Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 76: Diary (5)

Chapter 76: Diary (5)

Later, when the wounds had closed and the days resumed their harsh rhythm, he taught me how to feed myself.

He watched me without interfering, letting my hands tremble, fail, try again — until the gesture became memory.

To no longer depend on chance or the pity of the world.

He taught me how to prepare a special kind of meat, infused with secret techniques and subtle forces, a flesh that did not rot, even with time.

Food designed to last, to survive seasons and disasters.

Each step of the process was an act of patience, a quiet ritual through which he passed down a precious knowledge: that of being self-sufficient.

Of being autonomous. Strong. Able to face the void without bending.

It wasn’t just a survival lesson — it was a silent gift of independence, a legacy whispering that even without him, I could keep moving forward.

Then, one day... he left.

Without much explanation, without promises of return.

A month. A whole month without him.

The days followed one another like tombstones — without warmth, without name, without end. Even the wind seemed to flee from me.

A dark, heavy month, where each night stretched his absence to the unbearable.

A month in which I learned what it truly meant to wait — that feverish waiting, knotted with a cold fear that never left me, that dull terror he might never return.

Each dusk fell with the weight of a silent mourning I dared not name.

And then... one day, he came back.

Alive. Standing. But not unscathed.

He bore the wear of a world I did not yet know — a fatigue so deep it seemed to live beneath his skin.

Something in him had changed. Something deep, irreversible.

His gaze, once blazing with quiet certainty, now carried a new gravity, a gleam worn down by what he had seen or lived.

His posture, still upright but heavier, betrayed a weariness that neither rest nor victory could erase.

A shadow had crept into his gestures, discreet but indelible.

A fracture. Invisible to the world. But not to me.

He had faced something... something immense, invisible, that had partly broken him.

Not in his body, but in his soul, where scars cannot be seen, but leave a void no triumph can fill.

Despite that, despite the pain he now carried in silence, he gave me something priceless: an egg.

Fragile like a promise, perfect like a secret. It held more than life: it held intention.

Small, modest in appearance, but I felt, deep within me, that this object contained a power, a promise so precious that few could grasp its worth.

He had crossed the darkness to bring it to me, to keep building around me a future he still believed possible, even as his own strength faltered.

And I... I had nothing to give him in return but my presence.

My silent commitment.

To be there. By his side. Still. Always.

Then, we set off again.

In search of a hidden city, ancient, forgotten by all but the winds and the stones.

A whisper scribbled on a map eroded by time, a faded legend chased only by fools or the stubborn.

The journey lasted two months.

Two months of torn roads, of tortured forests whose trees seemed to scream under the wind, of mountains with crests sharp as blades, of scorched plains where even the sky seemed to have burned away.

Two months of battles, unforeseen trials, choices made with no certainty of survival.

Each day was a battle. Each night, a meager victory over exhaustion.

We slept with fear knotted in our guts, the dream never quite extinguished, alertness etched into our marrow.

And, tirelessly, he trained me.

He forged me. Again and again, until my muscles screamed and my bones threatened to give way.

But he knew. He knew how far to push without breaking me.

He knew when pain became poison, when breath threatened to become a final gasp.

Then, sometimes, he let me breathe. Let me rebuild, just enough to start again.

It was a trial, but also a silent pact: he believed in who I was becoming.

And I... I grew better. Day after day. Blow after blow.

Under merciless skies, in the mud, the ash and the dust, I shaped what I was meant to become.

My arm grew steadier, more precise, each movement devoid of hesitation.

My gaze, once unsure, sharpened like a blade, able to read intentions in a twitch of a shoulder, in the tension of a weapon.

My thoughts, once so slow, now flashed, tracing paths, escapes, possible victories where once I saw only chaos.

And my heart... my heart would anchor deeply, solidly, no longer tossed by fear or hunger, but beating with a new certainty.

I was becoming someone.

Not just a weapon in his hands.

Not just a student shaped by his will.

But something greater. Freer.

A being defined by my own strength, born of his teachings but carried by my own will.

And him, always there. Always present.

Sometimes ahead, opening the way with quiet assurance; sometimes behind, watching in my shadow without ever interfering unnecessarily.

He advanced with silent constancy, a discreet but unwavering faith.

He gave me time to learn — to fall, to rise, to understand for myself the value of each scar.

But he never allowed me the luxury of giving up.

He refused to let me yield to the ease of surrender, even when my body screamed, even when my mind threatened to fracture.

His gaze alone was enough to remind me that I was capable of more. That I wasn’t here to fail.

Under his silent eye, failure wasn’t an end... but a step.

And as long as he believed in me, I could not abandon.

And finally, one evening, as the wind carried the bitter scent of hot stone and old metal, we saw it.

First a blurry shape on the horizon, then little by little, under the last rays of the sun, the walls took form.

They seemed to still breathe, as if the centuries themselves had gone quiet not to disturb their slumber.

Eroded by the ages, clawed by winds and storms, yet still proud, standing like a challenge hurled at time itself.

The forgotten city. The silent promise of all we had endured.

We had found it. We had gone all the way.

And I... I stood tall, facing it.

Stronger than I had ever been.

More alive, more real than the starving and lost creature I had been on the first day.

My heart beat with calm and power, my hands no longer trembled.

There was in me a silent certainty: I had changed.

Not by miracle.

But through every trial, every step, every fight.

And now, this city would not be just a place on a map.

It would be the witness of what I had become.

And upon arriving, he asked for a suite.

The word slipped past me. It meant nothing to me.

A strange sound, foreign to my existence.

I only knew cold caves, makeshift camps hastily thrown together under hostile skies, hard and dusty ground where you fall asleep half-armed, heart ready to leap at the slightest alarm.

A suite? It was unimaginable luxury, an idea belonging to a world that had never been mine.

I looked at him, dumbfounded, unable to understand what he had just asked for us.

But him... he smiled.

As if, to him, it was only natural that we now deserved more than survival.

That we had the right to a fragment of comfort, of warmth, of normality.

And in that simple gesture, I understood once more that his gaze upon me was not rooted in the past.

It was the gaze of a future he was building, stone by stone, even if I could not yet fully believe in it.

But once upstairs... once the door crossed, I discovered luxury, for the very first time.

Not that of bodies and desires, but that of places, of things created solely for the pleasure of the senses.

The softness of the carpets beneath my tired feet.

The subtle scent of polished wood and light incense.

The thick, immaculate sheets, promise of a rest I had never known.

The dim lights, caressing the walls with golden reflections.

Every detail breathed an almost unreal comfort, a world where survival wasn’t a struggle, but a given.

I moved forward, hesitant, almost fearful, like an intruder in a dream that did not belong to me.

All around me, luxury whispered one thing: You are alive. You deserve to rest.

And that thought, more than anything, made me waver.

My room was immense. Too big, almost unreal for someone like me, used to narrow corners, to shelters stolen from the night.

A space just for me. A silent sanctuary.

At the center stood a wide, plush bed, so vast I would have only occupied a corner of it, covered in sheets softer than silk, caressing the skin like a promise of forgetting.

The walls were draped in rich fabrics, adorned with discreet patterns that seemed to tell ancient stories in their arabesques.

The light, soft, dancing, filtered by lanterns hanging from the ceiling, bathed the room in a hushed, almost unreal warmth.

Here, there was no cold, no threat, no echo of chains.

Just peace. Just me.

And above all... a hot bath.

A luxury I had never even dared to dream of.

I still remember the sensation of water against my skin, of the warmth slowly seeping into my tense muscles, undoing the accumulated fatigue, the forgotten pains, the hidden scars.

An irrepressible shiver ran through me, not from cold, but from raw, uncontrollable emotion.

I stayed there, a long time, motionless, letting the water gently engulf me, as if it could wash away everything I had endured.

It wasn’t just a bath, but a crossing. As if the water erased the layers of the past, redrew me from within.

As if I was afraid that this moment, fragile and unreal, would disappear if I moved too fast, if I breathed too hard.

It was a silent miracle, a suspended parenthesis between two worlds: that of survival... and that of life.

And in that warm silence, I understood that surviving was not enough. I now had to learn how to live. And maybe... to hope.