Chapter 205: The Rain Was a Memory
The rain had changed. It was no longer that soft veil, those timid drops that slide without insisting. No. It no longer caressed. It stung. Not like needles — that would be too simple, too physical, too obvious. No... it stung like acidic memories, like liquefied fragments of the past, falling from the sky to blend with the skin and awaken what we thought forgotten.
Each drop, now, seemed charged with an ancient weight. And even if they remained invisible to the eye, even if they didn’t mark the flesh, they still left a burn — discreet, diffuse, but stubborn. A fine, nervous heat that seeped under the skin, like a muffled truth rising through the pores, drop by drop, until it smothered thought. The rain was no longer weather. It was a memory. A wet memory falling back down on me.
And the railings... melted. Literally. The metal seemed to ooze, deform, unravel under an absurd heat, as if the world itself were losing patience. Their curves collapsed slowly, drop by drop, without a crash, in a discreet agony, almost modest. Like arms held out too long toward another, toward a call, toward a promise, and that end up letting go. Giving up. Not out of weakness. But because they understood there would be no answer.
I was still climbing. One step after another, without rhythm, without real will. As one climbs not to reach something, but because there’s nothing else left to do. The staircase, deformed, melting in places, undulated beneath my feet like a living matter in agony, and yet I continued. Not out of strength. But because stopping would have been worse. Because each step taken held me in balance, fragile, between falling and surviving.
Each step forced me to find a new balance. Nothing was stable. Nothing repeated. As if every gradient, every irregularity, every sagging was placed there intentionally — to challenge me. The world wasn’t trying to make me fall out of cruelty. It wasn’t a punishment. It was a test. A silent trial, almost benevolent in its brutality. As if it wanted to know. If I truly wanted to continue. If I was willing to move forward even when nothing held. Even when everything wavered.
All I knew was that without my regenerative ability — that anomaly gifted by my race, that poisoned privilege grafted to my cells — I would already be dead. Not once. But a thousand. Dead for far too long, consumed, crushed, abandoned in pieces on one of the landings of this world that forgives nothing.
And what chilled me, beyond even the pain, was this certainty: he was the most terrifying enemy I had ever faced. By far. By a long, long way. A chasm between him and the others. More crushing than Anarael, despite his divine light. More devouring than Xylorath, despite his theater of omnipotence. He... was something else. A presence that could not be contained. A horror that could not be named. An end that did not announce itself.
The child in my arms stirred. Barely. A shiver. A breath of movement against my chest. He hadn’t said a word, all along. Not a cry, not a whimper. A silence of stone, or of fear — I no longer knew. But now... he was crying.
Not loudly. Not like usual, those cries of fatigue or pain we learn to ignore to survive. No. This time, it was something else. A new nuance, fine, unsettling. In each sob, one felt an expectation. A tension. A demand. As if his tears, instead of fleeing, were bringing me back to him. As if he wanted something. Not comfort. But an answer.