Anthesis of Sadness Chapter 168: Someone

Sotis... I let myself fall. Willingly. Calmly. Absent. Into nothingness. Like one surrenders to a cold bed, without motion, without complaint, simply hoping... not to have to get up again. I didn’t fall to die. I fell to disappear. To slowly fade, without noise, without drama. So that the world, at last, would let sink into pure oblivion.

But those fucking vines... They ca for . Always. They arrived slowly. Without haste. Without force. Without violence. With that lukewarm insistence. That fluid, persistent vegetal presence. That organic tenderness I wanted to vomit. Because it didn’t judge . Because it didn’t yield. Because it held ... as if I were still worth it.

Sotis, I stopped. Without reason. Without trigger. Just... because the void called a little louder than usual. So I looked at the abyss. For a long ti. I stared at it. Without challenge. Without fear. Just... eyes open to sothing that never responded.

And sotis, I spoke to it. Maybe. In silence. In thoughts. Or maybe it was the abyss speaking to . And I listened... to myself stay silent.

But what was the point?

What was the point of continuing?What was the point of fighting?What was the point of thinking anymore?

I no longer knew why I was there. No more origin. No more thread. No more story. I no longer knew who I was. Nor what that word even ant. I didn’t know much of anything anymore. Just... that I was still there. And the abyss, it, never answered. But remained.

Ti had disintegrated. Dissolved into a formless slowness, without markers, without rhythm. There was no before, no after, just a vague continuation, a pale extension of being. And the abyss... was drawing in my essence. Slowly. Deeply. My being. My mory. My life.

Not with violence. Not with cruelty. But with the quiet constancy of things that know they will win eventually. And I was... glad. Yes. Glad. Not happy. Not saved. Just... relieved. Almost. As if, finally, sothing vaster than had understood that I couldn’t take it anymore. And accepted to undo . Without judgnt. Without question. Just... erase .

Then the voice. Again. Always. That voice one cannot flee, not because it screams, but because it doesn’t co from the outside. Because it’s there, inside. In the chest. In the nape. In the pit of the stomach.

It spoke without sound, without pressure, but it knew where to strike. — Are you going to stay like this? — Yes. — Are you going to let yourself die in this place? — Yes.

Silence. Not an empty silence. A tense silence, inhabited, heavy like a hand placed over the heart. Then... — Are you going to abandon Lysara and Cassandre... again?

I didn’t answer. Not right away. Sothing closed in . But not to flee. To contain. My teeth clenched. My hands contracted. And in that withdrawal... sothing stirred. Sothing I thought was dead. Fossilized. Dissolved by ti. Sothing I hadn’t allowed to live anymore. But which, at that one question, had lifted its gaze.

Ah...

It’s true.

It’s true.

I was a monster. Not in the sense of fairy tales. Not in the eyes of others. A monster to them. To what I had fled. To what I had broken by disappearing.

I had abandoned them. I had betrayed them. And I knew it. Not with flash. Not with screaming sha. But with the cold calm of truths that can no longer be denied. I deserved this. All of this. The wandering. The forgetting. The silence.

I deserved to wander, without na, without place, without end. To roam in a world without ties, without gazes, without warmth. To be forgotten. Slowly. Definitively. Like a scream that was never let out.

So... I stood up.

So... I stood up. Not with rage. Not with courage. Not like a scream. Not like a rebirth. With an old fatigue. A weariness that cannot be scread, but that still stands, out of habit, out of mory of movent.

I stood up like one gets up from a floor too familiar to curse anymore. And I walked. Again. I walked. Always. I walked. Not toward anything. Not to fix. Not to believe.

I walked... because I no longer knew how to do anything else. Because the body, even emptied, even ashad, sotis retains the reflex to survive. Because it had to go on. Even if it was still to flee. Even if I no longer knew what I was fleeing. Nor for how long.

Then, one day... I saw them.

There, suspended mid-height, between the desaturated islets and the faded sky, at the blurry border between matter and absence. Cocoons. Long. Silent. Large ovoid capsules, floating, pale, like ford of frozen foam or braided mist.

Their surfaces were stratified, layered with thin translucent mbranes, almost alive. They vibrated softly. In slow waves. Like taut strings never plucked. Like tuning forks buried in the ether, attuned to a music one couldn’t hear.

And yet... I felt it. Their vibration emitted no sound. But it resonated. Elsewhere. In .

And yet... I heard them.

Not with my ears. No. With sothing else. Deeper. Older. I heard them with my bones. With my nerves. With my breath that hesitated to stay. With my stomach, taut like a string. With my soul, or what was left of it.

Each vibration was an incomplete note. An unfinished word. A mouthless call. They resonated like mories one no longer wants to translate. Pains swallowed so hard, so long, they ended up silent... but never vanished.

Like tendernesses one had to kill to survive. That’s what they sang. Not in sounds. In shivers. In absences. And I... understood. Despite myself. I understood too well.

I approached. Slowly. Like one approaches a dream they don’t dare touch, for fear it will vanish. The shells pulsed. Barely. A slow, deep, regular beat. There was no threat. No tension. No shadow ready to pounce.

Nothing but that strange sensation of being awaited. Of being recognized. As if these suspended forms weren’t there to frighten... but to listen. They vibrated for . I felt it. They sang for . Even them. Even here.

So I reached out. Trembling. Uncertain. I placed my hand on one of them. And at once... a shiver passed through . A pure shiver. Raw. Ancient. Devastating.

It wasn’t hostile. But it was too true. It awakened sothing I wasn’t ready to see again. Sothing from before. Sothing of .

My skin bristled. Suddenly. Without warning. My heart... skipped a beat. Not from emotion. Not from fear. Not from mory. It was sothing else.

It wasn’t . It was the world. The world in . The world against my palm. But I didn’t pull my hand away. No. I stayed there. Motionless. Offered.

Against that soft surface. Against that warm matter, almost alive, almost maternal. Against that frozen dream that vibrated like an ancient promise.

I no longer tried to understand. I wanted... to disappear. To be absorbed. To be diluted. To be dissolved in that vibration so perfect it needed no na, no aning, no form.

A sonic purity. A will-less wave. And I... I wanted to lt into it. To no longer exist except through it.

And then... she spoke. Again. Softly. Inevitably.

— You seek silence.

A breath. Light. Present.

— But even it... still holds you.

I closed my eyes. Hard. As if to detach, to withdraw from myself. But I only sank deeper.

— You have no right to be here.

The voice was close. Too close. No longer whispering from afar. It breathed inside.

— You are here because you still refuse to listen to yourself.

— Shut up...

— You want to forget yourself...

— But you always choose the places that resemble you most.

I clenched my teeth. Hard. Too hard. My jaw ground. My breath stopped. My fingers... tensed around the cocoon, as if I wanted to cling to it or tear it away.

But deep down, I knew: what I held... held too.

It vibrated stronger.

Deeper.

Not just beneath my hand, but along my arm, up to my shoulder. My whole arm trembled, seized by a dull, penetrating wave, as if the cocoon’s matter were trying to enter , to pass through , to undo from within.

— It’s just an illusion, I whispered.

— All of it.

— This world.

— You.

— It’s nothing.

— You are nothing.

No response.

But the cocoon... resonated.

Lower.

More intimately.

An echo that descended into my belly, coiled into my loins, pulsed into my hips. It bore no image, no mory. Just a sensation. A lack. A hollow.

A perfectly shaped void. An absent space in my chest, so precise, so bare, that I recognized it at once. An absence of warmth. An absence of presence.

Sothing I had never known how to na, but which my body, itself, had always carried. A void even rage... had never managed to fill.

The voice... whispered again. Not loud. Not accusatory. Just there. Inevitable. Soft as a warm blade.

— You wanted to be held.— You wanted to be held tight. When you were falling.

I turned away. Slowly. As if my own body no longer wanted to hear it.

— Shut up...— But you’ll never say it.— Because saying it... is admitting it.

And I didn’t answer. I had no more words. Only that raw refusal. That knotted rage.

So I struck the cocoon. Once. Hard. Desperate. Not to break it. Not really. To silence sothing. To delay the mont.

It swayed. Slowly. Like a bell of mist. No sound. Just that strange oscillation, fluid, full of a silence that didn’t judge... but saw everything.

And a wave escaped from it.

Invisible.

But real.

I didn’t see it. I felt it. It slid under my skin, lifted the air, lifted the astral dust at my feet, that fine, floating dust that reacted like mory. Like breath. Like a mory.

Space itself shivered.

And then... the other cocoons answered.

One by one.

Each with a different tremor, but in harmony. Not a cry. Not an alarm. A rhythm. A call. A mute chord.

A vibration that needed no language, because it spoke directly to the fibers. Inside. To what trembles. To what rembers despite itself.

They sang together. For . Around . With .

And I no longer knew... whether they condemned , or welcod .

My heart... sped up. Suddenly. A warm startle. A new rhythm. Not fear. Not pain. Sothing else. Sothing warm. Shaful. Buried. A rising. An inner fire that lit nothing, but consud everything.

And I collapsed to my knees. Again.

But this ti... there were no tears. Nothing to cry. Nothing to expel. Just a vertigo. Brutal. Dull. Deep. An inner abyss spinning in on itself.

I wanted to vomit. Scream. Disappear. Tear myself apart. Rip from this skin that still held too much mory. But nothing ca out. Just that breath. That heart. That sha.

But I stayed there.

Immobile. Caught between the world’s vibration and the voice in my skull. Between the cocoons’ dull throbbing and the silence saturated through my own nerves. Between the edge of the abyss... and the mory of absent arms.

And she whispered.

Not loudly. Not harshly. Like a cold caress behind the ear. A murmur sliding under the skin.

— It’s not oblivion you want.

And I stood up.

Slowly. Feebly. Like a puppet without strings, without guide, but who, from a remnant of desire or mory, still tries to dance.

My legs trembled. My arms hung at my sides, emptied of all rage, emptied of all defense. Nothing to raise. Nothing to hide.

And I lifted my head.

Toward the sky. Toward that pale, motionless, unfathomable void. Toward that extinguished ceiling I no longer understood, but which still called . Not to illuminate . Just... so I would see it.

So... I spoke.

Not really to soone. Not really to myself. I spoke to the world, to the voice, to the empty space around , to the vast silence vibrating inside my chest.

I spoke in pure madness, naked, derisory. Raw distress, unrestrained. A child’s scream long stifled. A scream that no longer knew why it scread, but scread anyway, because it had nothing else left.

— What do you want from ?!

My voice echoed. Weakly. Like an echo apologizing for existing. It faded almost imdiately into the ether, swallowed by the air, by the invisible walls of this frozen world.

— What am I supposed to do?!

A silence heavier than space.

— Please... soone...

My voice broke. It couldn’t hold. It cut on an invisible sob, a rupture of breath.

— Soone!

But no one. Nothing. Silence. More massive than a wall. Vaster than an abyss. Crueler than refusal. A silence that knew. A silence that held.

— Please... tell . Guide . I beg you...

I fell to my knees. Again. Not from physical weakness. Not from pain. But from pure supplication. From inner collapse. Like reaching out to sothing already lost, but calling it anyway, because there is nothing else to do.

— I know I don’t deserve anything.

My voice trembled now. Fragile. Raspy.

— I know... I’m a monster.

A breath. A crushed remnant of pride.

— But please...

My throat tightened. My breath stopped. My lungs refused to go on.

— Please... help .

And the silence.

Total.

Not a breath. Not a whisper. Not even a heartbeat.

Even she...

Even the voice...

was gone.