Ch17. Dark corridors

The hidden passage was narrow, its stone walls cold and damp to the touch. Miles walked ahead with [Cheshire's Gleam] tight in his grip. The air was heavy, moist, smelling of rust and wet stone, pressing against his chest with each breath.

The only sound was the rhythmic shuffle of their footsteps, the echoes of their movement blending with the silence that surrounded them.

For the first few minutes, the winding path seemed like any other corridor, its path twisting in ways that seemed mundane. Miles kept his grip tight on scythe, the weight of it grounding him. Cheshire's absence of commentary was… odd, but he brushed it off. The Rabbit, too, was quiet, but he simply took it as he felt.

'The atmosphere is heavy, it's only natural that I'm not the only one nervous here.'

They turned a corner. Another corridor stretched out before them. The walls were lined with moss, faint droplets of water fell from the ceiling in rhythmic intervals. The path was tight, barely wide enough for them to walk side by side. But they didn't, of course. Although Miles was used to walking alone, he already got used to knowing that protecting the White Rabbit was part of que quest up until now.

A few minutes passed, then a dozen. Not long after, a dozen minutes became half an hour, then an hour, and the walls surrounding them still showed no signs of opening to an exit.

At some point, the familiar feeling of movement and time started to stretch thin. They continued walking. Around another corner, a stretch of smooth stone walls greeted them, the same as before. The hallway felt suffocatingly familiar.

"We've been here before…" Miles broke the silence in a whisper.

He turned his head slightly, glancing over his shoulder. The Rabbit was still there, his figure but a shadow against the dim light. Miles noticed the Rabbit's ears were drooping, his face unreadable. But he didn't speak. Not even a muttered remark or a sarcastic comment about the dampness of the air, the narrowness of the walls, or how late they were. Just silence.

Miles felt a slight pang of unease. It wasn't like the Rabbit to be so quiet for this long.

He shook it off and focused ahead. Another corner. Another stretch of corridor. Another slight curve in the path.

The walls were closing in. The passage was narrowing, just a little bit with each turn. Or maybe it wasn't.

Maybe it was just Miles' mind playing tricks on him. He was starting to feel it, the tightness of the space, the way his steps seemed to echo louder now, the way the shadows pressed down on him.

The feeling of being watched, followed, even, had become more pronounced.

He stopped abruptly, his foot hovering over the ground as a strange thought came to him. The way the path had been curving, the subtle changes in the angle of the walls, it didn't seem right.

He had a memory, faint but persistent. Hadn't they just turned left a few moments ago?

He glanced around. Nothing. No landmarks. No distinguishing features. Just the same stone walls, dripping with water, twisting endlessly ahead. He shook his head, pushing the thought down while raising his scythe above his head.

"What are you doing? We need to keep moving," The Rabbit muttered in a hurry.

Miles lowers the weapon in a compact arc, its blade scratching the wall with an unnerving scraping sound, marking the stone with a deep gash.

"Let's go." Miles began walking again, ignoring the Rabbit.

As they continued, the sense of deja vu grew stronger. Another corner. Another stretch of corridor that felt exactly the same as the last. And the one before that, only that the mark Miles had left was nowhere to be seen.

Miles paused again. His heart thudded in his chest, too loud in the stillness. He couldn't ignore it, the feeling of repetition, the unshakable sense that they were walking in circles. His breath hitched. He turned back, looking at the path behind them. It was…

No, it wasn't impossible. They had come this way before.

He crouched down, running his hand along the stone floor. It was cold, wet. There was nothing remarkable about it, so he decided to walk a bit more. After a few more turns, though, his pulse quickened.

The gash he left on the wall to his right was there, exactly how he had left it. Deep and pronounced enough for anyone to see.

"Rabbit," he muttered, his voice barely a whisper. "We're walking in circles."

Cheshire didn't answer, of course. The Rabbit had always been predictable, talking about time, about being late, always cryptic. But this silence felt different. The Rabbit felt… distant.

Miles' legs were shaky. The quiet weight of the corridors pressed down on him. They turned left, then right, then left again. But the path was the same. The walls were the same.

It was impossible. How could they be walking in circles for so long? No, it wasn't possible.

A thought occurred to Miles, and he opened the hidden quest map, but he regretted his decision as soon as he did it. The map popped up in front of him, hovering in the holographic window, shedding over the walls a ghostly black light that only he was able to see.

On the window, though, nothing but black. Not even dots representing him or the Rabbit.

Nothing.

Miles stepped back, his eyes darting around the corridor as a cold dread settled in his chest. What if they were trapped in that place?

He turned around, staring into the dark void of the path they had just come from. The darkness felt deeper this time. His fingers twitched around the scythe.

However, what really caught his attention was that…

"Rabbit?" Miles turned around, not seeing his furry companion. "Rabbit, where are you?"

The Rabbit was nowhere to be seen, and where it once stood, only silence and the echoes of the faint memory of the Rabbit's presence.

They weren't just walking in circles. They were lost, and now, the Rabbit was lost, too.

"Great! Argh!" Miles roared, swinging his scythe at the wall.

He could feel the weight of it now, the slow, creeping sense of inevitability. They had wandered too far. There was no way out.

No way back.

Miles turned slowly, his breath coming in shallow gasps, loneliness and claustrophobia overwhelming his heart, tightening around it like an iron hand. The walls felt closer now, the shadows darker. There was no escape. Not unless…

He looked ahead again, his mind racing to find a way out.

But there was none.

"We're lost..." He whispered.

The words felt like a cold truth settling into his bones. He had known it all along, but now, it was undeniable. The walls were shifting, the path was impossible to track, and Cheshire didn't seem to care, keeping his wits to himself, as though he had never spoken in Miles' mind.

Miles crouched, covering his face in his hands.

It was a maze.