After a while in silence — the kind of silence no one admits they're using to process everything — I stood up, stretched my back with the crack of someone aging poorly, and turned to him.
"Alright," I said, in the tone of someone wrapping up a very productive, but undeniably disastrous meeting. "You've told me how rotten the world is, who's holding the reins, and where the poison is buried… great. Now you just need to tell me one more thing."
He looked up, alert like a student who'd missed half the lecture.
"One thing?"
"How we get out of here."
Brelgrik blinked. First with one eye. Then the other.Then he smiled.
That smile of someone who clearly doesn't know the answer — but is going to answer anyway.
"Get out...? Ah... well... yes, getting out. We get out. Definitely. Just not... right now."
I sighed. Loudly.
"I swear on whatever sanity I've got left, if you answer that with a metaphor, I'm leaving you here and continuing on with a map scribbled in rat blood."
He raised his hands, laughing.
"No metaphors! No riddles!"
And then, immediately followed with:
"But it's going to be like climbing a wind tower during a memory quake."
"Brelgrik."
"Okay, okay, listen. There is a way out. But it's not close. It's not straight. And it definitely doesn't like to be found."
"That makes no sense."
"Of course it doesn't. No real exit does. If it were easy, everyone would escape."
"Fine. Where is it?"
He stood up with his entire body creaking, like his bones were arguing amongst themselves over the best way to stay together.
"We follow the broken rails of the old road. Under the Forgotten Wheel. The stone marked with three eyes facing east. There's a hole. A slippery, deep, dark one."
"Where you just crawled out from?"
"No! Not the physical hole. The other one. The... symbolic one."
"Oh my god."
He laughed, took two wobbly steps, and pointed toward a half-collapsed gallery at the far end of the corridor.
"The path exists, Dante. But it's moving. The tunnels... they shift. The stones are alive. Tired. And they only open the way for those who've already lost almost everything."
"Then we're fine," I said. "Because at this point, I've already left my dignity and at least a liter of blood behind me."
"Then they'll like you."
I looked ahead. A broken path, warm darkness, and the promise of an exit that maybe didn't even want to be used.
I looked at him.
"Are we going to make it?"
Brelgrik, for the first time, answered quickly.No poetry.No madness.Just a low, steady voice.
"It won't be easy. But yes. We will."
The tunnel Brelgrik pointed to felt less like a path and more like a temporary agreement between the rocks. It was narrow, twisted at impossible angles, and the walls seemed to close in a little more every twenty steps. There was glowing moss in the corners — not the helpful kind that lights the way. The kind that looks like it's watching you.
"They listen," Brelgrik said, as if commenting on the weather. "The stones. They always listen. Especially when we lie."
"Great," I replied. "I'd better stop promising this plan is going to work."
We passed through sections that didn't seem carved by tools. The ground was uneven and sometimes sank a full handspan under our weight. In other places, broken tracks ran along the floor, like an old mining route had been abandoned there — and by 'abandoned,' I mean devoured by something with big teeth and a taste for iron.
The silence was strange. Not total, but... held back. A silence that felt like it was waiting for something.
"Were these tunnels always like this?" I asked.
"No. They used to obey. But now... they're confused. They forget their shape. They forget the way in and the way out."
"Like you, then?"
He smiled, pleased.
"Exactly."
We kept walking, for an uncertain amount of time. At one point, a bluish glow appeared along the edges of the wall, as if the air itself was trying to guide us. At another, a deep rumble echoed beneath us, like some underground growl. The stones were moving. Slowly. But definitely moving.
"We're walking through an artery," he said, almost reverently. "This place was built on top of something alive."
"Oh, lovely. And which part are we in now? The intestine?"
He ignored me. Or pretended to.
We passed through a triangular opening, and on the other side, the floor widened. A low chamber with cracked pillars and chunks of collapsed ceiling. There, the tunnel seemed to breathe. Moisture rose in waves, and the temperature swayed like a fever.
"Are we close?" I asked.
"We're always far," he answered, walking with his arms outstretched like he was feeling a melody only he could hear.
Then it happened.
A click.
Subtle. Precise. Ancient.
I froze. So did Brelgrik.
We both looked down at the ground at the same time.
One stone — marked with a faint circle — was just slightly lower than the others.
The kind of detail you only notice when it's already too late.
A sharp sound echoed through the walls, like something had just awakened.
Brelgrik looked at me, eyes wide, voice clearer than ever.
"Sentence corridor."
"Is that bad?"
"It's... the part that decides whether you were meant to come this far."
"And the sentence is usually...?"
The ceiling groaned.
The floor trembled.
And somewhere deeper in the dark, something began to move — stone scraping against stone, with rhythm. Unnatural.
Something had been triggered.
Something old.
And I thought:
It was all going too smoothly until now. And the world hates when things feel easy.
The entire chamber began to shake — not like it was collapsing, but like it was waking up, opening its eyes after a thousand-year sleep and wondering who had the audacity to disturb it.
"This is a living trap?" I asked, stepping back, already feeling the vibration under my boots.
"It's a ritual trap," Brelgrik said, with that mix of fascination and dread. "It judges the worth of those who enter. And if you don't prove..."
"Prove what?"
He looked at me like it was obvious.
"That you're worth letting out."
"I hate this cave."
The walls started shifting, and the narrow opening behind us simply vanished — swallowed by stones sliding over one another like interlocking teeth.
In the center of the chamber, four pillars rose violently from the ground, each one lit with a glowing rune. Judgment runes. Old, complex... unstable.
"Okay, genius," I said, looking at him, "do you have an actual plan? Or are we winging it with poetry and blind faith?"
"The runes need a gesture. An action. They respond to harmony. A dance of ideas."
"In plain words?"
"One of us has to activate three runes while the other holds the fourth — in the right timing, the right order."
I took a deep breath. The sound of stone grinding behind me made it clear the alternative was being crushed by an inquisitive ceiling.
We ran.
The runes were cycling colors — blue, green, red, gray. Brelgrik shouted the sequence between whispers and weird rhymes. I didn't get most of it, but I followed the rhythm like a drunk playing pool: more luck and desperation than skill.
He jumped onto the first pillar, tracing the rune with his filthy finger. It lit up. I activated the second. Ran for the third.
But the fourth required simultaneous contact — and distance.
"There's no time!" I shouted.
"Then trick time!"
I shoved a fragment of stone into place and kicked the mechanism. The rune lit up for a split second.
All four pulsed in unison.
The ground shook again.
But didn't collapse.
Instead, the runes went dark.And a crack opened in the wall ahead.
Behind it... light.
Faint. Distant. But unmistakably daylight.
"There it is," I whispered.
We took two steps in that direction.
That's when the sound changed.
Not stone. Not runes. Breathing.
Something moved on the other side of the opening. A heavy shadow. Slow.
Not like a hungry predator.
Like a guardian that had waited too long for someone to test.
I stopped. Brelgrik stopped. We both stared at the crack.
And between us and the light...something was waking up.