Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 225: He Was Waiting for Me, Displaced

Chapter 225: He Was Waiting for Me, Displaced

I kept walking. Not out of will, not out of desire for movement or conviction that an elsewhere was waiting for me, but simply because there was no reason to remain still. Because stopping no longer had meaning, no longer had footing, no longer had use. My body moved forward with the same docility as breath, like a slow animal fleeing nothing, but finding nowhere to rest.

There was no longer a real direction. No goal. Just this vague, almost mechanical necessity to keep moving in a world that opposed nothing. I walked because staying would have been the same — and in perfect indifference, a step always seems preferable to stillness.

The ground hadn’t changed — still that soft, almost lukewarm texture, neither truly solid nor entirely unstable, like a world that accepts weight without ever resisting it. But my gait, it wavered. Something in the way I inhabited movement had given way.

I no longer moved forward according to a direction, nor even a will. I progressed trying not to fall, not to lean too far, as if my balance had been stolen during sleep. Each step seemed to originate from another part of my body, from a displaced center I couldn’t yet locate.

There was no longer clear verticality, no firm axis between my nape and my heels. My own gravity — intimate, invisible — had been rewritten, silently, without my knowing, and now my muscles were trying to understand this new inner map. I was walking sideways, inside myself.

And it was there, in that intimate offset, in that dull sensation of being slightly askew in my own body, that I saw him. Or rather... that I perceived him. Because it wasn’t a clear appearance, nor a figure emerging to be seen.

It was a shape, at the edge of a fold in the wall, almost merged with the material, half hidden under a layer of hanging fibers — as if the place itself had learned to cover him, to keep him in waiting.

A humanoid silhouette. Motionless. But not dead. Not frozen either. Just... in waiting.

He didn’t move, no. He didn’t breathe. No quiver, no heartbeat passed through him. And yet, he existed. Intensely. Present in a way foreign to all animation. He was there, placed, offered without appeal, like an answer laid down too soon, like a solution before the question.

And that simple fact — that existence held in silence — was enough to make me doubt my own movement.

I approached. Slowly. But not too close. Not like one walks toward danger. Not out of caution, nor out of fear of awakening something fragile or too powerful. No, it wasn’t fear. It was intuition. A subtle impression, immediate, rooted in the oldest fibers of my body — that part of me that senses before it thinks, that recoils for no reason, or steps forward without knowing why.

Because I knew at once that if it had been any other moment... he wouldn’t have seen me. If I had arrived an hour earlier. Or even a minute. Perhaps even a second. He wouldn’t have perceived me. He wouldn’t have recognized me. He wouldn’t have revealed himself.

Something in the world — or in him — must have slipped at the exact instant I drew near, for the encounter to become possible. And I didn’t know whether it was coincidence, a trap, or a form of response. But I knew it was now. Not before. Not after.

He was there for me. Yes. But not for the old image I held of myself, not for who I had been entering here, nor even for the one I still believed I was in the last room passed through. He was there for me now. For this version barely formed, barely recognized, perhaps born from the silent displacement of that inner weight.

He was waiting for me, displaced. Not stronger. Not more worthy. Not purified. He didn’t welcome me as one receives a hero nor as one judges a traitor. He was waiting for me as I was, but shifted. Different, not by essence, but by position. Just... elsewhere in myself.

As if it was that very gap he had waited for. As if the simple fact of having slipped made me accessible.

His skin was pale, almost translucent, stretched like a membrane too thin over silent flesh. It revealed, in some places, grayish patterns, like ancient veins or dormant currents, pulsing faintly — a dull vibration, contained, almost shy, but still alive.

He wore no clothing. Nothing placed. Nothing added. But he was covered with a fine, organic substance, as if woven directly against him, fused with the epidermis rather than layered over. A strange texture, neither entirely vegetal nor clearly animal, as if the world had slowly closed its threads over him.

It was neither armor nor nudity. Neither threat nor offering. It was simply there, settled on him long ago. And that ancient presence, that discreet weaving, seemed to say he was not born of now — that he had waited, long, never having needed to dress otherwise.

He finally looked at me. Not abruptly. Not like one turns their head. But with that strange calm of things that already know. His eyes were open. Still. Unblinking, as if that function had become useless due to the nature of his perception.

And above all: he didn’t speak. No word. No attempt to name, to explain, to contain what was happening. He looked at me as if I had already spoken. As if every step, every silence, every bodily hesitation had been heard. As if the simple fact of arriving here, off-center, fragile, had been enough to say everything.

His gaze searched for nothing. It didn’t probe. It received — without warmth, without judgment, but with the naked gravity of beings who no longer need questions to hear the answer.

In that gaze... I saw neither judgment, nor invitation. Nothing that tried to convince or repel. Nothing that demanded, nothing that forgave. There was no promise, no threat, not even tenderness. And yet, that gaze contained everything.

Not by accumulation, but by density. It said nothing — it reflected. It offered me something older than speech: a form. A reversed reflection. A version of myself I had never been able to be. Not for lack of desire, nor lack of choice, but because the world, the structure, the fear had always kept me outside that shape.

And yet, it had waited. It hadn’t disappeared. It had remained there, on the other side of the mirror, patient, motionless, certain that sooner or later... I would slip toward it.

He didn’t move. Not a gesture. Not a quiver. Even his eyes, still open, remained anchored in their calm fixity, as if movement was no longer necessary, or would have betrayed something deeper. But I knew he had recognized me.

It wasn’t a formulated knowledge. It wasn’t a sign. It wasn’t a call. It was a mute certainty, heavy, vibrating in the air between us. He didn’t recognize me for what I was. Not because I was someone. Not because I bore a name, a form, a role.

He recognized me because I had changed. Because I had finally stopped being exactly what I was before. Because something in me had given way, had shifted, had opened enough for this encounter to become possible. And that recognition... was enough.

I didn’t know if he was inviting me to approach. He made no gesture. He didn’t change his gaze, nor his posture, nor even the quality of the silence around us. Nothing moved around him. And yet... I did anyway.

With small steps. Not out of defiance. Not out of unawareness. But because something in me was older than fear, something that remembered this path before it was ever traced.

I moved forward slowly, like stepping into a memory whose end is unknown. Each step was weighted, held back, as if my body was expecting at every moment an invisible boundary, a limit not to cross.

But there was no obstacle. No refusal. No change. Just that slow advance in a silence that held me.

I came closer without creasing the ground, without betraying the momentum, without breaking the fragile thread that guided me. Just enough to reduce the distance. Not enough to make it vanish. A restrained proximity, as if the meeting wasn’t to take place in contact, but in that slight gap that nothing fills, and yet which binds.

He hadn’t moved. Not even a breath. His gaze remained anchored, calm, still, almost inert of will — but never empty. He didn’t scrutinize. He didn’t demand. He wasn’t expecting a reply.

And yet, he was waiting.

It was a gaze that wanted nothing, but awaited everything. Not as a request. As a promise already made, that only silence would come to fulfill.