Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 95: The Anthesis of Scars

Chapter 95: The Anthesis of Scars

Night had fallen like a velvet veil over the dunes, soft and dense, sliding slowly over the world with the precision of an ancient gesture.

The sun, only moments earlier, had drowned in the horizon like an ember extinguished in black water, and the sky, as the light receded, had ignited—not with a violent fire, but with a peaceful clarity, studded with a million living stars, each pulsing like a distant thought, suspended in immensity.

The wind, too, seemed to understand.

It had softened, withdrawn a little, whispering only halfway now, as if it didn’t want to break the silence we had woven around us.

We were seated there, on a simple travel rug, spread atop a sandy hill whose gentle slope overlooked all of Terra Neutralis, like a balcony open to eternity.

The fire we had lit, modest and controlled, cast around us rings of shadow and light, drawing shifting shapes across our faces, as if even our features hesitated to remain fixed in a place so alive.

And before us...

Before us stretched the unimaginable.

The verdant eternity.

A motionless sea of living flora, of slumbering trees, of secret clearings and invisible creatures, breathing gently under the starlight—peaceful, silent, untouched.

As if it had always been waiting for us.

As if this moment, precisely this moment, had been foreseen.

I slowly swirled the wine in my ornate metal cup, watching the dark reflections stretch under the firelight, like a thick ink poured by the night itself to better mark the instant.

The Blood of the Azuram Hills.

A name whispered with reverence in the most exclusive circles, a wine few had the luxury to taste, and even fewer to understand.

First dry, almost austere, it then blossomed, like a whispered confidence, into notes of moon-ripened black fig, a touch of dry smoke recalling evenings spent too near burnt fields, and finally, at the very end, that surprising, almost irreverent hint of burned mint—a paradoxical freshness, both soft and sharp.

A deep wine.

Strangely sincere.

I brought the cup to my lips.

I drank one sip. Then another.

And through the prism of that slow, enveloping warmth, my eyes rested on her.

Lysara.

Sitting by the fire, her shadow dancing with the flames, focused, silent, her gestures slow but precise, dictated by a memory she had never learned, only absorbed.

She cooked as she fought: without embellishment, with an almost instinctive, almost solemn mastery, but always calm—as if every action had its place, its measure, its weight.

Tonight, she had prepared a fondue.

Not an improvised dish, but a thought-out one.

She had flambéed a blend of roots with round, sweet aromas, keeping their tender, almost caramelized texture, before adding fine shavings of sylph cheese—a rare, airy paste she melted slowly in a black stone dish smoothed by time.

She then slid in thin slices of palm heart, lightly sweet with elegant crunch, pieces of dried carhi meat—a southern creature, its flesh pink and tender like ripe fruit—and an assortment of sautéed fruits whose floral, honeyed notes completed the whole with an almost provocative delicacy.

The entire dish exhaled a complex, subtle, enveloping aroma.

A scent of ancient forest.

A scent of a rediscovered hearth.

A scent both wild and delicate, like her.

I decided to break the silence.

Not out of discomfort, nor out of a need to fill a void—but because some thoughts, sometimes, assert themselves with such clarity that they can no longer be kept inside.

— You know..., I said, gently setting my glass down beside me, eyes lifted to the stars, their fine light laid upon my pupils like cold ash, ...I could see myself staying here.

One day.

Once everything is over.

Once the world stops hunting us like beasts.

Once the chains, visible or not, have given way.

Just... live.

Not to flee.

But to finally be.

She lifted her eyes from her preparation.

Her hands stilled.

But she didn’t reply right away.

Her gaze lingered on something, between fire and shadow, between what I had just said and what she already knew.

I continued, lower, my voice rough, my eyes lost in the horizon line where night seemed to softly swallow the earth:

— This world... it has bled too much.

And me with it.

I’ve seen horror wear a thousand faces.

I’ve faced it. I’ve carried it. Sometimes, I’ve even become it without meaning to.

But this place...

This place is something else.

It’s like a scar turned flower.

A wound that chose not to bleed anymore, but to bloom.

A promise.

Do you feel that too?

She nodded slowly.

Not a reflex gesture.

A mature assent, felt, rooted in something deep.

Then, after a moment, in a breath barely audible, she murmured:

— It’s... silent. But not empty.

She looked around, as if the fire, the earth, the sky could lend her the words.

— It’s as if every single thing here... knew its exact place. And accepted it.

I poured myself a bit more wine, slowly letting the dark liquid flow into my glass, watching the purple reflections slip and swirl across the surface like miniature heat-mist, lazy and alive, suspended above this world too calm to be true.

It was beginning to go to my head.

Not in a heavy or unpleasant way, no.

Just enough to let a few walls fall—those I had learned to raise without thinking, built of restraint, discipline, strategic silence—and to gently untie those thoughts I had kept folded inside me too long, like letters never opened.

I took a bite of the fondue slice she had prepared, soft, melting, slightly tangy—a singular taste that lingered on the tongue, like a happy memory one doesn’t dare name, for fear it might dissolve.

Then, without really looking at her, my eyes still turned to the peaceful vastness of the sky, I let my voice slip out, lower, calmer:

— And you, Lysara?...

I paused, my gaze sliding to her from the corner of my eye, my fingers still resting on the warm rim of my glass.

— Where do you see yourself, after all this? Would you want to live here too?...

She didn’t answer right away.

She stayed frozen a moment, as if suspended between two thoughts, absorbed by the fire—or perhaps by something she wasn’t ready to voice yet.

Then, wordlessly, she slowly sat down beside me, crossing her legs with measured slowness, almost ritually, and lifted her gaze to the sky.

The stars danced in her dark eyes, and in the light resting on her features, there was something younger, more vulnerable—a clarity she may not even have known she carried, but that the night revealed without mercy.

— I...

She hesitated, her voice suspended at the edge of a breath, as if every word to come had to be weighed first in silence.

Then she sighed. Not a dramatic sigh. A release. A truth.

— I’ve never really dared to dream, you know.

A silence fell between us, not heavy, but dense.

The fire crackled, casting soft shadows over the canvas of the desert, as if it wanted to smother the weight of memories.

— When you’re chained from childhood... dreaming is like dying a little more.

She spoke slowly, placing each word as one lays down a weapon.

— So I learned to expect nothing. To shrink inward. Just survive.

She turned her head toward the horizon, and her gaze, even in darkness, seemed to search for a place to rest her wounds.

And for a moment, I thought she’d stop there.

But she continued, more softly still:

— But now...

Her voice had changed.

More fragile.

But truer.

— Now, I think I’d like a world at peace. A real one. Not a truce. Not a temporary agreement. A world where no one is for sale. Where no one is born in chains. Where simply existing isn’t a debt to repay.

I looked at her for a long time, not trying to hide the emotion rising slowly in me like a silent tide. The fire cast golden and embered highlights across her face, sculpting her features with raw tenderness, revealing both the strength and the fragility of who she had become.

— You want to abolish slavery? I whispered, voice low, almost broken by the weight of what I was beginning to understand.

She nodded gently, without looking away, and in her gaze there was a light I had never seen before—something feverish, lucid, burning, but also calm, certain, like a star one chooses to follow without ever doubting again.

— I want no child like me to ever look up at the sky again and wonder what freedom is.

Her voice had not trembled.

She fell silent then, letting her words float between us like an ancient vow rising to the surface of a new world.

Then, after a few seconds, she added, in a lower, softer, deeper tone:

— This landscape... look at it. It’s not just beautiful. It’s not a painting. It’s not a luxury. It’s what any sane being should want to build. Not fortresses. Not kingdoms. Not thrones and walls.

She pointed with her chin to the infinite horizon, bathed in calm and light.

— But this. Grass under your feet. A home. A hand that doesn’t strike.

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

My throat tightened with that rare, deep emotion that manifests not in cries or tears, but in pure silence.

So gently, almost timidly, I ran my hand through her hair.

And she didn’t pull away.

She didn’t tense.

She no longer fled touch.

She didn’t resist.

She was there.

With me.

We stayed there, without speaking, without moving, without wanting to interrupt anything of that fragile perfection, as if merely breaking that silence would profane something older than us, truer than our stories.

Then she spoke again, in a low voice, her eyes still lost somewhere between fire and stars:

— If we succeed in our mission... I want to grow something in this world. A true home. Not a fortress. Not a bastion. Just a place... where you could lay down your burden. And I, my memories.

She didn’t say it like a promise.

Nor like a dream.

But like an obvious truth she had only just discovered—and now finally accepted to say out loud.

I raised my glass again, unable to answer otherwise. My throat too tight for words, too full of that strange weight we call hope when we don’t yet dare name it as such.

I raised my glass to her.

To us.

To the world she deserved.

— To this day of peace. And to the ones you will build.

She didn’t answer.

She simply raised her cup too, and our eyes met in the firelight, and in that brief gleam, there was nothing more to add.

The stars had multiplied above us, as if the sky, in turn, wished to bless this moment.

The firmament had turned into a true black ocean studded with life, each bright point pulsing like a silent truth pinned to the vault.

And I...

I began to glimpse a distant future, perhaps still fragile, perhaps still blurry, but real—a future where blood and battles would no longer be the center of the world.

A future where living would no longer mean killing.

Where we could finally lay down our weapons without the silence that followed feeling threatening.

A future that she, without knowing it, had just planted in my heart.

And just like that, without crash, without drama, without cry—the night passed.