The sky shook with immense force, intense wind blew against Jean's face, the sand and rocks were also being affected, the ground also vibrated along with them, making his feet unstable.
Balancing himself, he looked up at the moon, all the jellyfish were dead, and were currently on a one-way trip to the ground. Looking at the knot responsable, he saw a shocking sight.
The knot was being undone, exactly like how you would untie a witch's knot.
The four ends slowly returned to normal brightness. Then, the knot finally became untied, leaving two strands of light on the sky. The two strands suddenly disintegrated into fine dots.
The dots were bright, and looked similar.
'Wait.'
Observing the sky again, he couldn't help but wonder where all the stars had gone. Was it because the knot was so bright?
Looking at it one more time, he finally realised. The witch's knot, was somehow but surely made up of every star in the night sky.
But how?
Jean asked himself 'how' an endless amount of times, however, none of them had answers. The stars started to gain speed and returned to their supposed starting positions.
Not after long, he could see the Milky Way again, which now terrified him.
Something or someone definitely helped him with the moon. But why? Was he going to fight that thing soon? Just the thought of it made Jean shrivel in fear.
Jean stood unmoving, gazing upon the nightsky, lost deep in his thoughts. Was it another alien organisation? Had his dream given him false information?
He started to stop dismissing the discrupansies between the two and finally began analysing them. In the end, he didn't get any conclusive answers, instead, got more questions.
Starting to become paranoid, he suddenly remembered that the members of the Base and the Wanderers were missing.
Looking down from the sky, he noticed the ground looked a lot more lively somehow. Scanning around the vicinity, he found that connecting the tubes and the stairs were a trail of blood.
This one seemed less complex than the one underground as it was only a circle but he still couldn't decipher what it meant.
The circle had 12 more trails connected with it. Going counterclockwise, the trails of blood became darker and darker. Abel was also urging him to go in a certain direction, which coincided with the trail of the darkest blood.
Wiping the sweat off of his forehead, he began his walk onwards. Suddenly, he began having thoughts he had never had before.
'What is there after we win?'
'Why struggle so hard for such an elusive future?'
'Why did this happen?'
He knew that he had to keep going, but why? and how? Was he just going to rely on pointless hope once again?
The ground was soft but not coarse, which made Jean uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. It felt as though it was moving under his feet, poking and mocking him.
But he ignored this, and the thoughts that he had earlier.
If he ran away from his problems, nothing should happen right?
He was so deep in thought that he didn't realise the sudden cut off in the blood trail. Only when he hit a rock that he paid attention.
Asking the maggot for answers, the thing just shrieked, so loudly that it shook the world, surprising Jean. After that, he dropped to the ground and seemed to have lost all life.
He wanted to pick it up but when he reached half-way down, he felt vibrations in the ground. Quickly stopping whatever he was doing, he jumped away.
And right at the next moment, the ground split apart, and a massive tentacle shot upwards. The tentacle looked like a pillar of gelatinous liquid, and shortly after its appearance, it went back into the ground.
'...'
Though he didn't know where the members are, nor know how to find them, he still could follow the hints in his dreams.
He was now quite unsure about trusting his dreams, after how vague and also how he almost got stuck inside it. But he had trust in Tyche and her abilities.
Halting his step, he seemed to have remembered something: Tyche. Without proper healing, she could be dead right now and he overlooked that fact.
Remembering about Tyche only raised the urgency of the whole ordeal and Jean couldn't help but frown. He had not seen nor dreamt of Tyche's capsule, so it was quite safe to assume she got taken with the others too.
However, that wasn't a good fact. He didn't know what even happened to the members. If they all died then well, maybe everything was pointless and he would join them too.
Approaching the hole left behind by the tentacle, he suddenly remembered about Ares. It came as a shock to him that he was dead, after all Ares was just Jean, but better.
Hearing that he was dead just dropped his confidence even further. But leaving those thoughts behind, he looked down into the hole. Though it was only about 3 meters in diameter, its depth was unknown.
He then clung to the walls of the hole and began climbing down. Each minute making the world darker and darker, until finally, it was total darkness.
The walls were now of an incredibly disgusting material that was both slippery and corroding, which made the descent that much harder.
His eyes suddenly changed, allowing more light to get inside, but light didn't reach down here, effectively making it useless. Jean then closed his eyes and tried to utilise echolocation.
The wet and repulsive sound of his grip on the walls, created sound vibrations that bounced off the other walls in the whole, serving as a alternative to his sight.
Descending a few hundred more meters down, he suddenly felt the presence of another hole within the hole, except it was horizontal.
Stopping his descent, he traversed over to the hole and tried to get in, his whole body was burning and crying for help, but he pushed onwards.