Chapter 201: The Death I Do Not Accept
I kept climbing. Again. Still. The body moved forward, obedient, mechanical. But something inside me stopped following. A deeper, more fragile part that no longer found reason, momentum, or breath to go on.
As if, from bearing too much, it had disconnected from the rest. It stayed behind. Or maybe it sank deeper into me. I no longer knew. I only felt that shift — discreet, but real. Like a loss that makes no sound, yet slowly eats everything away.
My feet struck the steps with a muffled violence, as if they wanted to break them, as if each step was a protest, an absurd attempt to shatter the cycle.
My breath tore through the air, ragged, rasping, useless — a breath that no longer nourished anything, that no longer carried, but sawed at my throat with every inhale. I was there, but not really. A machine of flesh and vertigo, continuing in spite of itself.
My legs... were bleeding. I didn’t know when it had started. Or how. There had been no scream, no blow, no warning. But the blood was there. Dark red. Thick.
It flowed slowly, drawing lines between my steps, irregular trails like fragments of memory refusing to close. Every drop seemed to say: you keep going, but you’re losing something. And I no longer knew what. Only that it was leaving. That it was being written on the ground, despite me.
The world did not react. Not a shiver, not a whisper, not a hint of response. It stayed there, impassive, indifferent.
As if it had ceased to exist for anything other than my walk. As if it watched me without truly seeing. Or maybe... it had always been that way: a mute backdrop, witness to collapse, but never moved by pity.
The stairs did not vibrate. No echo, no resonance, as if my steps no longer mattered. As if I no longer had weight. The very matter seemed indifferent to my presence.
And the rain — still falling — kept coming. Warm. Silent. Relentless. It did not refresh. It cleansed nothing. It slid over me like over something already gone, already detached from what it passed through.
Nothing answered. Nothing changed. Everything persisted. Unchanging. Indifferent.