made Noise

I entered a kind of room, but even that word seemed too rigid, too architectural to describe this place. It was a space, yes, but made of stretched, supple, living membranes, as if the world itself had folded in on itself to shape its interior.

Soft fibers lined the walls, woven together in a gentle, almost warm material that sent back no echo, no aggression. Everything seemed to breathe, slowly, in a vibrant stillness, as if I had just stepped into the hollow of an immense, patient, and silent being.

It wasn’t very big, this room, no larger than a nook in a cave or a breath folded onto itself. But the silence here felt immense. Not oppressive. Not hostile. Immense in another way — like a sleeping sea, deep, vast, without anger, but endless, whose edges I could no longer see, as if every attempt at defining it dissolved in the smooth softness of this absence.

This silence didn’t crush. It contained. It encompassed. It welcomed me not to imprison, but to suspend me — in a strange, fragile, almost uterine peace.

In this motionless sea, I felt it — someone, or something, was there. I didn’t see it. Not directly. There was no shape, no movement, no trace. But there was this density. This dull, slow, deep certainty.

An otherness present without imposing, perceptible not through sight, but by the weight it laid in the air, in the ground, in my nerves. Like a new gravity, a mass suspended in silence, a presence placed in the world with such obviousness that it no longer needed to be visible.

Lately, in my wandering through this world, I had begun to sense something — a new sense, a new capacity, maybe, but different from anything I had known until then. It wasn’t a skill. It wasn’t a system-related stat. Nothing digital, nothing coded.

It was... something else. More blurred. More ancient. I didn’t even know if it truly existed, or if it was just an illusion born from silence. And yet, I felt it.

There were ripples. Tiny movements in the world. Folds in the silence. Pulses in the walls themselves, in the light, in the thick air. Discreet vibrations, almost internal, as if the space was whispering truths that my ordinary senses didn’t know how to name.

I didn’t understand how it was possible. I didn’t know if it came from me or from the place, if I had changed or if the world had modified me. Maybe it was an adaptation. Maybe I was becoming something else.

All I knew was that now, I could use it.

This new sense, this intuition, this listening beyond listening. A way of perceiving not with the eyes, nor even with the mind, but with something else, something deeper, older — or maybe, in the end, it really was linked to an advanced stat, simply turned... silent.

The cause didn’t matter.

Because there, against the wall, I felt a quiver. Slight. Organic. Something alive. Lurking between the soft fibers, clinging to the structure itself, invisible to the eye, but present. Present like an expectation. Like a held breath. Taut. Vibrating. Like a string of forgetting, laid there long ago, waiting only for the faintest brush to resonate.

I didn’t move. I stayed there, perfectly still, as if the air itself had frozen around me, as if the slightest movement could break a fragile balance I didn’t yet understand. My breath was slow, restrained, almost absent, absorbed by the thickness of the silence. But deep down, I knew. I didn’t need to see, or to hear. I didn’t even need to think very loudly.

It had sensed me.

Not through my steps. Not through my words. But through that vibration I hadn’t managed to contain. That faint wave, maybe imperceptible to any other being, but not to it. It had perceived me. Recognized me. Located me. Not by my physical presence, but by that inner tension I carried despite myself. And at that instant... I understood that stillness would not make me invisible.

I felt something, like a soft, deep echo, barely perceptible but irresistible, rising slowly into my chest, sliding between my ribs, like a word one doesn’t hear but understands before it’s even spoken, like a foreign certainty seeping into the body before reaching the mind.

It emitted no sound. It said nothing. No voice, no sentence, no breath was there.

And yet... I heard it.

Not with my ears. Not with my thoughts. I heard it in intention.

Something touched me — gently, deeply, without shape, without boundary. A will without direction. A shiver that crossed the world and settled in me, effortlessly.

And this intention... overwhelmed me.

It was neither hostile, nor curious. It didn’t try to impose, nor to seduce, nor to frighten. It was simply... ancient.

Profoundly ancient.

Like a thought left there for centuries.

A voice without a throat. A call without purpose.

A breath from before language, fixed against the wall of the world for so long that it had forgotten its origin, but which still continued, despite everything, to vibrate to exist a little longer.

Me, by entering here, I had brushed it. Barely. Like a draft of air passing over an old scar. It wasn’t a shock, nor an intrusion. More like a diffuse, involuntary contact, but enough to awaken something. A sleeping vibration. A trace inscribed too deeply to have been forgotten.

But it didn’t accuse me.

It didn’t judge me. It didn’t frighten me.

It recognized me. Simply. As if my presence resonated with something it had once known, maybe long ago, maybe in a world where neither it nor I yet had form. It was a rhythm. A memory. A pain, perhaps. Something unspoken, but still beating beneath the surface.

And I... I didn’t try to respond.

I thought nothing. I formed no intention. But my body, slowly, without conscious decision, began to vibrate in return. My breath. My bones. Even my skin. Everything in me seemed to recognize that wave like one recognizes a whisper buried in the flesh.

And for the first time... I was no longer the only one vibrating.

In this soundless dialogue, in this exchange without words or shape, an image appeared to me.

It wasn’t projected. It wasn’t sent. It simply imposed itself, like a memory that didn’t belong to me but had found in me a place to fold into.

A body.

Folded, long, stretched into the very wall. Not attached. Not imprisoned. Fused into the material like a stem into sap, nourished by silence, born from silence, shaped by this absence that reigned here. It had no mouth. No eyes. No hands. But it listened.

It had always listened.

Since the beginning of the floor, perhaps. Since long before me.

A guardian? A witness? A sensitive root, buried there to record the world, to absorb without ever speaking? I didn’t know. And maybe I didn’t need to know.

It spoke to me again. Not with words. Not even with images.

Inside me.

Something vibrated, slid, insinuated itself, not like a message, but like an ancient certainty that needed no translation. I couldn’t formulate it. No language clothed it. And yet... I understood it.

Or rather, I was understood by it.

And what it said, in this soundless space, in this silence thicker than air, resonated in me like a gentle and implacable truth.

It said:

— You made noise.

Here, I understood more and more clearly, silence wasn’t just a void: it was a rule. A living boundary. A sensitive membrane that reacted to the slightest disturbance. And I knew this silence must annoy, disturb, maybe even torment all kinds of lives — entities I couldn’t yet name, but that my instinct sensed as aberrations born of absolute muteness, shaped by absence, hostile to anything that vibrated too strongly.

I had no desire to meet them.

I had no desire to face those abominations of silence, those forms that undoubtedly hunted beats, breaths, uncontained intentions. And above all... I knew that a fight here wasn’t just a risk. It was an alert. A wave. An invisible clamor that could, in an instant, traverse the entire floor.

And attract the guardian.

A shiver ran through me at just the thought.

Not a sharp fear. But a duller, slower, deeper wave, rooted in my bones — like a reflex memory, a soft, indelible terror, reminding me that I had brushed her... and that even that had been enough to mark me.

But I was interrupted.

Not by a sound, of course. Not by a cry.

By a new sentence, slid into me with the same implacable softness as a blade plunged into warm water:

— You know now.

And yes... I knew it.

I already knew it too well.

I knew that I shouldn’t have. That noise, here, wasn’t just a mistake, nor a misstep. It was a wound. A wave that split balance. That tore the other, that pierced the world, and above all... that damaged me.

Me first.

Because here, to make noise was to resist the world instead of tuning to it. It was to force a presence where only resonance mattered.

And I finally understood that even without shouting, I had screamed too loudly.