Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 189: Refuse the End

"Still nothing?" he said, tone flat. "You know, there comes a point where this stops being amusing. And just becomes... pointless."

—-

Dylan didn’t answer. Just the clinking of chains, a nervous twitch in his left leg. He no longer had the strength to lift his head, let alone challenge the man with a stare. His Stigma pulsed faintly, like a sick heart.

The executioner sighed. He leaned in, grabbed Dylan’s jaw, and lifted it with a leather-gloved finger. The Awakened’s eyelids fluttered slowly, as if even that had become an ordeal.

"Look at me."

But there was no response.

He lightly tapped his cheek. It was no slap. Not even a blow—just a cold summons to consciousness.

"You’re going to die of spiritual exhaustion if you keep this up. That’s stupid, isn’t it? No grand finale. No spectacular escape. Just... drained."

He let go of the jaw, which dropped limply. Dylan tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. A spiritual nausea gripped him. An indescribable sensation, like his very being was tearing apart in slow motion, piece by piece.

The alchemical poison was infiltrating the hidden corners of his essence. Each heartbeat pulled him closer to a chasm deeper than death.

The loss of self.

The man slowly returned the empty Chrysalid case to his coat. He cast one final glance at Dylan, then turned toward the door.

"We’ll be back in a few hours. You’d better change your mind. Otherwise... we’ll start again. And believe me: that was just the test dose."

He left the room.

The lock clicked. Silence settled in—thick, muffled—like the whole world had been smothered under a sheet of bitterness.

And Dylan... remained.

Suspended, sweating, shivering, emptied.

He no longer had the strength to fight inwardly. Even thinking hurt. Every memory was a burden. Should he talk? Betray his employer? But the man had been so meticulous, so precise, he had only allowed Dylan to know the bare fragments needed for the mission—as if he’d anticipated this very outcome.

The fact that it wasn’t that Dylan didn’t want to speak, but that he had nothing to say,

ate away at him more than the poison itself.

That was the irony—raw, cruel: he wasn’t a hero, just a pawn unaware of the game. No key hidden under the tongue. No last-resort phrase. No explosive truth. Just a guy dangling, hollowed out from within, with silence as his only companion in misfortune.

He might’ve laughed, if he’d had the strength.

But even that demanded too much.

A laugh would’ve torn his lungs apart.

So he sighed—or at least, he thought he did. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

His consciousness drifted halfway between two shores.

The present, and some kind of inner limbo where body, mind, and pain faded without hierarchy.

There were no more priorities—only sensations crumbling like a sandcastle left too long to the tide.

Dylan closed his eyes.

Not to escape. He no longer had the energy to escape anything.

But because his eyelids were heavy, and the world, in that moment, wasn’t worth the effort of keeping them open.

An instant—or an eternity—later, he felt something slide across his collarbone.

Like a shiver. Neither cold nor warm. It was liquid, but not like sweat. More like a thick, viscous trail.

Blood? But not the usual red. It was a dirty black, oily, like soot mixed with tar. A strange sensation accompanied it: a deep, dull pressure rising from his Stigma. Not a new pain, but a buried struggle surfacing through his skin. As if the mark—that sickly heart beating out of sync inside his flesh—was finally rebelling.

It was rejection.

The CB29, that alchemical poison crafted to infiltrate and disrupt the spiritual essence, had met one last resistance. The Stigma, archaic and instinctive, had identified the intruder. Its deep mechanism—meant to maintain the host’s integrity, to preserve the purity of the vital flow it channeled or embodied—was now in motion. Not by Dylan’s will—he had none left—but by autonomous reflex, like an organ desperately trying to expel venom.

Another drop formed, then slowly slid from the center of the pulsing mark. That spiritual soot, black and nauseating, was the residue of internal battle. The Stigma was forcing its channels open, mobilizing the last untainted scraps of Dylan’s vital energy in a desperate attempt at filtration—at purge. It was trying to expel the impurity, to reject the foreign substance threatening to dissolve everything. Each drop of that dark liquid was a spasm of autarkic defense, a superhuman effort to preserve the core of being against dissolution.

But the effort was overwhelming. Each expulsion of black soot cost Dylan another fragment of what little remained. It was a battle within the battle, yet another agony. The poison devoured; the Stigma burned his final reserves to purge it—and Dylan, suspended between the two, was nothing more than a desolate battlefield. The irony was complete: his last defense was finishing him off even faster. The sensation of inner tearing grew, mixed with that dull, relentless pressure beneath his skin, with the foul ooze trickling down his collarbone.

He couldn’t even shiver. He just stayed there, eyes closed, feeling this tangible proof that something within him still refused to dissolve without a fight. But the battle was hopeless, and every drop of black soot was a tear of defeat, carving its way through dirt and sweat before falling, silently, to the cold floor.

The drop fell. It hit the ground with a muffled splat—but in Dylan’s mind, it was like the crack of a bone bent too far.

The Stigma kept pulsing.

In a chaotic rhythm, faster now. Like a tribal drumbeat struck by a dying man.

His body, too, was heating up. Not with comfort, but with a feverish rise of toxic fire. A soul-fever, almost incandescent, where the skin didn’t burn, but the inside twisted like linen soaked too long in bile.

Dylan didn’t move. He was past movement. But inside his chest, a silent rage stirred.

No thoughts. No words.

Just resistance.

As if something—him, or something inside him—refused the end.