Chapter 213: For Lack of Proof
I took a step. Then another. Not like one moves forward. Not like one conquers. But like one yields. Like one accepts to no longer retreat, even without understanding where one is going, even without expecting anything.
My foot gently struck that strange surface, living membrane more than ground, and in the faint vibration that rose from the sole to the throat, I felt something give way inside me — not a pain, not a fear, but that leftover resistance one keeps by reflex, even though the body knows there’s no longer a battle to fight. I wasn’t walking. I was laying down a trace, fragile, permitted.
It was there, precisely there, in that bare gesture, that step laid without force but without escape, that I understood — not as a constructed thought, but as a diffuse vertigo, a sudden hollow in the sensory space.
Something was missing here. Truly. An absence heavier than weight, more palpable than matter itself. Not an object, not a landmark, not a light.
But something vital. Fundamental. So deeply anchored in every consciousness that we no longer perceive it... so long as it is there. And whose absence, here, struck me all at once, without violence, without cry, but like a breath one waits for and that doesn’t come.
Something every living being shares, no matter their world, their name, their form, their memory. A thing so obvious it becomes invisible — until it disappears. And in that silence, in that suspended walk, I felt its loss like a raw burn.
Sound.
It wasn’t a silence. Not a banal absence. Not that empty peace one feels after chaos, nor that muffled suspension one sometimes calls calm. No. It was something else. A visceral lack. An absence so total it became aggressive, insidious, devouring.
An abnormal void, disturbing down to the flesh, as if my steps, though real, no longer found hold on anything. As if my body moved forward without weight, without friction, without tangible proof of its existence. No impact. No resonance.
Just that disconcerting sensation that I was walking without being there, that my gestures left no imprint, no sound, no response from the world.
As if everything I knew — the simple laws of matter, the minute cues of reality, the shivers, the rustles, the shared breaths — were being taken from me one by one, with cruel gentleness. As if the world was erasing me not to punish, but to make me indistinct to myself.