Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 62: Deep Within the Dark

They pushed deeper into the darkness, the flames casting jittery shadows on the walls that danced with every step they took.

Dylan, being the instigator of this night-time expedition, led the way. He moved cautiously, almost counting each step, fingers tight around the torch handle. The flickering light cast a shaky cone ahead of him, revealing a passage that grew narrower the further they went.

The path seemed perfectly straight. But human eyes have their limits, and despite the illusion of linearity, the end of the tunnel remained out of sight. A vanishing line, leading to something... or nothing.

Behind him, Élisa and Maggie’s footsteps echoed faintly, dampened by the walls. No more breeze. Just this creeping feeling of moving through something closed-in — like the digestive tract of a long-dead creature.

Then Dylan frowned. Something felt off. He scanned the walls.

"These walls... they’re not natural," he muttered, mostly to himself.

Maggie raised her torch higher, and Élisa stepped closer to inspect the rock.

Where before the walls had been rough, jagged, like any natural formation, they were now oddly smooth. Too perfect. Too regular. The ceiling curved precisely, and the floor had flattened out as if polished by millennia of passage — or something far more intentional.

They weren’t in a cave anymore. They were inside a cylinder.

The walls gradually arched around them, enclosing the space. The torchlight bounced off the surface like it was slightly damp... or breathing.

Then the straight path morphed into a spiral. Not abruptly — subtly. They only noticed when their weight shifted, their steps starting to slip.

The slope, at first gentle, became steeper. The floor, now coated in fine dust or maybe some kind of organic residue, lost its grip.

"Careful..." Élisa whispered, pressing one hand to the wall for balance.

Dylan nearly lost his footing and caught himself, palms flat against the wall. Maggie cursed under her breath, clutching a crack for support.

The descent had become inevitable. They weren’t walking anymore — they were slowly sliding toward something. And that something, deep down, might’ve been waiting for them.

"What now? We keep going?" Maggie asked, her eyes catching the trembling torchlight.

Dylan didn’t answer right away. He was listening. Down there, at the tunnel’s end... something pulsed. Not a sound — a vibration. Distant, deep, almost imperceptible.

But he recognized it.

The same rhythm from his dream.

"After all this way, you wanna turn back now?" he murmured. His voice wasn’t scared, or reassuring. Just... tense.

Élisa tightened her grip on her dagger.

"Then let’s go all the way."

They kept moving down — or rather, drifting — through that winding tube. The path was never straight.

Sometimes they climbed, sometimes they slid, they twisted and turned — like they were following the fossilized spine of something ancient, or the tunneled path of a beast that once carved through stone.

But for all the strangeness of the place, nothing attacked them. No lurking monsters. No disembodied whispers. Just them, their torches, and that stone and silence tunnel.

The floor kept changing underfoot. Sometimes dry and solid. Other times soft, almost alive under their soles. But the cylinder never really diverged. No forks. No choices. Just one road.

"It’s like we’re walking inside the memory of a passage," Élisa murmured at one point, her voice swallowed by the echo.

Dylan nodded, eyes still locked forward.

And then they saw it.

The light.

Faint. Distant. But there.

A pale, bluish glow, cold, seeping gently through an upcoming bend. Nothing natural about that light, yet it didn’t scare them. On the contrary — it felt like a promise. A tangible sign that there really was something at the end of this path.

Dylan felt tension slip from his chest. Maggie let out a low whistle.

"Damn... guess crawling through a fossilized intestine wasn’t for nothing."

Élisa narrowed her eyes, studying the light.

"Keep your distance. Just in case."

But despite her words, none of them really slowed down.

Something ahead was calling to them. And this time, they were ready to see what the dream had been pointing them toward.

They kept going, breathing steady, torches dimming as they got closer to the light. And then... they emerged.

The cave opened up all at once, without warning, into a vast space, almost too huge to be real. The walls looked carved from golden stone, streaked with black veins, like someone had frozen a sandstorm mid-surge.

Above them, the ceiling had vanished, replaced by a strange sky. But not the one they knew. The stars were too bright, too sharp, too many. And in the middle of it all, a chunk of moon hung suspended — warped, misshapen. Like a broken version of the real world.

And the light... cold, bluish, but not harsh. It slid down the walls, touched a black lake below, making it shimmer with an odd glow. Almost alive.

"What the hell..." Maggie muttered, arms hanging loosely at her sides.

Dylan didn’t answer. He was staring, eyes wide.

It all looked too beautiful to be real — like reality had blurred into something else.

Élisa stepped forward, still alert. Watching, scanning, like the whole place might detonate with the slightest sound.

The silence was total. No creatures. No breeze. Just an artificial calm, heavy and thick.

"This kind of confirms my theory..." she murmured.

She pointed at a nearby rock wall, marked with deep scratches.

"We really have been following some kind of beast. Look at those marks. It tried to crush the stone, but failed."

Dylan frowned.

"You mean... it was trying to dig?"

Élisa nodded.

"I think the underground water bothered it. It probably tried to tunnel up. And erosion eventually widened the way, turning it into this cavity."

Dylan leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes on the lake’s dark surface. He raised an eyebrow, half a smirk curling his lips.

"So it’s safe? Can I jump in?"

Élisa shot him a sharp look.

"No."

Maggie burst out laughing.

"At least wait till we know the water doesn’t melt bones or summon some ancient sea demon, for real."

Dylan shrugged.

"It’s not like I said I was gonna drink it. Just... a quick swim."

Having never known these kinds of inviting, untouched waters in his old world — a world ravaged by war and nuclear fallout — Dylan had a soft spot for clear water.

He couldn’t help it. Every time he saw some — clean, unpolluted, almost magical — he wanted to dive in.

It was rare. Too rare. Like a forgotten luxury. Almost sacred. So yeah, he always got a little too excited whenever he stumbled on a pool like this.

"If you wanna get dragged down into the abyss by your ankles, be my guest," Élisa muttered as she passed him, clearly annoyed but just as tense.