Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 191: In The Corridor

The corridor stretched out before him, narrow as a poorly healed vein. The smell of mold was sharper here, mingling with the scent of his own blood still trickling down his arms.

Barefoot on the cold stones, Dylan moved with muffled steps. He had no plan, just momentum—that raw, bodily impulse, that methodical rage that had replaced fear. The silence weighed heavy, punctuated only by water dripping from the ceiling like a broken clock counting time that no longer belonged to him.

He followed one corridor, then another. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Pipes ran along the walls, breathing in fits and starts, as if the bowels of the place were still alive. This wasn’t an ordinary prison. It was something else. A place designed to erase.

Then he reached a crossroads.

Three openings. Three gaping maws. Each exhaled a different air, barely perceptible. To the left, a warm, heavy breeze, almost oily. In the center, the air was stagnant, unmoving. To the right, a sharper, drier draft carried the scent of iron and rust.

He stopped, his heart pounding in his temples. No sound, no clue. No trace of footsteps, light, or movement.

Just silence.

Oppressive.

Dylan took half a step back, as if the space were already swallowing him. His eyes flicked from one corridor to the next. He didn’t know which one led to the surface. He didn’t even know if there was a surface. Maybe all of this was just an endless belly, a womb of walls and chains.

His fist tightened around the key still clutched in his palm. Only one way out. But which?

He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath.

He wasn’t waiting for a sign. He was waiting for instinct. Something older than reason. An inner pulse.

But all he felt was the hollowness inside him, the essence that hadn’t yet returned. The stigma had purged the corruption, yes—but he wasn’t ready to ignite again.

He was alive, sure.

But vulnerable.

A sharp noise echoed from somewhere behind him.

His heart skipped a beat. He whirled around—nothing. Not even a shadow.

So he turned back to the three paths.

And made his choice.

He went right.

Not because it was the right choice—but because it was the one that scared him the least.

Every step felt like one word too many. The corridor narrowed here, its sweating walls exhaling the breath of a forgotten cellar. The echo of his footsteps barely carried, smothered by the damp clinging to the stones like diseased skin.

Dylan moved at an angle, his back grazing the walls. In his right hand, he clutched a rusted hook—one of those used to hold his ribs apart. In the other, a long, sharpened metal rod. Nothing noble. But anything becomes a weapon when you have nothing but yourself.

The gloom thickened. His eyes struggled to adjust, his still-fragile senses searching for landmarks in the chaos. He felt the ground grow uneven beneath his feet, as if the slabs themselves had tired of lying flat. He nearly stumbled, caught himself against the wall, steadied his breath.

Then the corridor ended.

A dead end. Brutal. Dripping stone walls, sealed. No branching paths. Nothing.

Except him.

A man. No—a human mass. Two meters tall, maybe more, hunched against the far wall, chained like an animal too dangerous to die free. The chains formed an absurd web around him—wrists, ankles, torso, even his neck. One chain, thicker than the others, was engraved.

His eyes were open, but they saw nothing. The kind of gaze you find in those who have seen too much—or expect nothing more.

Dylan stood still.

So did the other.

Then, slowly, the giant’s head turned toward him with a crack of worn bones. The voice that came from that carcass held no tremor. No plea. No threat.

Just quiet certainty.

"Unchain me. I know the way."

"I have sharp ears."

His tone was disarmingly calm, almost conspiratorial.

"I heard how you killed your torturer... or your executioner, whatever. It wasn’t clean, but it worked. So let me join you. Let’s get out. Both of us."

Dylan didn’t answer right away.

He stood there, breath short, fingers clenched around his two pieces of metal as if the wrong word could tip everything back into chaos. He sized up the human creature before him. No, this wasn’t just a man. There was something else, a presence coiled beneath the skin, a calm hiding something vaster, darker.

But he asked the question anyway. The one you always ask.

"Why are you here?"

Not spoken in anger. Not even in suspicion. Just the weary honesty of those with nothing left to lose.

The giant shrugged. Or tried to—the chains stopped him.

"Me?"

A smile spread across his face. Not joyful. More... tragically satisfied.

"I fucked the Marshal’s daughter."

Silence settled between them.

The kind that expands inside the skull of the one who hears it.

"Not a metaphor, mind you. Not some bullshit like ’I stole a sacred relic’ or ’I disobeyed a divine order.’ No. I just... slipped into the wrong bed. The right night. And the wrong father."

He rattled his chains as punctuation, then added under his breath:

"Apparently, she liked it. He didn’t."

Dylan remained stone-faced. But his eyes darted in every direction. He didn’t like this. The atmosphere. This guy. This place.

But he recognized one unavoidable fact: this man knew something.

And he knew nothing.

So he took another step forward. The metal creaked in his hand.

"Your name?" he asked.

The colossus answered without hesitation:

"Julius. But call me whatever you want. As long as you free me before they come to remind me I’m scheduled for execution tomorrow morning."

Another noise. Closer this time. Footsteps. A muffled voice. Tools.

Dylan looked up at the ceiling, then back down the corridor he’d come from.

Time was running out.

And there was no room left for hesitation.

Dylan stepped closer.

Not like a hero or some kind of savior. But like you approach a wounded beast—or worse, a mirror.

He inspected the chains. The ones on the wrists were tight enough to draw blood. The one around the neck, engraved, vibrated faintly. A steady clicking, almost a mechanical chant, emanated from the thickest one, as if it contained some kind of spiritual mechanism or a dormant curse.

"I’m not touching that one," Dylan said, pointing to the neck chain with the metal rod.

"Good instinct. You’d be dead. Or maybe me. Or both. We’ll never know."

Julius tilted his chin slightly, giving him space.

Dylan wedged the rusted hook into the left wrist’s lock, scraped, forced. The metal squealed like a whimper. A sharp *click*, and the chain gave way.

"One," Julius murmured, almost amused.

He moved to the other. Same routine. His fingers trembled—not from fear, but exhaustion. His stigma was still burning through the toxins, his mind floating at the edge of fever. But he held on. Out of pride. Instinct.

"Two."

The ankles were trickier. A pin stuck, a piece of metal too bent to slide. He had to wrench it loose, like pulling a tooth in a dream.

"Three... and four. And we’re still breathing."

Finally, Dylan looked up at the central chain. The one that ran through Julius’s torso and anchored deep into the wall, as if holding up the building itself.

"This one?"

"Cut it, and everything collapses."

A brief silence. Then a muffled snort.

"Kidding. Maybe. Hopefully."

Dylan drove the rod into the lock. A soft click. Then nothing. He forced it. Again. Resistance, then a metallic scream. And everything gave way.

Julius’s body lurched forward.

He didn’t fall.

He straightened.

To his full height.

Dylan had to step back.

Julius stretched, his shoulders cracking like a waking tree. His torso was scarred with old wounds, his gaze now firmly rooted in the present.

"Fuck... you have no idea how good it feels to stand."

"You’d better be worth it," Dylan grunted.

"I’m a man of my word. And of secret passages."

Voices echoed behind them. Not from the corridor he’d taken. No. The other one. The one he’d hesitated to choose. Because of the boots and the too-bright lights.

"This way. Hurry, they must’ve gone west!"

Julius glanced back.

"Well. Now or never, hero."

"Lead the way, giant."

"Call me that again and I’ll throw you in another cell."

The echo of boots on stone grew louder, sharp and threatening. Julius didn’t waste a second. With a broad motion, he shoved Dylan aside like a twig and pressed himself against the dead-end wall, his massive fingers tracing the damp seams between the stones. His eyes, now alert, scanned the moss-covered surface with unsettling intensity.

"Here," he muttered, his voice suddenly stripped of its nonchalance. His hand stopped on a darker stone, seemingly identical to the others. He pressed his heel, then his thumb against a precise angle. A dull click echoed, muffled by the sound of pursuers spilling into the adjacent corridor.

The stone pivoted silently, revealing a low, black opening, barely wide enough for a man to slip through sideways. A gust of stale air, even older than the corridor’s, rushed out—thick with dust and something cold, mineral, and dead.

"After you, scout," Julius quipped, a fleeting smirk on his lips, shoving Dylan toward the opening without ceremony.

Dylan didn’t have time to protest. He slipped into the dark, the old hook and metal rod at the ready, his senses on high alert. Behind him, Julius followed, his broad frame scraping the walls. He grabbed the pivoting stone from the inside and eased it back into place with surprising gentleness for his size. The last sliver of light vanished, plunging them into total darkness just as the guards’ lanterns swept over the empty dead end.