Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 89: Father and Daughter: A Silence for Two

Chapter 89: Father and Daughter: A Silence for Two

— Still standing? I threw out, a torn smile on trembling lips, voice carved from breath but still laced with that sharp irony that never left me—even on my knees.

She answered instantly, without hesitation, her reply as quick as the gleam in her eyes. Her smile, subtle but sharp, settled at the corner of her lips like a shard of victory still contained.

— Still standing, she said.

A pause.

— But you... you’re falling.

Her voice wasn’t aggressive. She was stating a fact. Naming the scene. Framing it with the calm of someone who knows they’ve already won.

But I lifted my chin slightly, my eyes locking onto hers, burning, alive, fueled by a last spark that neither fatigue, nor poison, nor even pain could extinguish.

— That’s true...

A breath. A tension.

— ... but look around you.

She barely furrowed her brow, intrigued. Then, slowly, she lifted her gaze.

And she saw.

At first, just a flicker. A pale reflection.

Then a second. A third. Then dozens. Hundreds.

Lines. Symbols. Luminous curves appearing as the dust settled, as the wind calmed, as the eye adjusted.

The runes.

Carved everywhere. Invisible until now. Etched into the ground, on the glassy walls of the crater formed by her own fall, where the heat of her armor had transmuted the sand into glass. A smooth, hard, stable surface—exactly what I needed. Because my engraving only took on basic materials. But resistant ones. And she, through her power, had gifted me the perfect canvas.

Glass.

Her work.

My support.

And everywhere, as far as the eye could see, they stretched.

Simple runes. Weak on their own. Barely noticeable carvings, made from my blood, my breath, my silent art.

But all... connected.

Linked by an invisible network, patient, meticulous. A web of links, an architecture etched deep into the world. Hundreds of minor effects, discreet, inscribed one after another, while she moved forward, while she struck, while she shone. And I, in the shadows, had been weaving.

Because that was my other strength.

My craft.

Not explosive magic. Not flamboyant power.

Just... inscription.

Persistence. Detail. Accumulation.

Engrave. Inscribe. Connect.

Minor runes, almost ridiculous, too weak to raise alarms, too simple to be noticed. But together...

Together, they formed a trap. A field. A labyrinth.

A silent ritual ready to activate at the slightest word, the slightest gesture.

And in that precise instant, Lysara understood.

She saw.

The desert... was no longer a setting.

It was my domain.

My work.

My weapon.

The ground vibrated.

A dull pulse, barely audible, but deep. Like an ancient whisper, a forgotten echo rising from the bowels of the desert. And then... the runes awakened.

One by one.

As if the sand itself, until then frozen in silence, had begun to breathe. Pale glimmers slid between the lines, slithered between the engravings, wrapping around her legs, her feet, climbing gently up to her armor. A discreet magic, patient, creeping. Nothing brutal. Nothing spectacular.

But it was everywhere.

All around her.

A pressure settled.

Not a blow. Not an assault. A density. Thin. Invisible. And yet... oppressive. Like a veil tightening around her. As if the very air had taken on intention. A magic without cries, without flame, but saturated with intelligence. It wasn’t enough to break her mythic armor, no. The Noctifer was a living fortress. But it was enough... to slow her. To hinder the fluidity of her movements. To disturb her reflexes. To trap her in a cage only a tactician’s eye could conceive.

I watched her.

And I spoke.

— You thought I was playing swords?

My voice was calm. Almost gentle.

— No, Lysara...

I raised one of my blades, the tip gleaming in the stark light of the awakened runes. The other remained planted in the ground, anchored like a beacon, like an activation needle at the heart of the ritual. The sand vibrated around it, reacting to every beat of my blood.

— From the start, I led you where I’m strongest.

She frowned. A hesitation. A tension in her shoulders. She sensed the trap now. Too late. Her hammer, held high, trembled slightly, its weight suddenly less obedient. The Noctifer vibrated too, its red veins pulsing irregularly—as if it sensed a quiet magic it couldn’t comprehend.

And I... continued.

— You fought well, I said. Truly. But now...

A pause. A heartbeat.

— Let’s see how many runes your armor can take.

She opened her mouth.

— But Dad...

Her voice. That tone. That breath filled with emotion, with conflict, with respect laced with fear. It vibrated gently in the thick desert silence. A call. A warning. Maybe a plea.

But I shook my head slowly.

— You really think I prepared tonight without making sure I knew all your capabilities? You think I’m careless? You think I came here... without a trump card?

The wind rose around us, as if it responded to the words, the tension, the truths laid bare.

And then she screamed.

— Desecration Shock!

Her hammer struck the ground with cavernous violence. A dark wave burst from the weapon’s base, pulsing, saturated with cursed energy. The sand lifted, the glass cracked, the runes trembled. The impact—that cry of metal against earth—seemed meant to dissolve everything I had built.

But I didn’t retreat.

Not yet.

The ground shook.

Not a soft tremor. Not a simple reverberation. A raw, absolute impact. As if a sacrilegious drum had been struck barehanded by a weary deity—tired of rules, tired of boundaries. The entire desert seemed to hold its breath, then expel it in a single, heavy, ancient, irreverent exhale.

And my runes...

My thousands of runes...

They shivered.

Then... they broke.

Not in a burst of light. Not in a spectacular explosion. No. It was worse. An invisible wave. Silent. An intangible force, a rejection of the sacred, a total reset of the magical space. The glass fissured without a sound. The carvings vanished like memories left too long in silence. One by one, the inscriptions disintegrated, devoured by an anti-magic older and stronger than all my precautions.

And I...

I laughed.

A real laugh.

Not mocking. Not desperate. A sincere laugh. Awed. Almost... paternal.

A breath of raw joy. Of absurd pride.

And in that laugh, a thought passed through me—biting, cruel, yet strangely tender:

Why didn’t I check the hammer before giving it to her?

I could have.

I should have.

I knew the forges. I knew the Master. I knew the risks. Every rune, every vibration, every pulse of the living metal... I could have sensed them.

But I hadn’t.

And maybe... maybe deep down, I didn’t want to.

Maybe a part of me, silent, buried, unconscious, hoped for this.

Hoped for exactly this.

A flaw. A comeback. A moment where she would break everything. Even me.

And she had done it.

Her spell—no, not her spell. The hammer’s. That was the nuance. It wasn’t a cry from her alone. It was a weapon forged for this. To desecrate. To purify through annihilation. Her artifact had just activated its unique ability, an effect kept hidden, dormant, until this very moment. A symphony of targeted anti-magic. A reversed barrier. A total negation.

And the desert, in an instant, became neutral again.

I remained there, breath suspended, fingers still stained with the blood used for my glyphs. My gaze lost in the dying dust of my efforts.

And I couldn’t help but think...

The poor mages.

Yes.

All those who would one day face her, draped in spells, cloaked in wards, armed with scrolls, circles, incantations...

And who would watch, in a flash, their works reduced to nothing by a single hammer strike.

I laughed again.

This time, lower. More tired. But no less proud.

But even without the runes...

I still had the blood.

And blood... never lies.

I had never worn armor. Never donned those ceremonial cages of metal that so many revered. Some saw that as a weakness. A recklessness. An arrogance.

But it was none of that.

It was a choice.

A silent vow.

To bleed.

To feel everything.

To take everything.

And above all... to spread everything.

Because throughout this entire fight, while my muscles bent, while my blades sang, and while the runes were etched, my regeneration had been working. Tireless. Fierce. It produced, soaked with vitality, liters of blood I never truly lost. I let it flow, drop by drop, on the blades, on the marks, in wounds kept open on purpose—and the desert, silent accomplice, drank it.

It had seeped into the sand.

Mixed with the grains.

Infused into the crevices.

Absorbed into the marks.

And now...

I released it.

Not with a cry.

Not with a gesture.

By simple will.

The desert rumbled.

The sand rose, trembled, cracked. A red mass burst forth, surging, sliding, thick as a liquid nightmare. A crimson wave rose on the horizon, not fluid... but dense. Viscous. Alive. Furious.

The blood.

My blood.

No longer channeled by runes. No longer held by glyphs. But awakened by the bond. By me.

And it listened.

It rose.

It stretched.

It charged.

Around Lysara.

It wrapped her instantly, coiling in rapid spirals, sliding over the armor like bloody silk, seeking the seams, the joints, the gaps. It didn’t strike. It constricted. It bound. It stitched the world around her like a second, shifting skin. A hermetic cocoon. Visceral. Merciless.

She struggled.

Of course she struggled.

Her hammer trembled in her palm, ready to rise again, charged with the raw energy she embodied. But I knew. I knew the limits. She had already unleashed the heat surge. She had already exhausted the Noctifer’s overload.

And that power... as great as it was... came at a price.

Her armor, magnificent, invincible—was on its knees.

The blood wasn’t done.

It seeped in. Between the layers. Beneath the plates. Into the very fibers of her clothing. It wove like a worm, contracted, hardened. And already, her arms compressed, her legs sealed. The air grew scarce.

There was no more space.

No opening.

No escape.

She was trapped.

Not by a spell.

By me.

By my blood.

By a will nothing could seal.

And yet...

Something.

A breath. An absence. A faint vibration in the air.

Behind me.

Too late.

I had felt nothing. Nothing.

The wine, the fatigue, the poison... all had conspired to smother my senses, to muzzle my instinct. My focus, entirely fixed on the cocoon, on that perfect hold, on that victory woven from blood and will, had made me forget the essential.

A shiver.

Cold. Instinctive. Too late.

Then...

The bite.

Cold. Treacherous. Surgical.

Six blades pierced my back. Clean. Silent. Deadly. Like shadow claws rising from nothingness. They struck without anger, without sound, without cry. They did what needed to be done.

I staggered.

My breath caught sharply, seized by pain as much as surprise. My lungs snapped shut like traps, my legs gave way, my fingers loosened.

Her extension.

How could I have... forgotten?

One of her most insidious abilities. A technique she’d only recently mastered, but with terrifying precision: self-projection. Detached limbs, mimetic fragments of her body, animated by her will, capable of striking from afar, silently, like serpents detached from the head.

And she had coated them.

With the fruit’s poison.

The very one she had prepared in secret. The one that had weakened me. The one now finishing its work.

I fell.

Heavily.

Face to the warm sand, this sand I had made mine, that I had bloodied, engraved, turned into territory. My blood seeped in silence, soaking the grains one last time.

My grip...

Loosened.

The blood, robbed of its master, unraveled. It dissolved into red wisps, fell limply to the ground, lost its cohesion. The cocoon cracked. Tore. Burst into a viscous rain.

And Lysara...

Lysara fell.

Her body collapsed, without force, without violence. Just... emptied.

Short of breath. Unconscious.

She too had reached her limit.

And then...

Silence.

Perfect.

No wind. No cry. Even the stars seemed frozen, suspended in mute vigil.

A draw.

I thought, in one last flicker of consciousness. A smile, pale, tired, crept to the corner of my cracked lips. Not of defeat. Nor regret.

But pride.

Tenderness.

Before my eyelids gave in.

Before the poison—and my daughter’s infernal tenacity—extinguished the light for good.

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