Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 85: A Gift in the Desert

Chapter 85: A Gift in the Desert

As always... I attacked her by surprise.

It had become a silent ritual between us. A cruel game. An unspoken tradition.

Before fights. During. Sometimes just after, as she wiped away the blood or caught her breath. It didn’t matter. There were no rules. Only this unwritten law: as long as she hadn’t seen me coming, I had the right to try.

And I won.

Always.

Well... I still won. But less and less easily.

Because she was changing.

Day after day, blow after blow, her body adjusted, her reflexes sharpened, her reading of movements became more precise, more instinctive. She was no longer that hesitant student, forged in urgency. She was becoming... something else.

A wall. A predator.

She controlled her outfit perfectly — that mythical armor which, in another era, might have belonged to a fallen god or king. She mastered its weight, its density, its energy flow. Each plate had become an extension of herself. Her movements, once somewhat clumsy, had become fluid to the point of near poetry.

And I... struggled.

Not out of weakness, but because she forced me to surpass myself. Unable to break through her front defenses, I slipped through. I attacked from behind, from blind spots. I used twisted techniques, feints, decoys. Devious, indirect, sometimes almost dishonorable attacks. But that was the price to pay against her.

She laughed.

A clear, honest laugh, vibrant with wild joy.

And I did too.

We were two blades crossed in an endless duel, a sharp choreography, a dance of steel and pride. Every clash carried that delicious tension between the desire to win... and the wish to see the other resist a bit longer.

It was dangerous, yes. But delightful.

Then, one morning, everything changed.

Not suddenly. Not brutally. But slowly. Insidiously. Like everything that truly matters.

For several days, we had begun to feel the difference beneath our feet. The ground, once hard and cracked, was slowly giving way to a softer, looser texture. Between the slabs of blackened basalt, tongues of sand crept in, as if the desert itself were trying to cover the stone, to smother the memory of fire.

The wind had changed too.

Less dry. Less scorching. It carried something else. A finer dust. A more diffuse warmth. The breath of a world no longer angry, but dormant.

For a long time, our path had wound between two extremes: the frozen lava flows of the volcano and the blond dunes, as if two ecosystems still contested supremacy over this region. Tongues of ash mingled with waves of sand. Black ridges rose from golden expanses, like the last teeth of a dying beast.

And then, without warning, it ended.

The basalt disappeared. The red cracks faded. The sulfur vapors, the obsidian hues, the scorched memories of the old world... all of it vanished like a bad dream.

Only the sand remained.

And the dunes.

As far as the eye could see.

An ocean of pale gold under a white sky. Silent, shifting waves, undulating like a sea frozen in prayer.

We had entered Terra Neutralis.

The central region of the continent. A land of balance, of silence, of vertigo.

And even though our goal was to the north, we had to keep going down. Deeper and deeper. Toward the heart of this strange desert, where the world seemed to fold in on itself, as if hiding a secret.

Something immense.

Something ancient.

That evening, we set up camp in the hollow of a sandy valley, in what I could only call an ocean of sand.

Not a desert. Not hostile terrain.

No. An ocean. Vast. Alive. Silent.

All around us, the dunes stretched to infinity, shaped by the invisible tides of the wind, as if this world were no longer made of earth, but of breath and memory. Each wave of sand seemed frozen in an ancient movement, still undulating from a forgotten past.

And there was no sound.

Nothing but the steady glide of the warm wind, an almost caressing breeze that wound between the golden crests like a long, weary sigh escaping the throat of a sleeping god.

The ground was warm beneath our bodies, as if it had kept the day’s heat to better offer it once night fell. Almost welcoming. Almost tender. It barely sank beneath our steps, supple, yielding, as if it recognized us. Each grain of sand shimmered under the rising moon with the discreet glow of ancient gold, polished by centuries and steeped in sacred silence.

And above us... the sky.

Vast. Open. Swallowing.

A sky without end, a night blue so deep it seemed to want to absorb the entire universe, to swallow even the most stubborn thoughts, until only breath remained. Only the moment.

The stars shone by the thousands — no, by the millions. No two were alike. Some cast a white, sharp light, like arrows frozen in the fabric of the world. Others pulsed slowly, with a pale blue, an ancient red, like still-warm stellar hearts.

And between them, trails of cosmic dust, like strands of ink suspended in the air — or brushstrokes from a celestial painter who had spilled the ink of dreams across the black vault.

Forgotten constellations took shape, only to vanish again. Legends rewritten in the instant. Silent stories only the skies seemed to understand.

And I... I was there.

Sitting. Arms resting on my knees, shoulders relaxed, breath slow.

Gaze lost in the infinite.

I felt... calm. Deeply calm.

Not that deceptive calm before a storm. Not that tense, alert silence. No. A real calm. Rare. The kind that takes you when, for once, the world doesn’t look at you as a monster, or as a hero. When you are nothing more than a breath resting between sky and sand.

Almost vulnerable.

And I accepted that.

For a suspended instant, everything disappeared: the screams, the blood, the heavy memories, the ancient vows.

Only the desert remained.

And the stars.

Lysara was cooking.

There, in the heart of that ocean of sand, with the same ease as if she were in a kitchen paved with onyx, between marble walls and amber torches. The desert didn’t seem to touch her. To her, it was just another backdrop. A vast open-air kitchen, offered by the gods themselves — or perhaps challenged, conquered, by her sheer will to exist.

Before her, a piece of dark wood furniture had materialized, effortlessly drawn from her magic bag. It stood there, incongruous yet sovereign, as if it had always belonged to that dune, as if the sand itself had been waiting for it. The slightly open drawers gave off a scent of warm metal and ancient spices. A few utensils floated in the air, held by discreet enchantments, swaying with the wind like instruments of a silent ritual.

I watched her.

Without speaking.

Without even wanting to move.

Impressed. Fascinated, perhaps.

Because she had changed.

Where once her gestures had been rough, mechanical, born of survival’s urgency, they were now... precise. Measured. Strangely elegant. She chopped, measured, poured, mixed with almost ceremonial rigor. Not a hesitation. Not a mistake. Her face, lit by the floating braziers she had summoned, remained focused, intent.

She had learned. Not just technique, but attention. Intention.

Her cooking wasn’t that of a demonic master chef, no. There was no extravagance, no artifice. But there was something rarer: the truth of the gesture. A burning sincerity in every preparation. A will to do it right, to nourish, to give.

Each dish she crafted seemed to say: I am here, I’m watching over you, I offer you what I can, and I do it well.

It wasn’t just a meal. It was a message.

And that night, more than usual, she put particular care into it. A quiet gravity. An attentiveness she usually reserved for battle.

As if this meal mattered more.

As if, in that suspended night, between stars and sand, she wanted to say something. Not with words. But with spices, cooking, the silent tenderness of service.

And I... I needed nothing more.

I watched her, and for once, I felt fed long before the first bite.

When she finished, she walked slowly toward me, her steps barely erasing the subtle furrows left by the wind in the sand. In her hands, she held a plate, still steaming, from which rose a light mist, rich with the scent of roasted spices and black herbs. The mix was complex, controlled — a diffuse warmth wrapped the food, as if the cooking had been guided by a will older than fire itself. A union of strength and precision.

She handed it to me calmly, almost ceremoniously, without a word more than necessary. Not out of coldness. But because she knew, already, that silence would carry more weight than any clumsy phrase.

Then she turned, and with that deliberate slowness that revealed intention, she searched through her magic bag. Not hurriedly, not like someone finishing a chore. No. She was looking for something specific. Important. And she had known it from the start.

First, she pulled out a cup. Thin, elegant, of dark, satiny metal, as if forged in the shadow of a memory. The engraved patterns ran along the stem like fragments of a forgotten poem, fine runes pulsing faintly under the glow of the embers. A cup made not to contain, but to offer.

Then came the bottle.

And then, I knew.

Its shape was slender, refined to the point of arrogance, with a tapered neck and a supple, almost feminine body. The glass was black as obsidian, but smooth, worked, polished until it reflected the stars themselves. At its top, a thick stopper, sealed with dark wax, engraved with subtle symbols — runes of preservation, of sealing, of reverence. The kind of detail found only with elite apothecaries or in the private cellars of ancient nobles.

She handed it all to me.

A plate. A cup. A rare wine.

And that look. That half-smile. That almost-held breath.

— This is for you, she said softly. I bought it in town... I wanted to give it to you.

Her voice had no grand flourish. She wasn’t seeking effect. Not thanks. She didn’t even wait for me to say anything. She just offered the moment. Like a simple truth. Like a fact she was finally naming.

I remained still.

Not in surprise. But because I felt, deep in my bones, that something had just happened.

It was her first real gift.

Not a test.

Not a challenge.

Not a confrontation disguised as affection.

A gift. Pure. Unnecessary. Sincere.

And that detail... that intimate detail that made it sacred: she had remembered that I liked wine. Not potions. Not war brews. Wine. The kind that takes time. That you savor in silence. That has aged in the dark, like me.

I took the cup slowly, my fingers brushing the cold metal. The weight was perfect. The balance too. She had chosen with care. Not at random. Not by imitation. But because she knew.

— Thank you, I whispered.

My voice cracked a little on the word. Not out of weakness. But because suddenly, the space around us had taken on a new weight. The fire barely crackled. The sand, golden with embers, breathed slowly beneath our feet. And the sky...

The sky was watching us.

So I raised my glass. First toward her.

Then toward that velvet-black sky, embroidered with silent stars.

And I drank.

The wine... the wine had a taste that existed in no market, no palace, no ancient cellar.

It tasted of her memory. Of her gesture. Of her intention.

And that night, in the heart of Terra Neutralis, between fire, dunes, and the girl I had chosen, I drank the best glass of my life.