Anthesis of Sadness Chapter 207: It Wasn’t Me… Yes. It Was Me

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Author’s note: Read the Chapter after ’it takes two’ before this one. enjoy your reading :)

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I hadn’t looked back in a long ti. Maybe since the statue. Maybe since the confession. I was still climbing, endlessly, in that spiral without end, that path suspended between the sky and nothing. But sothing was different. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. A faint softness slipped into the loop. Not comfort. Not joy. But a form of acceptance. A breath a little less painful. A gravity a little less crushing.

The loop was still there, yes — repetitive, narrow, demanding. But it felt a little more livable. A little more human. As if, now, it was no longer a trap. Just a passage. And as long as I kept climbing, even slowly, even exhausted... I was no longer running away.

The child against my chest. Silent. Warm. Present. His small body breathed in rhythm with mine, sotis offbeat, sotis echoing, like a fragile music still searching for its tempo. He didn’t speak, but he had weight. Not as a burden, no. As a reality. As a truth one finally accepts to carry without wanting to set it down.

His arms around did not squeeze. They rested. And that simple contact, that bare, defenseless closeness, reminded with every step that I was no longer alone. That I didn’t have to be.

My breath steadier. My head held higher.

There was sothing infinitesimal there, maybe invisible to the outside eye, but which, in , marked an entire shift. A slightly more regular breath, a rhythm no longer just trying to survive but to hold. A head that no longer bowed under the weight of sha or the past, but that, without pride, without victory, rose. Just a little. Just enough.

It wasn’t a glorious straightening, not a triumphant return. It was more discreet, more intimate, more true. A fragile verticality, like that of a broken tree that, despite everything, keeps growing, keeps reaching upward. And that movent, that unflashy straightening, was already a refusal. A refusal to go back down. A refusal to dissolve into silence.

I walked. Still. Less out of will than out of necessity. Because now... sothing in wanted to see how far I could climb.

And then... I heard it.

Not a cry. Not a distinct word. Just a breath. A faint voice, untethered from ti, that seed to float in the air like a note escaped from a mory. It didn’t impose. It didn’t strike. It slid gently, between two heartbeats, between two held breaths, as if it had always been there, lurking in the thickness of silence, and was simply waiting for the right mont to exist.

It wasn’t a call. Not a summons. It was... a sonic presence. A fragile warmth, carried by the wind, by the rain, by everything the world had left behind . And that sound, so faint, so discreet, touched more deeply than all the screams. Because it asked for nothing. It simply said: I’m here.

The footsteps echoed behind . Slow. Steady. Uneven, though. As if they hesitated to exist, but refused to disappear.

It wasn’t a heavy walk, not a pounding stride — no. It was more discreet. More intimate.

But each step had weight. A rhythm. An ancient truth. Like a mory the world had tried to drown for too long and that, now, refused to remain silent.

Each step seed to say: I’m still here. Not to frighten. Not to haunt. But to remind.

Remind of what was silenced. What was buried. What always returns, gently, when one stops running.

I didn’t turn around right away. It wasn’t out of fear. Not really. Nor forgetfulness. It was... instinctive.

As if sothing in knew it was necessary to wait. To first listen. To let it co. To let it approach.

The step behind was not a threat. It didn’t rumble. It didn’t press.

It simply waited, at its own pace, at its own distance, as if it knew better than I did the right mont.

And I, frozen in that inner movent, remained facing the fog, the ascent, the vibrating silence, barely breathing, with the confused certainty that turning around too early would break sothing.

Desecrate a fragile balance.

So I waited. Because sotis, not turning around... is also a way to face.

I knew that rhythm.

I recognized it imdiately, even before understanding it. It vibrated in like an old song never learned, but that the body rembers how to sing.

A simple tempo, irregular, fragile. And yet, familiar. Intimate.

After all... I had shaped it. With my own hands. In a frenzied, trembling state, possessed by a mory too heavy to remain silent.

I had sculpted it in the nacre, each gesture drawn from a vertigo, a burning necessity, a need to make the invisible visible.

And then I had abandoned it. Back there. A few thousand steps lower.

I had left it behind, deliberately, thinking it was just a fragnt. A trial passed. A frozen trace.

But it was there, now. It had returned. Not to haunt . But to join .

And now... it was climbing.

The statue. My statue.

The one I had left behind, frozen in the mist like a solidified cry.

The one I had shaped in urgency, in fear, in that vertigo where one sculpts what one cannot say.

It was no longer motionless. It was no longer just a mory raised in stone.

It was moving. One step after another. Uneven. Hesitant. But alive.

And I felt it throughout my body — that shift from the past that no longer stayed in its place, that fragnt I had tried to bury that was now joining , no longer as a fault, but as a part.

A part of I hadn’t been able to love, that I had left back there, alone, in the cold.

And now... it was climbing. As if it too had understood. As if it too had decided that the ti for silence was over.

That little boy, huddled, that I had frozen behind a half-open door...

I saw him now, no longer as a distant sculpture, a fragnt abandoned in the marble of the past, but as a being in motion.

He was moving. Slowly. Fragilely. But he was moving.

The one I had imprisoned in a posture of fear, of silence, of refusal.

The one I had locked there, crouched, knees to chest, hands over ears, not to hear, not to see, not to exist.

The one I had sculpted to punish myself for having been him.

He was climbing. Through the mist. Through the sa staircase.

And I... I was no longer ahead. Not really. I was with him.

I already sensed that this path was no longer mine alone.

That this frozen past was claiming its place in the present. Not to accuse. But to continue. To finally breathe. To walk, too.

He was walking.

Not to catch up to . Not to stick to my steps, nor to extend a hand, nor to beg for a glance.

He wasn’t chasing . He didn’t reproach .

He moved forward. For himself. For . For what we were, both of us, separated too long by sha, by denial, by that urge to forget that always ends up choking what one ant to save.

He didn’t co to join . He ca to remind .

Remind to move forward, too, like him.

With that hesitant slowness, but straight. With that bare fragility, but real.

With that fear still clinging to the belly, but that no longer stopped the legs from moving.

He didn’t walk to flee. He didn’t walk to show the way.

He walked to exist.

And that simple movent... compelled to go on.

To not betray myself. To walk, no longer to survive, but to be worthy of the one I had left behind.

I decided to turn around. At last.

Heart a little tight, legs heavy with anticipation, as if that simple gesture carried more weight than all the steps climbed so far.

And he was there.

Not aggressive. Not pleading. He asked for nothing. He expected nothing.

He didn’t judge .

He was simply... alive. Present.

A shape made of mory and matter. Of what I had fled, of what I had locked away, and of what, perhaps, I was beginning to welco.

He didn’t shine. He didn’t tremble.

He was there, standing, shaped by my hands, but now animated by sothing beyond .

His eyes, hollowed but deep, stared at .

Without reproach. But without forgetting either.

They didn’t try to erase, to forgive, to console.

They simply said: I rember.

And in that gaze... I felt the whole naked truth of a past that no longer wants to stay frozen, but that does not ask to be erased.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need words.

He walked. That was all. And it was enough.

And I... I resud climbing too.

No faster. My steps were still heavy, my legs still marked by the old fatigue, that fatigue of living with what one has long refused to see.

But I climbed more truly. Each step, this ti, had a weight that no longer tried to disappear.

Because now I knew. I could no longer pretend.

No longer look away, no longer push away the trembling hand within.

I could no longer hide behind forgetting, behind excuses, behind that phrase I had repeated a thousand tis like an empty prayer: it wasn’t .

Yes. It was . The silence. The refusal. The flight.

It was , huddled behind that half-open door, it was , frozen in the nacre, it was who had let it happen, because I was too small, too terrified, too incapable.

But now... I knew. I accepted it.

And I climbed. Not in spite of it, but with it.

Because sotis, to acknowledge... is the first step toward sothing else.

Not toward forgiveness. Not toward peace.

Just... toward a step a little straighter.

He was there. Behind .

I didn’t see him. I didn’t need to turn around.

I felt him. His presence was like a breath behind the neck, a timid warmth that didn’t weigh, but that remained, constant, watchful.

With every step, I knew he was there. That he was watching .

Not to overwhelm . Not to crush under the weight of what I had been, of what I hadn’t done.

There was no anger, no reproach, no bitterness in that gaze I felt vibrating in my back.

He watched ... to make sure.

To make sure I was no longer running. That I wasn’t falling back into those old reflexes of forgetting and silence.

That I wasn’t locking myself again into that eternal victim posture to never face the truth.

He didn’t want to be strong.

He just wanted to be there. To go on.

To walk, even if I trembled. To climb, even if I doubted.

And that silent gaze, resting behind , had beco a thread.

A promise. A soft but unwavering demand: don’t fall again.

I knew, deep inside, that I could no longer run.

Not out of constraint. Not out of exhaustion.

But because I no longer even wanted to.

It was gone. Dissolved sowhere in that climb, in that long vertical wandering where each step had emptied of a part of my fear, my sha, my need to disappear.

I was better — not healed, not cleansed, not saved, but better.

I moved forward. No longer as a fugitive.

But as soone finally accepting to be here.

To inhabit his body, his mory, his gaze.

I felt it deep inside, in that fuller breath, in that way I placed my feet with a little more truth.

And I felt it too: I was almost at the end of this place.

Of this infinite spiral, of this world suspended between sky and fall.

This place had never been a trap.

It had simply waited for to evolve. To change. To go through it.

And I think... I think I was nearly there.

Because I was no longer the sa broken beast I had been entering here.

At last... I hoped so.

Because doubt, that one, never really leaves.