Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 64: The Forge and Oblivion

Chapter 64: The Forge and Oblivion

I was lying on my back, stretched out on the cold floor, lost in the meanders of my thoughts. My vacant gaze pierced the ceiling without really seeing it, while my mind drifted, tossed about by the turmoil of this relentless chaos.

I knew, deep down, that I had no other choice. I had to move forward, no matter the cost, face the inevitable, even if each step seemed to bring me closer to a bottomless abyss. But... it was hard. Terribly hard.

A nagging question gnawed at me: had I really made the right choice by dragging Lysara into this senseless madness? Had I not, deep down, sealed her fate, condemning her to a hell even crueler than the slavery I had wanted to free her from? A bitter taste, heavy with guilt, rose in my throat, almost choking me under the weight of my own doubts.

That day... had I really made the right decision? Everything had been decided in an instant. A simple choice, suspended between courage and madness. A heartbeat, a breath of audacity or misjudgment, that had been enough to tip everything over.

Maybe... maybe I should have died that day. Accepted the end without trying to cling to a chimera of reincarnation. Abandoned this world to its own decay, without interfering further.

Eyes closed, I let myself be overwhelmed by the crushing weight of my regrets, by the bitterness of those choices that, one by one, had sealed my fate.

As I drowned in my darkest thoughts, a strange sensation slowly pulled me from my inner abyss: a presence, discreet but palpable, motionless at the entrance to the library.

I lifted my head, with the heaviness of one who carries too many regrets. Of course... it was her. Lysara.

My daughter, my precious child, stood there, silent and still, her large eyes bathed in mute sadness fixed on me.

She had heard the commotion. Of course she had heard it... Without a word, she approached, step by step, each of her movements imbued with an almost painful delicacy, as if she feared breaking me further.

Once by my side, she knelt with infinite gentleness. Then, without the slightest hesitation, she slid against me, resting her small head on my slumped shoulder.

Exhausted, drained of all strength, I closed my eyes. We didn’t speak. We just stayed there, wrapped in a fragile silence, and that simple gesture, more than any words, brought me a peace I had not felt in an eternity.

To this child, so small and so strong at once, I owed everything. And I would give it back to her, no matter the cost. Despite the crushing weight of our fate, I would make her the happiest being this world had ever borne.

I would offer her everything I could give, erecting for her a kingdom of light within the very heart of shadow, making her live like a goddess among the ruins.

But, as always, that brief moment of respite eventually faded, swept away by the inexorable flow of time.

Each evening, tirelessly, I would take up my old notebook with its crumpled pages, refuge of my stray thoughts, and let my pen run, like a hand reaching toward the past.

Word after word, memory after memory, I traced the broken echo of what I had become, the faded visions my eyes had captured, the wavering truths I refused to let sink into oblivion.

And in this carefully orchestrated luxury, where everything seemed too perfect, too calm, too meticulously crafted, I felt an imperceptible change growing within me. It was not healing—far from it—but rather a slow, insidious mutation.

A tiny crack opened in the wall I had built around my being. Just enough to let through a ray of light, fragile, wavering, but very real.

Sometimes, when the evening spread its cloak of shadows over the world, I ventured into the silent depths of the forge. Under my arm, I carried a barrel, carefully chosen, a promise of new intoxications.

Each time, a different vintage accompanied me: sometimes a rare nectar, with glints of liquid gold capturing the light of the last embers; sometimes a black wine, so thick and dark it seemed like frozen ink, a fragment of night poured into a bottle.

But always, without exception, it was something extraordinary, a precious offering to the silence and the flames.

And there, in the glowing, vibrant heat of the Heart-Forge, I found Xagros again. The Lord of the Furnace. A titanic creature, made of roaring fire, ancient stone, and memories as old as the first mountains.

We exchanged few words, sometimes none. Silence, heavy and complicit, was enough. But always, invariably, we drank, sharing that mute bond stronger than any oath.

One day, during one of our rare conversations, Xagros had spoken to me of his son. In the incandescence of his gaze, I had glimpsed the shadow of a bittersweet nostalgia, a distant echo resonating from another age, older still than the stones of the forge.

His child had been born of a union as improbable as it was unimaginable: that of a Pyrmoth, lord of flames, and a tigress-woman, fierce and free as the winds of the savannahs.

The image, as strange as it was striking, of Xagros enamored with a feline creature crossed my mind—and, despite myself, a pure and crystalline laugh escaped my lips, sharp as a spark in the burning air.

But beyond that whimsical vision, beyond the images tinged with irony and tenderness, he had given me something even more precious: a name.

A word heavy with promises and mysteries, which he had whispered with unusual gravity, as if entrusting a fragment of his soul.

I had then buried it deep in my memory, in a secret corner that even time would not dare to touch. Like a silent talisman, I kept it, waiting for the improbable day when our paths, by some whim of fate, would finally cross.

Sitting on burning blocks, in a heat so fierce it seemed to make the air itself vibrate, we let the living metal murmur beneath our feet and the heavy chains softly groan, hanging from the blackened ceiling.

In this atmosphere saturated with fire and silence, we raised our cups gravely, like two ancient gods paying homage to some forgotten oath. And, in those simple gestures, we exchanged far more than mere drinks: we offered fragments of soul.

A word whispered in the furnace. A gaze full of history. A stray memory, shared without shame.

Over the weeks, through our meetings woven of shadow and embers, something was born, fragile at first, almost shy. A respect, raw and rough, like the stones of the mountains.

Then, slowly, imperceptibly, a warmth different from that of the flames enveloped us. And finally, with the patience of blacksmiths and the strength of the elements, a true friendship anchored itself between us.

Not a boisterous camaraderie, punctuated by hearty laughs and slaps on the back, like those born in smoky taverns. No. It was something denser, more serious, rarer.

A silent alliance, forged in trial, hammered like incandescent metal, then cooled in the deep waters of trust. An unalterable friendship.

And sometimes, as I turned to climb back to the surface, ascending the narrow stairs where the heat writhed in incandescent curls, I felt his gaze weigh on me, lingering a second longer than necessary.

A gaze heavy with silent thoughts, with mute suspicions. As if he were whispering, from the depths of his ardent being: "You... you don’t come here by chance."

And he was right.

Since the first descent into the bowels of the Heart-Forge, since the first exchange sealed by fire and alcohol, something in me knew that our meetings were neither whim nor accident. They responded to an older call, to a buried necessity, as if the burning threads of fate, invisible and merciless, had already begun to weave their web around us.

That month, as the days slipped by like embers on the wind, an improvement from the System discreetly enhanced my abilities.

My profession, the fruit of long hours of effort and perseverance, had finally crossed the threshold of level 10, marking a symbolic, almost solemn milestone in my journey.

With that milestone, a first skill revealed itself to me, like a star appearing at the edge of twilight:

Primary Engraving (Inferior).

A modest skill, without brilliance, but endowed with precious stability—a foundation on which any patient builder could erect future wonders.

It offered me the ability, still fragile but promising, to hand-engrave elemental runes—strength, fire, vibration, anchoring...—directly onto metal, wood, or stone.

Each glyph, inscribed with care, translated a pure, raw intention, stripped of frills, like a cry addressed to the very essence of matter.

The effect of these marks remained modest, a discreet pulse, but constant, impervious to time and ordinary alterations. At this embryonic stage, a single rune could be activated per artifact, limiting ambitions, curbing dreams.

Nothing spectacular. Nothing that would ignite songs or rouse crowds. But it was a beginning. And in that beginning already vibrated the promise of an ancient art, solid and unalterable, ready to grow.

From that day on, with the same stubborn patience as water carving rock, I had continued my progression. Step by step, rune after rune, I carved my path through the invisible architecture of the System, raising my profession to level 15.

Each milestone crossed brought me no sudden revelation, no dazzling miracle. But like a blacksmith endlessly hammering an as-yet unshaped blade, I felt, beneath the surface, the slow birth of a discreet, obstinate, irreversible power.

We continued our learning, closely guided by our teachers, austere guardians of an ancient and jealously guarded knowledge.

And, on the fringes of that imposed rigor, we gave ourselves over without restraint to the delights this decadent city had to offer—a city where knowledge rubbed shoulders with debauchery, where past greatness mingled with a slow decay, sweet as poisonous honey.

There, between the gilded walls and feverish alleys, each temptation became a lesson, each excess, an experience engraved in flesh and soul.