Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 75: Diary (4)

Chapter 75: Diary (4)

Then came the return to the city.

I thought I had already received everything, believed that my heart, still new to this happiness, could hold nothing more.

And yet... he continued. Without expecting thanks, without seeking recognition.

He bought items without really counting — useful things for the road, precious tools, strange trinkets whose purpose I didn’t understand, and even some things simply pretty, useless but beautiful, as if beauty itself deserved to exist at my side.

And then he offered me a room. A real one. Just for me.

A quiet, soothing space, where I could sleep without chains on my wrists, without screams torn from the night, without cold walls to remind me every morning of what I had been.

It was a refuge. A sanctuary. A place that bore no mark of iron or pain.

And for the first time in years, I no longer needed to sleep half-awake, ready to flee.

I was free. Truly free.

He kept feeding me. Again and again.

Day after day, he laid before me dishes with impossible flavors, meals I wouldn’t have even dared to dream of in my calmest days, when hunger gave me only the space of a heartbeat to imagine anything beyond survival.

Each meal was a silent celebration, a quiet tribute to a life I was just beginning to brush with my fingertips.

He spoke to me too. About everything, about nothing.

He threw compliments at me — sometimes clumsy, tripping over his own words, often sincere, burning with that raw warmth no mask could hide.

And jokes. Oh, they weren’t always funny.

Often, they fell flat, lost in hesitant silence.

But they made me smile inside, every time, because they came from him.

Because they were real. Because they were for me.

And without even realizing it, he was rebuilding something in me, word by word, laugh by laugh.

And in this new daily life, woven from simple gestures and quiet attentions, something new was born within me.

A different fear. Deeper. More insidious.

No longer the fear of pain, of death, of being abandoned in the cold night.

But the fear of losing him. Of seeing the light he had unknowingly lit begin to fade.

And he, without knowing, kept going. Always more. Always better.

As if what he had already given was never enough, as if he wanted to build for me an entire world, from nothing.

As if he carried the certainty that I deserved more — even when I still doubted it.

He kept moving forward, always offering his hand, even when I didn’t quite dare take it.

One day, he bought us two matching kimonos.

They were beautiful. Of an almost unreal lightness, woven from fabrics so soft they seemed to slip through the fingers like running water.

The materials, joined by dark tones — midnight blue, deep grey, charcoal black — caught the light in a subtle way, revealing quiet reflections with each movement, as if the very shadow breathed around us.

I loved them so much... Not just for their beauty, nor for the care he had clearly taken in choosing them.

But because wearing them, I felt like I existed at his side. Like I was seen.

Like I walked in his wake not as a shadow, but as his equal.

Like I resembled him a little. And for the first time, that idea didn’t terrify me.

On the contrary, it warmed me, like a silent certainty: I was no longer alone.

But all of it led to a question. A choice. Inevitable.

One day, he looked at me with that sadness he hid so poorly, despite all his strength, all his control.

A crack in his mask.

I felt, deep down, what he wanted: he wanted to see me leave.

Not out of rejection. Not out of weariness.

But out of silent love, from that instinct to protect only those who have truly known loss can feel.

He wanted to offer me another life. A life far from him, far from blood, far from the constant danger that clung to his steps like a shadow.

And in his eyes, in that restrained pain, I saw all the kindness in the world.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t push.

He just looked at me, with that same quiet, silent softness, like an outstretched hand with no force.

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

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

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

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

That flame 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 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.

So I decided. A simple, irrevocable choice.

I would stay. With him.

In the hell that awaited him, in the storms to come, in the darkness that would try to swallow him.

I would walk at his side, no matter the cost, no matter the wounds, no matter the fear.

I would be his strength when his faltered.

I would be his hammer — the one that strikes when he weakens, the one that breaks when he hesitates.

I would be his student, humble and devoted, but also his shield.

And if he fell... I would raise him up. Again. And again.

Without ever looking away. Without ever giving up.

Because my existence, now, had found its meaning in his.

And nothing — not fear, not death — could take that from me.

The months that followed were a whirlwind, a dizzying rush of sweat, blood, and will.

Relentless training, merciless, with no pause and no reprieve.

He forged me with the patience of a master shaping a blade, breaking down my weaknesses to extract a strength harder than steel.

He taught me to fight — not with blind rage born of instinct, but with the cold precision of those who know that every move, every breath, can decide life or death.

He taught me to think — not like prey, but like a strategist, always three steps ahead of adversity.

Above all, he taught me to survive, no matter the cost.

To endure the impossible.

To turn fear into fuel, pain into a weapon.

Each day was a trial. Each night, a silent victory.

And, slowly, painfully, I became what he saw in me: something greater than I had ever believed possible.

He taught me strategies, the invisible patterns that govern battles, the subtle traps woven in shadow, the tiny cracks even the most fearsome creatures leave behind.

He didn’t just show me how to strike — he forced me to think.

To anticipate. To read the chaos of combat like an open book, to feel the moment before it arrived, to sense danger before it took shape.

Day by day, he pushed me beyond my limits, not out of cruelty, but because he believed I could be more than I was.

He confronted me with my own barriers, broke them one by one, until I began to believe too.

To understand that I wasn’t born to flee or survive... but to stand tall.

To fight. To win.

One day, he was down.

Poisoned, weakened to the point that he could no longer rise.

His breath was shallow, his face pale, and for the first time, I thought the opportunity had come.

A chance, small but real. A moment to surpass him. To prove I was ready.

My heart pounded furiously, torn between hesitation and hope.

But even then, even broken, he defeated me.

Not by muscle. Not by a sudden maneuver.

But by his blood itself — a living flow that rose around him, like an invisible army.

A wall of liquid, threatening, as unrelenting as he was.

Before I could strike, before I could even dream of victory, I froze.

My body betrayed my will. My mind, shaken by this silent display of power, recoiled.

And I had lost.

Not from lack of skill.

But because I understood, in that precise moment, that his true strength lay not only in his flesh... but in the bottomless abyss of his will.

Another day, I saw him face an abomination.

A living nightmare, a monstrous reptilian creature whose body seemed sculpted from pure hatred.

The abomination had multiple heads, each vomiting flames of a different color — icy azure, acidic green, searing red, the black of the Void.

Its arms, whip-like and extendable, were embedded with black blades so sharp they sliced the air itself with a hiss.

It melted into the ground like a viscous shadow, bursting forth without warning, launching fragments of its own body in bursts of fire and steel, only to reassemble itself immediately, implacable, immortal.

It was horror without a name, a beast escaped from another world, built to destroy anything that dared exist before it.

Nothing I had seen until then could have prepared me for that spectacle: a struggle at the edge of reality, a dance between two forces that nothing should have been able to stop.

And this time... he almost lost.

For the first time, the cold certainty of his fall struck me.

Before my eyes, the abomination tore off his arm in a burst of flesh and dark blood, splattering the blackened earth around him.

He lay on the ground, pale, broken, his breath as faint as a dying whisper. Half-dead.

To see him like that, reduced to helplessness, struck in his legendary strength, pierced me with a pain I hadn’t thought possible.

I looked at him, unable to turn away.

And my heart... clenched like never before.

Not from fear of losing a master, nor even a guide.

But from the fear of losing the one who had managed to rekindle a life in me — fragile, still flickering, but more precious than words.

That fear, violent and pure, consumed me entirely, letting me understand that I could no longer imagine this world without him.

He weakly pointed to the creature, still crawling through the bloody dust, clinging to life with hideous persistence.

It was a parasite, a twisted beast, a misshapen fragment of hate that existed only to take over his broken body.

And I felt a rage so pure, so violent, it made me tremble.

I would never forgive.

Not it. Not for wounding him. Not for daring to touch him.

So I struck.

With a blow charged with raw rage, with repressed pain, with everything I had never been able to scream.

The hammer fell like the justice of a forgotten world.

I crushed it. Shredded it. Until nothing was left of it, nothing but insignificant debris.

And in the silence that followed, heavy and unreal, a truth erupted within me.

Me, a mere level 47 creature, still hesitant, still so far from the summits...

He had just defeated a level 102 monster.

An adversary of such rank I had never even heard of one before — except in tales meant to terrify novices.

He had faced it alone. He had held his ground where anyone else would have fallen.

I was awestruck. Fascinated.

As if I were discovering at that moment the dizzying vastness of what he was — and of what I might one day become at his side.

I came closer to him, carried by a silent certainty stronger than fear, stronger than pain.

I leaned in, feeling my own heart pounding against my ribs like a war drum, and, without hesitation, I offered him my blood.

My essence. My life.

A silent offering, simple, absolute.

My veins burned, but I did not look away.

I saw him then, regenerating before my eyes — his torn arm reborn, driven by an ancient, untamed force, his wounds slowly closing, as if an old magic, forgotten by the world, was weaving his flesh again in the secrecy of silence.

And for the first time... for the first time, I was able to give him back a fragment of all he had given me.

A piece of what he had taught me: that one can survive for oneself... but also for someone else.