Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 74: Diary (3)

Chapter 74: Diary (3)

We eventually reached a city.

A real city, alive, buzzing with activity and voices.

And for the first time, I entered it without hiding, without lowering my head, without searching for shadows to disappear into.

Each step felt like a betrayal of the past, a breach in the silent survival I had grown used to. My body moved forward, but my mind still hesitated to believe in this permission to exist in broad daylight.

We ate at an inn, in a lively room filled with laughter and stories.

A real meal. Hot. Hearty. Seated at a table. Together.

There was, in that simple shared act, a tenderness my body no longer knew how to receive. As if each bite rekindled a forgotten memory, a time when I wasn’t just a hungry body or a fleeing shadow.

The simple fact of being able to sit, to eat without fear, without haste, without imminent pain, felt unreal.

Then he took me to a shop.

Each step between the stalls awakened in me a sense of unreality: I was not a thief this time, not a hunted beast. I was a person. A visible presence, worthy of being equipped, prepared. Chosen.

There, he chose an outfit for me—sober, sturdy, designed for the road and for battle—and a hammer, heavy and balanced, whose handle seemed to have been waiting for my hand forever.

He had already given me so much, offered me so much that I no longer knew how to contain the flood of emotions.

I didn’t know how to thank him. I didn’t have the words.

The words caught in my throat, too big, too new, like clothes you don’t yet dare to wear. So I took refuge in silence, like one hides behind a shield too worn but familiar.

My past had not taught me how to receive without suspicion, nor to say thank you without trembling.

So I remained silent, my fingers tightening around the hammer’s handle, my heart pounding with a gratitude so deep it became almost painful.

On the road, one day during a quest, we saw in the distance a black tide.

A writhing, living wave of shapeless creatures. Thousands, maybe more.

They didn’t walk: they slid, crawled, tearing at the ground with their screams. Indistinct masses, as if darkness itself had decided to take form and devour the world.

A tsunami of howling shadows that swallowed the horizon, making the sky darker, heavier.

The entire world seemed to contract around that threat, as if reality itself bent under the weight of such horror. Even the light no longer dared to fall.

The ground seemed to vibrate beneath their passing, a low rumble rising through the ash-laden air.

And I was afraid.

A visceral, brutal fear, pure and primal, that left no room for reasoning, no illusion of courage.

It was a fear that gripped the heart and crushed the mind, a fear that stripped you down to a raw state of weakness before the vastness of death.

What sane being wouldn’t feel terror before such unleashed force?

But I looked at him.

And on his face... there was that strange glow.

A spark of exhilaration, almost childlike, mingled with something infinitely older and more terrible.

A smile. Slight. Serene.

As if this coming chaos were nothing but a playground for him.

That was where his true nature lay—not in peace, but in the storm. He was born for that fury, forged in the antechamber of carnage. He didn’t fight the tide: he commanded it.

And without a moment’s hesitation, without looking back, he surged forward.

Alone. Into the advancing black vastness.

He threw himself into the tide of shadows, and he danced.

It was a trance. An offering. The chaos responded to his movements like a tamed beast, and each impact rang out like a primitive heartbeat in the veins of the battlefield.

A death dance, fluid and bloody, a symphony of steel and fire.

He killed relentlessly, his movements precise, beautiful in their horror, weaving a tapestry of death around him.

With every wound taken, his body closed itself, swallowing pain like a pitiful offering.

He killed. Regenerated. Killed again. Tirelessly.

The ground opened beneath his steps, flesh fell like dead leaves, and his body—too alive to yield—danced to the rhythm of the world’s end. Even fear seemed to part to let him pass.

Until the impossible became reality: he imposed his rhythm on the black sea, as if death itself had drawn back before him, unable to lay its cold fingers on his untamed flesh.

The next morning, as the sky barely began to pale, he sat beside me.

And he spoke. Calmly. Sincerely.

He explained why he did all of this. Why he had chosen me.

Not for what I was. But for what he had seen beneath the dust, the wounds, and the silence. He had seen—without my understanding how—the ember beneath the ash. And he had chosen to blow on it, with no promise, no guarantee.

Why he needed to become stronger, faster, more relentless than any legend.

He spoke of what awaited him—enemies lurking in the shadows, oaths still heavy to bear, battles that would, sooner or later, demand his blood.

He confided in me his secrets, his flaws, his invisible wounds.

And I received them as one receives a blade in hand: with care, with awe, and the dizzying realization that what you hold can cut as much as it can protect.

He laid bare his past before me, raw and unadorned, like an open wound he no longer tried to hide.

And in the end, he gave me a choice.

To stay. Or to leave.

He didn’t try to bind me. He didn’t beg.

He simply looked at me, with that same quiet, discreet gentleness, like a hand extended without force.

It was a bare invitation, with no trap or condition. A freedom offered, not imposed, but whose weight split my heart. Because choosing now meant turning away from the abyss that had kept me alive until then.

And I understood, in a shiver of fear mingled with certainty: I was afraid.

Not of him. Not of his darkness or his power.

I was afraid of losing that warmth, that fragile fire I had only just discovered in the hollow of the world.

That fire that reminded me, finally, what it meant to be alive.

It wasn’t a destructive fire, not the kind that burns everything in its path. It was a faint, flickering flame, but capable of lighting up my deepest shadows. And I wasn’t ready to let that light die.

Not now. Not after glimpsing what life could be—not just surviving, but learning, at last, to burn with a fire that illuminates, rather than consumes.

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