Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 235: The Root Remade

Chapter 235: The Root Remade

I no longer knew if I was moving forward. Perhaps in that marsh, the very idea of progression no longer made sense. There was no direction. No real orientation. Only... a blurry sense of gradual sinking into a living, shifting matter, which led nowhere, yet somehow continued to hold me.

As if space no longer needed direction to welcome me. As if the mere act of remaining... was enough.

I barely floated. I no longer walked. And yet something seemed to move. Not me. Not the space. The ground. Or whatever served as it. It contracted, very slowly, according to a rhythm I could not perceive at once, but only glimpse in fragments, like the breathing of a continent, too slow to belong to a creature, too vast to be purely organic. It was a breath before forms. A memory pulsed by the earth itself.

An intentionless wait. Not a trap. Not a trial. A world that simply would not release anything.

And always that silence. Absolute. A silence that allowed no friction, no sound. Even my steps—if they still existed—left no audible trace. I moved through a wadding that rejected any percussion, as if the world had decided to silence witnesses. I was contained in a density that even absorbed the possibility of leaving an imprint.

And then... I saw it.

A thing. Suspended. A thin, dark, quivering form. A root, I first sensed. But it was not truly a root. It did not arise from the ground. It descended into it. Slowly. Upside down.

As if the sky itself sought to anchor in that damp flesh. As if the above sought refuge in what remains.

It descended from a vague point suspended in air, as if it came from elsewhere higher, more abstract, more ancient. A glowing filament, woven of a thick, almost coagulated fluid, dripping slowly downward, drop by drop. And where it touched the surface, the matter responded. Not by rejection. But through welcome. It barely folded, allowed itself to be traversed with a kind of mute gratitude.

I approached. Not too close. Just enough to see that this thing was not vegetal. The filament beat. It had its own pulse. Discreet. Irregular. Like a memory uncalled, yet returning. And I saw, around its anchoring point, that the ground had changed. It was no longer the same texture as the marsh. It had been... rewoven. Denser. Smoother. More stable.

It did not resist. It opened its skin. It offered its matter unguarded, with an almost animal docility learned only after collapse.

As if that root repaired. As if it came to seal a wound. An omission. A fragment erased. A memory too damaged to heal alone.

Not in detail. Not in meaning. But in the body. I felt it. An ancient suture. A slow, patient attempt to reunite what refused to be whole.

I felt a shiver. But not of fear.

Of shame.

Because I understood. Even without knowing where it came from, even without tracing that filament to its source, I knew what it was doing. It reconstructed. It stitched. Slowly. Carefully. Gently. What others, perhaps I, had tried to erase. It gathered what had been disjoined.

As if the world hesitated to answer. As if it waited... for me at last to name what I still refused to name.

And the world... accepted it.

It didn’t resist.

And I... I remained there. Useless witness to a graft not meant for me.

Useless witness. But not neutral. Part of me wanted to avert my gaze. The other... wanted to reach out.

But it disturbed me even in my chest. Because it touched a point I had never wanted to let be resewn. It awakened a fracture I had chosen to keep open.

And then a phrase rose in me.

Not a choice. Not a conscious thought.

An eruption.

— I do not want to be repaired.

I did not say it. I did not even think it. It just was. Direct. Intrusive. Yet intimate. And the marsh reacted. Around me a wave formed. Very faint. A vibration. An almost imperceptible breath. Like a hesitant membrane. As if the matter waited. Not for an answer. A restatement. A precision.

But I said nothing.

I did not want to say that. I did not even know if it was true. Perhaps I did want it. Perhaps not. Perhaps I did not want to be changed. Or perhaps I no longer knew what I wanted to be.

I turned away.

Not to flee.

To preserve myself.

Out of fatigue.

And it was then... that I saw it.

Not as a revelation. Rather as a shift of sense. Something there had always been, but which I had not yet seen.

Something else.

Further on.

A form.

Not living.

But not dead.

Not organic.

But not inert either.

A broad white mass, bristling with soft points, surfacing in the marsh like a buried memory resurfacing uninvited. It rested not on the ground. It floated. Very low. Barely lifted. As if the world itself carried it. As if the matter supported it with silent care. Almost tenderness.

I thought it was a ruin.

A remnant.

But it was neither stone nor wood. An unknown substance. Too smooth to be natural. Too porous to be shaped. A foreign matter. As if designed to welcome without enclosing.

Not in the head. Not in words. But in the breath. Something in me remembered... without knowing what.

And the closer I drew, the more I understood.

It was not a thing.

It was... a cradle.

A vast split cradle. Opening upward. Empty.

But not abandoned.

All around, suspended filaments. Inverted roots. Channels of warm light descended from above and slotted into its fissures, as if the world refused to believe nothing remained to nourish. As if it continued to infuse that void softly with the idea of presence.

And I felt ill.

Not fear.

A gentle nausea. Clammy. Almost affectionate.

As when entering a room where a child had slept long ago, and understanding that one had no right to enter. An ancient room. A forgotten matrix. A memory you wished not to awaken.

Because it did not cry. Because it judged nothing. It slept. But it slept in me.

I stepped back.

I did not want to know.

I did not want to acknowledge.

I did not want to be asked to say what that form meant.

And the marsh... did not insist.

It simply continued to breathe, slowly, under my steps, as if it already knew I had seen. That that would suffice. That I could not erase it.

And I, I knew.

I knew that what I had just seen... would eventually seek me out.

And here, in that slow, saturated world, nothing healed.

We only stitched.

What we still refused to call a wound.