So I started walking again. Once more. Without heroism, without illusion, simply because there was no other choice. But this ti... everything was worse. Everything was doubled. The fatigue. The weight. The burn in my muscles. The breath ripped away with each step. The world itself seed to have thickened, beco unlivable, as if it wanted to prove I had learned nothing, accepted nothing. Every movent was a negotiation with collapse. Every second, a fall narrowly avoided. But I moved forward anyway. Because falling... would have been worse.
With each step, I felt like I was moving through a hostile world, a world that didn’t want . As if the earth itself rejected , forcing to press down every foothold, every breath, to beg for my place on a path I hadn’t chosen. I walked... like an intruder.
The worst part, maybe, was this: nothing was straight anymore. Neither the steps, nor my back, nor my bones, which seed to slowly twist under this damp, insidious heaviness, clammy like a living mold.
Even my thoughts lost their axis. They spun, scattered, panicked since the encounter with the statue — as if sothing in had been unbalanced, shifted from its center, and could no longer find its equilibrium. Everything beca slanted. Slippery. Unsettling. And I, in the middle of it, still tried to stand... though nothing held anymore.
Even the light seed false. Too pale. Too flat. As if my eyes no longer knew how to look, as if the world had lost its depth. Everything was blurry without being so. Too sharp, too off-kilter.
And I had lost my bearings. I wandered through a sick geotry.
I stumbled every three steps. My balance was nothing more than a mory, a distant reflex lost in the drunkenness of effort. My legs no longer held — they swayed, bent, barely resisted.
And my breath... scattered in my temples, beat against my skull like a chaotic tide, unable to feed anything but vertigo. I wasn’t walking anymore. I was slipping, jolting, fragnted, supported by nothing but an obstinate refusal to collapse.
I was cold. And hot. Both at once. My body didn’t know how to respond anymore. Every muscle vibrated off-beat, as if I were caught in a tremor only I could feel.
It wasn’t just the effort. It was a loss. A slow dissolution of everything still keeping upright.
The child, anwhile, wasn’t asleep anymore. He was awake. Silent, motionless, but entirely there. Not agitated. Not demanding. Just present. Pressed against , against my chest, like a foreign heartbeat syncing with mine.
Too present. With a warmth that was calm, quiet, but relentless. A truth I could no longer ignore. A soft awareness that refused to fade, to blend into the background. He didn’t speak, but he weighed. Not through his weight... but through what he represented. Through what he reawakened.
He embodied sothing I didn’t want to see. Sothing older than my mistakes. More intimate.
He didn’t weigh. He judged. And that was worse. Not with words, not even with a look. Just by the simple fact of being there, calm, constant, unchanging. Like a living mory.
Then, without warning... he spoke.
Not loudly. Not like a child. His voice had nothing juvenile, nothing timid. It was a tiless tone, detached from the body, suspended sowhere between breath and absence. A crumpled grain of silence, barely audible, but which slipped into like a wave.
It asked for nothing. It reassured nothing. It was simply there, laid against the world, like a truth one doesn’t dare refuse.
— Why didn’t you open the door?
His whisper lasted only a second, but that second was enough to crack everything. A line opened in , sharp, cold, as if his voice had pierced sothing I had forgotten to protect. He had touched... the exact point.
I stopped dead. The world froze around , but it was my body that had stopped first. My heart turned to stone, heavy, frozen in my chest as if it refused to beat for that mory.
My skin tightened around my bones, rigid, too tight, like a garnt no longer deserved.
— What?
My voice was almost foreign. But he didn’t answer. He didn’t repeat. He didn’t even move. He had spoken. Once. And it was enough.
Because what he said... kept vibrating silently inside .
I would have preferred he scream. That he hit . That he insist. But no. He had gone quiet. And that silence... condemned more surely than any word. Because it left alone. Alone with what I already knew.
The world around seed to lean. Slowly. Subtly. Like a breath held in anticipation. As if every stone, every step, every thread of fog leaned in imperceptibly, listened, paused just to hear.
My answer.
But I had none. Nothing ca. Nothing but that tight, beating, shaful void at the bottom of my throat.
Only silence. Mine. Too late. Too bare. Too true.
My throat was full of glass. Every breath sliced. Every attempt to speak shattered against invisible shards.
And then, I felt my knee give... then the other... without appeal. My arms followed. No strength. No will. I gave in. I let him go.
The child slipped from , slowly, like an abandoned breath. He rolled gently on the step, without jolt, without cry, without panic. And he stayed there. Sitting. Upright. Silent.
As if nothing had happened. As if he had always known I would eventually fall.
Like the last ti, he cried. Not loudly. Not to be heard. Just that stream of pure sorrow, irrepressible, that escaped him effortlessly, without resistance.
But his tears... they were real. With a naked truth, undeniable, silent. And they pierced more deeply than I had imagined.
Not violently. Not like a slap or a reproach. No. More like a warm blade slowly sliding into a ripe fruit — with that soft and cruel precision, the one that doesn’t seek to hurt, but to open what must be opened.
He cried like one breathes. Naturally. Without will.
And I listened to those sobs like one hears a music one doesn’t understand, but which grips the chest.
I wanted to flee. Run anywhere, even without legs, even without escape. I wanted to scream, tear the air, howl everything I had never dared to say. I wanted to collapse for real, let go of the mask, the burden, the climb, the world — everything.
Let my body scatter in silence, never rise again. Because in that gaze, in those tears, there was no room left for lies. And I had nothing left to stand on.
But... I knew. Everything in already knew.
Running wouldn’t help. Screaming would only echo into emptiness. Collapsing wouldn’t erase anything.
So, slowly, almost on my knees, I knelt before him. I extended my arms. Without strength. Without words. Without the slightest certainty.
Just with what was left of . That chipped, trembling fragnt, but still standing. A silent offering. A simple gesture. Bare. That maybe said: I don’t know if I can... but I’m here.
It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t forgiveness. It was an attempt. A hand reaching from the abyss. A silent effort to say: I don’t know how... but I want to.
He looked at . And this ti, his eyes were no longer empty. They were full. Saturated with sothing heavy, deep, suffocating.
It wasn’t anger. No. It was worse.
It was waiting. An old waiting, motionless, patient like an endless night. A waiting that didn’t shout, that asked nothing, but that weighed. That placed on the weight of a silence I no longer knew how to carry.
He didn’t judge . He waited for to judge myself.
And that was worse. Because that lack of anger left face to face with my own cowardice, bare, irrefutable, incurable.
Then, slowly... he let himself be picked up. Without a word. Without resistance. As if sothing in him had broken, or maybe simply accepted.
His body slid against mine with the gentleness of a gesture long awaited.
He didn’t hug . He didn’t cling. He let it happen. And that letting happen... weighed more than anything.
And that gesture — that simple slide against — silently cracked sothing. As if an old wall gave way without a sound, where I still believed I held strong.
His weight, to my great surprise, hadn’t increased. He wasn’t heavier than before. Nor denser. Nor hotter.
He was there, exactly like the first ti — light, warm, contained. And yet... sothing in had changed.
It wasn’t he who weighed differently. It was who carried him differently.
I was. Not physically — my body still followed, out of reflex, out of habit. But ntally... I was heavier. Laden with a new burden, a mute tension, a vertigo I could no longer ignore.
A question had slipped inside , insidious, sticky, impossible to silence: had I been running all this ti... without even realizing?
Had I backed away, not by choice, but by willful forgetting? And if that were true... then how long had I been wearing that escape like a coat I refused to look at?
And if I had stayed there, frozen in that refusal? And if I was nothing but that... an escape with a human face? An articulated shell, built to walk, but incapable of inhabiting what it carries?
Was I supposed to open that door myself? Was it truly the right thing to do... or just another illusion of courage overlaid on an old wound?
I didn’t know anymore. I knew nothing. I was completely lost, drowned in the anders of my past — a past that was no longer a line, but a labyrinth.
Every mory folded in on itself, every choice led to another, every certainty crumbled as soon as I touched it. And that door... it waited.
Silent. Heavy. Too real to ignore. Too ancient to be opened without trembling.
Until now, I wanted only one thing: to hold on. Hold on to atone. Hold on to repent for what I had done. Hold on to protect, no matter what, Lysara and Cassandre in this world I understood less and less, but in which I refused to abandon them.
I had promised myself — no, carved into myself — never to run again. Never again to rest on my laurels, nor hide behind empty gestures.
But for that... did I truly have to open that door? Was it the path of courage, or just one more trap, disguised as a choice?
I didn’t know. And that uncertainty gnawed at almost as much as the guilt I carried.
Did I really have to open up to what haunted ? To that thing lurking under the skin, those visions that ca back unannounced, always at the worst mont, as if they waited for my weaknesses to slip in?
And that woman... that silhouette, that voice, that presence following in the shadow of every breakdown — who was she, really? What did she want from ?
Was she an echo of my mories, a repressed fragnt of my own story? Or a foreign entity, planted there by the gods to mock , to drive the knife deeper every ti I doubted?
I no longer knew. I was lost. Internally fragnted. Full of doubts, suspicions, questions that spun endlessly, unanswered, like shadows circling a dying fla.
Maybe the child and she... were one and the sa. Two reflections of the sa forgotten core.
Maybe I had never wanted to know who they really were, because I sensed... that what I would find there would destroy .
But for now, what really mattered — what had to take precedence over everything else — was to keep going. Move through this hell. Endure this trial, even on my knees, even on the edge.
Get out of here, as soon as possible. Tear myself away from this loop of pain and vertigo, not to flee... but to return stronger.
To catch my breath. To grow stronger. To beco stronger than all those damned beings who had crushed , manipulated , humiliated .
Stronger than them. Stronger than myself.
So, without waiting any longer, without trying to understand what I still couldn’t face, I started walking again.
Not because I believed. But because I could no longer turn back.
Because the only thing more unbearable than moving forward... was abandoning that gaze behind .
One step. Then another. Then another again. Again. Again. Again.
Each stride beat the ground like a deford prayer, a desperate pulse torn from silence. Again. Again. Again.
Words were no longer words. They beca heartbeats, pain, fragnts.
A raw, animal rhythm, scread into flesh. AGAIN. AGAIN. AGAIIIIN.
Until there was nothing but that. Nothing but the obsession to go on. Because stopping... was dying.
As if I were carrying... not just a weight anymore, but questions.
Questions that, for the first ti, had taken shape. A real form. Compact. Alive.
They were no longer scattered thoughts, whispers in the mist — they had a body, a warmth, a silence of their own.
And I carried them. Against . In . Like one carries a child one doesn’t yet understand... but can no longer abandon.
And in each step, there was a voice. Muffled. Cold. Repeating endlessly, like a broken litany:
open it.
Open it.
Open it.
Reviews
All reviews (0)