Anthesis of Sadness

It was time.

I stood before the entrance to the tunnel that led to the heart of the circle. The place seemed calm, perfectly still in its appearance of stone and silence, but I could already feel, just beneath my feet, the muffled beatings of the world below. The voices. The footsteps. The echoes of things we try not to relive. The moment was approaching. The one I would have liked to delay a bit longer. Just a little. One more minute, maybe two. But it was here now, placed before me like a blade in balance. The time had come to go to the Inter-Species Tournament.

Time to see them again.

The others. Those we called the Chosen Ones. Those who, like me, had been selected to face a prophecy we had not written, to carry a fragment of this world between their ribs, like a blade lodged close to the heart. I had to walk toward them. Look them in the eye. Try to resemble them still. Wear the same body, the same gait — though nothing, absolutely nothing, was the same. And I already knew that nothing ever would be again.

My heart tightened. Not with a cry, but slowly, deeply. As if an invisible hand had been pressing down on it for too long, with that impassive regularity that can no longer be ignored. I dreaded this reunion. Truly. Not because I was afraid of them... but because I knew what they were going to see.

I knew what their gazes would hold.

And above all, I knew what I would have to tell them.

There would be no joy. No sudden laughter, no promises whispered between silences. No surge of relief. No illusion possible.

Not with what I had to tell them.

Not with what I had seen.

I missed Anthony.