Chapter 199: A Spark of Grace
I kept climbing. Tirelessly. Not by choice, not really. But because stopping would have been worse.
Because the ascent, however absurd it may have been, had become my only possible direction. A dull, mechanical movement, worn by exhaustion, but driven by something deeper: the refusal to yield.
Nothing vibrated outside anymore. The world had gone silent. A total, thick, almost sacred silence.
Not a shiver. Not a breath. As if everything — the wind, the rain, even the mist — had held its breath.
As if the entire universe had frozen to leave me alone with what remained. Me. My weight. And that which, in silence, kept growing heavier.
The stairs no longer echoed. My steps fell without resonance, as if swallowed by a floor with no memory.
Even the rain had lost its smell, its rhythm, its sound — it was falling, yes, but without touching, without wetting, without marking.
Everything seemed there, without being there. Present but hollow. A set drained of substance.
As if the world was slowly fading around me, leaving a bare, suspended space where nothing responded anymore.
The world was testing me differently, this time. No more screams, no more shocks, no more open pain. No.
It tested me through emptiness. Through absence. Through that slow, insidious way of depriving me of landmarks, of sounds, of shapes, until even my thoughts collided with nothing.