Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 92: On the Edge of Paradise

Chapter 92: On the Edge of Paradise

Then, after a month of wandering marked by that strange, enchanting, almost unreal routine of silence, training, muffled laughter, and meals shared in the flickering glow of the fire... we saw it.

It wasn’t an arrival.

It was a revelation.

From the top of a hill of golden sand, with gentle curves sculpted by millennia of winds, we stopped. Our steps, until then sure and steady, froze without our deciding. The wind blew softly, warm, laden with light grains that slipped between our fingers, lifted our cloaks, caressed our faces.

And before us...

Before us, a world opened up.

But not an ordinary world. Not a simple landscape.

An unreal world.

A miracle frozen on the horizon. An expanse of light, reflections, and strange shapes, of impossible balances, calm shadows, and glimmers too pure to belong to the rugged reality of the desert.

A silent world, immense, vast as an ancient dream.

And at that precise moment, without exchanging a word, without even looking at each other, we both knew.

We had arrived.

Terra Neutralis.

I was speechless.

Literally incapable of forming a single word. Not even an exclamation, not even a whisper. My lips parted, then froze, as if all the language in the world had suddenly escaped me. My thoughts themselves... had fallen silent. Dissolved. Swept away like light dust in the warm wind. There was no more logic, no more memory, no more analysis.

Only the obvious.

And that beauty. Impossible. Indescribable. Immediate.

From the top of that dune, the gaze embraced something that went beyond the simple notion of landscape. It wasn’t a decor. It was a revelation. A thin line between the real and the sacred. Contemplating that expanse was to brush against the very border of the divine — that place where creation seems to have slowed down, laid down its tools, then contemplated its work... in silence.

A breath of eternity.

Laid there.

Between us... and the rest of the world.

Before us stretched an ocean of greenery.

Vibrant. Living. Infinite.

A sea of long, undulating grasses, with changing reflections, traversed by shivers like so many sighs escaped from the earth. Each breeze drew silent, soft, and calm waves there, as if nature itself aligned with an invisible, deep, and ancient breath. Here and there, animal silhouettes crossed the horizon, peaceful, confident, indifferent to our presence — silent proof that we had crossed a boundary where fear no longer existed.

An unusual light bathed the scene.

Neither harsh nor golden. But soft. Filtered. As if it descended directly from a benevolent gaze, from an ancient tenderness that this world had not yet forgotten. A glow without visible source, emanating as much from the sky as from the ground, from the air itself — as if everything here radiated from within.

It was a paradise.

A true paradise.

Not an illusory decor. Not a fragile oasis at the mercy of the winds. No — a rooted dream, stable, patient. A miracle of balance planted in the heart of the desert, like a sacred contradiction. A living refusal of the ruin that surrounded it.

The meadow below was not simply fertile.

It was inhabited.

Presence. Harmony. Life.

The trees rose with a slow, natural grace, as if they knew exactly where to stop so as not to disturb the sky. Their foliage shimmered in a thousand greens, some deep as emeralds, others pale, almost silvery under the shifting light. Around them, palms with twisted trunks formed vegetal columns, framing wide clearings, bathed in flowers of unreal hues — lunar purples, cerulean blues, pearly whites that I had never seen elsewhere.

Vines, supple as water ribbons, danced slowly to the rhythm of the wind, sometimes brushing the ground before rising again in a fluid, almost choreographed movement. And on the ancient stones, blackened by the ages, ivy spread. Not to cover. But to embrace. To gently caress the shapes, as if retracing the erased contours of a memory, of a buried world that only it remembered to love.

Among this exuberant flora, lush to the point of the unreal, I recognized some wonders — rare species, carefully described in old books, studied in margins hastily annotated by amazed scholars.

But no reading... no, no line, no engraving, no treatise could have truly prepared for this.

For this presence.

For this quiet power.

For this living beauty that could not be explained — that was felt.

There were the Valley Mother-Breaths.

Plants with long, supple, and silky stems, they formed sheets of undulating grass, braided by the wind with an almost meditative slowness.

They did not just move — they seemed to breathe with the earth itself, to pulse in unison with something vaster, older.

With each breeze, they described wide, soothing spirals, like natural incense laid on the skin of the ground.

Their mere presence amplified the fertility of the place.

They attracted pollinators, discreet insects, curious small mammals.

They did not dominate — they served.

They vibrated.

They were the heartbeats of this ecosystem.

Further on, sheltered from direct light, under the cool shade of twisted palm groves, I distinguished the Woven Shadow Champiris.

Discreet mushrooms, timid, anchored in the earth like secrets that one discovers only if one takes the time to look.

Their star-shaped caps were traversed by violet veins, almost translucent.

They seemed to throb, very slightly, as if they listened to the steps of those who brushed past them.

But their apparent fragility was only a mask.

These underground beings absorbed toxins, filtered venoms, stabilized the invisible flows of natural magic in the soil.

Silent guards.

Humble alchemists.

Balancers.

And then...

And then, there were those ruins.

Half swallowed by the greenery.

Not in ruin, no — asleep.

Fragments of erased stone, broken arches, collapsed pillars, like ancient temples slowly devoured by a dream.

Time had not erased their presence.

It had covered it with a sacred mantle.

The walls, columns, forgotten thresholds were covered with Thousand-Leaf Dawn Ivy — a marvelous, capricious, poetic vine.

Its iridescent leaves changed color at each hour of the day.

Some displayed a soft, soothing green, others turned deep night blue or powdery pink, almost translucent in the slanting light.

And I, motionless, fascinated, watched them weave.

They drew on the stone living patterns, natural arabesques, vegetal glyphs that seemed to still sing — slowly, silently — the memory of the place.

As if the ruin, by letting itself be covered, entrusted its history to the foliage, so that it would transmit it to the wind.

Beside me, Lysara said nothing.

And neither did I.

But this silence was not an absence.

It was neither heavy nor empty.

It was sacred.

We were simply... seized.

Seized by what we had before our eyes.

Seized by beauty.

And perhaps also... by what it awakened in us.

On the edge of paradise.

There were not only plants.

Terra Neutralis also breathed through its inhabitants.

Its fauna — as diverse as it was peaceful — lived in perfect symbiosis with the flora.

There were neither predator nor prey here.

No hunting.

No cruelty.

Death itself was not perceived as a rupture.

It was neither flight nor punishment.

It became an offering.

When a being passed away from old age, its body was not abandoned.

It was received by the earth.

Gently absorbed by the roots, enveloped by mosses, woven into the vines, converted into fertile memory.

Balance was not imposed.

It was lived.

A natural circle.

Silent.

Soft.

Sacred.

And in the distance, in that muted light that bathed the valley like an extended dream, I recognized several.

Creatures I had studied so much.

Names I had read, recopied, underlined in ancient grimoires.

Rare species, described with wonder by scholars who, for the most part, had never seen them.

And I...

I saw them.

Alive.

In their habitat.

And that simple fact was enough to make something beat stronger in me.

I first distinguished a few families of Glim’bit, settled on the hillside, perched in the densest foliage.

Small simian creatures, supple and nervous, whose fur seemed to have been woven by the forest itself.

A vivid green, almost saturated, speckled with ochre spots — as if moss and clay had agreed to paint them by hand, adorning them with the colors of the soil and light.

Their backs were covered with bioluminescent lichens.

Fine, undulating luminous networks, pulsing slowly with each breath, following the rhythm of an invisible breath.

At nightfall, one might have thought them sculpted in constellations.

But what fascinated most was their mouth.

It did not open like that of other beasts.

It slipped vertically, discreetly, like a living fissure in the bark of an ancient trunk, revealing fine and long teeth, resembling fibrous roots.

Vegetal fangs.

A strange geometry, almost disturbing, that the rest of their body contradicted by its absolute gentleness.

For the Glim’bit...

Were tender.

Deeply, resolutely tender.

They lived in tight-knit groups, organized like small silent tribes.

They cared for each other with an almost human delicacy — sharing food, cleaning the fur of their kin, surrounding the elders with constant attention.

Watching them, nestled in the vegetal nests they had woven among the branches, one might have thought to contemplate entire families of miniature sages, rocked by the wind and the muffled songs of the foliage.

And I, in silence, watched.

Without daring to disturb them.

Without daring to blink.

And then, around a grove with dense foliage, where the air seemed to hold its breath, I saw them.

The Oru’Lenn.

The silent guardians of the forest.

Their appearance was neither abrupt nor sudden.

It was natural.

As if the forest had simply decided, at that precise moment, to reveal a part of itself.

Their silhouette was unforgettable.

Giants of nearly seven meters.

Their bodies seemed to have been woven rather than sculpted — an interweaving of thick lianas, supple branches, flowers blooming between two beats of air.

Blocks of mossy stone were integrated into their torso, their shoulders, as if the mountains had lent them some of their weight.

And on their flanks, in places, shone slow flows of vegetal glass, translucent and iridescent, frozen in fluid forms, like living crystal capturing light without ever rejecting it.

They advanced unhurriedly.

And yet, with each step, life sprang forth.

The ground, beneath their feet, opened to them like a fertile dream.

Flowers bloomed in their wake, instantly.

Carpets of moss formed.

...Butterflies were born from nowhere.

Their very passage... was a blessing.

They were neither beasts, nor spirits.

They were not outside the world.

They were the world.

The very essence of Terra Neutralis.

Standing.

Awake.

Present.

Peaceful.

And before them, I knew not what to do except stop.

Fall silent.

Watch them pass, as one contemplates a walking prayer.

And there...

There, far in the plain, in a golden haze where the horizon blended with light, he moved.

A Sol’Natar.

A titan.

A myth.

An impossible dream that only stories still whisper to the children of scholars — and that even the eldest of scholars no longer dare to believe.

He stood nearly fifteen meters tall.

A massive pachyderm, with legs as heavy as the roots of ancient trees, each stride making the earth tremble — without ever harming it.

But it wasn’t his size that was most striking.

It was what he carried.

On his back bloomed a garden.

A living garden.

A miniature world, in perfect balance: millennia-old vines hanging like emerald curtains, domes of soft earth upon which open-petaled flowers stretched toward the sky, and small natural fountains, clear and flowing, springing between rocks, catching light and turning it into liquid rainbows.

And around it all... life.

Tiny beings — fairies, perhaps, or some even older, more secret people — moved slowly across the surface of this living mountain, traveling along its skin as one might cross a continent.

The Sol’Natar did not simply walk.

He passed through the world.

As if he only half belonged to it.

And his eyes...

His eyes were two wells of pure water, so clear and blue one might think they held the sky.

Not a gaze.

A presence.

And in meeting them, I understood.

One could dive into them with one’s soul.

Leave behind one’s burdens.

One’s pain.

One’s faults.

And perhaps, in rising again... return cleansed.

I no longer dared to breathe.

Before so much beauty, so much grace, so much peace...

My heart felt ready to break.

And beside me, Lysara remained silent.

She, too, was watching.

Without tension.

Without fear.

Without that constant vigilance that war engraves in the bones.

Just... watching.

Perhaps for the first time.

And in that shared, sacred, perfect silence...

We were alive.

And that was enough.