Anthesis of Sadness Chapter 197: The Embrace That Weighs More

The climb was becoming impossible. Not because of the slope, nor the altitude. But because of the density.

Sothing was thickening with every step. In the air. In my legs. In my thoughts. As if the world, suddenly, weighed heavier. As if every particle around had grown denser, saturated with an invisible but real weight — a weight of mory, of truth, of exhaustion.

It was no longer a climb. It was a crossing. A wall of silence, of resistance, that I could neither bypass... nor refuse.

Each step pressed deeper into my belly, like a dull, visceral pressure compressing sothing older than pain.

A deep backwash pounded in my legs, wave after wave, as if the ground itself was trying to push back.

My breath scattered. It no longer flowed, it fragnted. Beat after beat, it beca erratic, dissolved, fleeing — as if my own body could no longer contain what it was going through.

My arms, they... still held the child. Out of habit. Out of duty. Out of reflex.

But they no longer believed. Faith had retreated from my muscles, leaving only the gesture, emptied of conviction. They held on, yes, but without certainty.

As if my arms continued to carry what they no longer understood. As if, already, a part of had begun to let go... silently.

The world seed to have slowed down. Or maybe... it was . Impossible to tell.

Everything had beco slower, thicker, as if suspended in a breath that couldn’t finish. Sounds dragged. Contours vibrated.

Even ti seed hesitant. As if it too no longer knew how to move forward. As if everything around had started doubting at the sa ti I did.

The fog was growing heavy. More than a veil, more than just a visual obstacle — it thickened into matter.

It clung. To skin. To eyelids. To thoughts. Even denser, moister, more intimate. Like an imposed second skin, a tepid shroud that could no longer be pushed away.

It no longer hid the world, it invaded it. And with it.

After what felt like hours, in that hell saturated with mist, fatigue, and silence... she appeared.

No crash. No sudden light. Just a form detaching from the void, slowly, as if she had always been there, lurking in the folds of the world, waiting for the precise mont to show herself.

And in that appearance... sothing shifted.

A statue. But not motionless. Not frozen in stone as one would expect.

She seed to breathe with an imperceptible breath, vibrate with a restrained life just beneath the surface. There was in her posture sothing too supple, too present, to belong to the world of dead things.

She wasn’t waiting. She was watching.

She descended slowly down the spiral steps, step by step, sideways, with that strange, almost unreal gait, like a disjointed puppet left to wander alone in an ancient ballet, forgotten for centuries.

Each movent seed both chanical and full of intent, as if sothing in her wavered between falling and dancing, between collapse and perverted grace.

A silent, hypnotic descent, disturbing to both the eye and the soul.

Her face... eroded by ti, by wind, by sothing unspeakable.

But despite the cracks, despite the material worn down to oblivion, sothing remained. An outline. A lingering softness.

Feminine. Maternal, even — but of a tired, emptied, dull motherhood.

A face that no longer promised anything, that no longer protected, but still looked on. As if loving had lasted too long, too heavily, and only this expression remained: an exhausted waiting.

She was naked under her sculpted drapes, but there was nothing in her that evoked flesh. No sensuality. No warmth.

Her body was only an outline, a suggestion frozen in stone, where skin had never existed.

What she offered wasn’t a refuge, nor an embrace. It was sothing else. Older. Colder.

The residual trace of a vanished will — the dead will to comfort.

A fossilized gesture toward a soothing that had never taken place.

She extended her arms. Not suddenly. Not like a threat, nor even like an offering.

Rather like the mory of a gesture. Slowly. With that strange hesitation of things too ancient to still believe in welco, but too stubborn to entirely give up.

Her arms opened without warmth, without promise, but with a troubling persistence — as if, despite everything, she kept waiting.

— No... not now... please... I can’t bear one more weight, I murmured, barely, like a broken breath in my throat.

And without aning to, without thinking, I took a step back. A simple step. But it was enough.

As if that movent, however minimal, had triggered sothing.

An imnse weight fell upon , brutal, crushing, heavier than anything I had carried until then.

It had no shape, no origin, but it was there — total.

My legs buckled instantly, ripped from their fragile balance, and I fell to my knees.

Not out of submission. Out of inability. Out of silent collapse.

She approached. Slowly. Inevitably.

And around , the platform remained closed, without exit, without edge, without the slightest gap through which to flee — neither by legs, nor by will.

No way out. Not even the illusory one of revolt.

And then, in that closed circle, that suspended place where nothing answered anymore, I gave in. Not with peace. But with that raw, exhausted lucidity that is born when there is no choice left but to accept.

Her arms brushed against . Barely. But that contact was enough. And everything in ... scread.

No sharp pain, no torn scream — no. A silent scream, internal, visceral. Of dissolution.

As if her stone skin, cold, dead, devoid of warmth but saturated with oblivion, absorbed what remained of .

My last strength. The little will still holding up. My reasons. My goals. My most stubborn resistances.

Everything drained away. Gently. Inexorably.

As if she took nothing... but claid everything.

I struggled. My body fought, shaken by disordered movents, without coordination, without real strength — but with the raw instinct to survive.

I cried out too. Or at least... I tried.

No sound ca out. My throat contracted, burning, mute, incapable of expressing the terror.

It was a cry without voice, without shape, trapped sowhere between belly and breath.

A cry from within, no longer seeking to be heard... just not to die suffocated.

The child in my arms was becoming blurry.

His contours dissolved, wavered, as if erased by an inner mist I no longer controlled.

Or maybe... it was my eyes.

My gaze, clouded, drowned in fatigue, effort, progressive surrender. I no longer knew.

If it was him disappearing, or ceasing to see. But sothing, slowly, was being lost.

The statue embraced for a mont. A heavy, slow, implacable embrace. A tomb’s embrace.

Not a gesture of comfort, but of sealing. As if her arms had never been made to console, only to close. To imprison.

And in that cold, dense contact, frozen outside of ti, I felt sothing close within . Definitely.

My back gave out. Suddenly. And I scread.

A twisted cry, torn from the deepest part, a raw, primal, visceral cry.

It wasn’t a cry aid at her. It wasn’t a revolt against her presence.

It was a cry against what she embodied. Against that kind of love.

The one imposed without asking. The one that demands without understanding. The one that pretends to soothe but requires surrender.

A cry against what she wanted to take from . Against that trust she expected, silently demanded.

A cry that said: I don’t want to. I can’t. I don’t believe you.

So I pushed. Weakly. Very weakly.

As if every muscle had to wake from a deep numbness, as if the slightest movent required a will I no longer had.

But it was enough. Not a burst. Not a rupture. Just a gesture. Tiny. Trembling. But enough.

Enough to say no. Enough to pull away from her. Not to give in completely.

She stepped back. She faltered, in a movent almost slow, almost uncertain, as if my weakness had been enough to unbalance her.

And I... collapsed. Onto my back. Brutally.

Body struck against the cold ground, tensed in a final jolt, then released entirely.

My arms, they, were empty. Open. Disard.

The child had slipped, gently, imperceptibly, out of my embrace. Like a promise one failed to keep.

I looked up. He was there. Sitting, a few steps away. Motionless.

His eyes were looking at — straight, clear, but without anger.

There was no judgnt in his gaze. Just a mute reproach.

An old, contained sorrow, laid there between us without words, without violence.

And then, gently, he began to cry. Not loudly. Not theatrically.

Just a pure sob, broken, from the deepest part of him. A naked pain, that didn’t accuse, but that said: you let down.

The fog grew thicker, heavier, almost solid.

The rain, too, beca denser, tighter, as if each drop weighed more, hamring my skin with insistent slowness.

The sll thickened too — clammy, sticky, heavy with sothing sweet and rotten, a scent that crept into the throat.

And the steps... they too seed to change. Their material, their rhythm, their logic.

As if the world, in reaction to what had just broken, decided to twist as well.

It was becoming unbearable. Completely.

Each breath was a struggle, each step a stifled agony.

Air was lacking, sucked away by a creeping anxiety that gnawed at my gut, mixing with the accumulated exhaustion, the repeated efforts, the continuous tension of the past days.

And the environnt — that saturated, viscous, oppressive world — finished crushing what remained of clarity.

So, without a cry, without a spectacular fall, my body gave way.

My mind blurred. And I passed out. Simply. Like a fla deprived of oxygen.

When I woke up, sothing had changed. Nothing spectacular, nothing miraculous — just a bit more clarity.

A slight calm, ntal and physical, as if the fall had allowed the body to take back a forgotten breath.

I felt a little better, yes... but I was still exhausted. Deeply.

A stubborn fatigue, rooted, that did not express itself in pain but in weight.

An exhaustion that didn’t call for rest, but for slowness. For survival.

The environnt had changed again. Subtly, but undeniably.

The contours were no longer the sa, space had slipped, drifted, as if obeying a shifting logic I could no longer follow.

But I paid it only distant attention.

My gaze, it, remained fixed on the child. That was all that mattered. All that still mattered to .

In that deford, unbearable world, he had beco my only direction, my only urgency, my only priority.

I didn’t know exactly why, or how, but sowhere in ... I felt it.

He was the key. The exit. Or maybe simply... what remained of my humanity.

The child, like the first ti, held out his arms to .

The sa gesture, simple, silent, almost ritual.

And without thinking too much, without questioning, I took him against .

My arms closed around him with the automatism of a mory.

But this ti... he was different. Heavier. Denser. Hotter.

His body radiated a vivid warmth, almost painful, as if sothing in him had thickened, sunk deeper into reality.

It was no longer the sa weight. It was a presence. A truth.

A responsibility that, this ti, truly weighed.

And I knew. Without explanation, without voice, without vision.

I knew, in every nerve, every vertebra, every held breath.

Every refusal of a trial. Every escape. Every rejection. All would be punished.

Not by pain — that, I already knew.

But by sothing more insidious. Twice the weight.

An invisible, inevitable burden, that would add itself to the existing one, rge with it, cling to it.

The more one refused, the more one carried. The more one resisted, the harder the world pressed.

It didn’t strike. It weighed down. Until one bent. Until one gave in.