Legs trembling and hands frozen, he drank some water because his thirsty throat convinced him to overcome his fears. He drank so much water that his belly became like a balloon.
'I drank water finally, but how am I going to survive?'
Jeevan then continued walking because his legs gave up on running, and he thought that running made no sense while preserving energy to survive was the main key here. He found himself walking against the movement of the land itself, and he was not sure of the direction as well.
The dull star sank into the endless ice lands and spikes. The night was even worse. His face became red, and his nose was bleeding. He could not tolerate the cold.
'Not to mention that my stomach is screaming at my face to give it some food.'
He walked with an uncanny feeling about the place. His eyes slowly faded, and his mind had already given up on the journey. Finally, his movements became random. He walked here and there, wobbling. His mouth spoke random words that made no sense.
His brain convinced him to settle down, but at the same time, it thought about the Keeper's pet. He again heard the distant howling.
His mind broke, and his will crumbled in the most terrible way. He fell down.
Deep in his mind, he wandered, searching for a reason to get up and find a way out of here.
'Grandpa... uh... my old man... umm... I'm dying here in this miserable place. Nothing but ice and snow. I'm all alone again. Ah... ah... my legs, they hurt. I thought I would find the reason behind your disappearance, but uh...'
He closed his eyes and became unconscious.
Time flew like a bird. Jeevan was covered with snow, causing his body to lose its temperature.
At some corner of his mind, he had a wish to escape, but his body gave up, so he remained calm and waited for his time. Each and every muscle of his body froze, his lips cracked with blood, and his eyelids were covered with snow.
'I can still feel the cold. I hate this place. If my legs gave up, then why is my body alone feeling this terrible cold?'
He wished for death. At the same time, he noticed his body felt like it was being dragged by something. He thought it was the Keeper's pet, and his mind showed him vivid thoughts of the pet tearing his flesh with its giant maw and claws, and him being nothing but food for a disgusting monster.
But he decided to look around. Struggling, he opened his sore eyes. He could not see anything due to the snow covering him.
But he made sure that he was not bleeding anywhere.
'I'm not bleeding, then why do I feel like I'm moving?'
A flash crossed his mind.
'The land! The land!'
Struggling to move, he tried to crawl.
'The land is moving according to the crow and the theories in the books. Planets like this exist.'
He tried to move, but it was no use. It was like he was in a coma, with only his eyes open to see and hear everything around him.
He was helpless, and the night passed like this.
He calculated the acceleration of the land and the change in the location of his body with respect to the day and night, all inside his head.
'OK, a little math now. If the night has passed away, then I have only one day left on this planet. If I die here, then I don't know where my soul goes or where my body goes. And the daytime lasts for nine hours compared with Earth.'
He decided to lift his body up and continue his journey.
Slowly, he got up, but one of his legs showed no movement.
'My left leg is numb, which means the nerves got damaged.'
Dragging his left leg, he slowly moved forward, but a couple of times he fell down and crawled.
'OK, Jeevan, you just need to stay alive for nine hours. After that, the soul returns to the body, and this hellish place... my God... I should survive.'
While crawling with great difficulty, he heard flapping sounds.
He turned his head back, thinking it was the crow, but it was a small flying thing with brown skin and wings like a bat. It only had a large eye and no mouth, claws, legs, or limbs.
It was an unusual creature.
Seeing this, Jeevan widened his eyes with disgust and started to move with his numb leg, terror written across his face.
'This place... I thought it was hell, but it's crazy. It's insane. I don't know how to describe it.'
He even vomited a couple of times thinking about the eye creature.
While moving forward, he turned his head to see whether the thing was following him.
To his surprise, it was simply flapping its wings and staying there.
Then he turned back and moved forward.
He encountered it again.
But it was not the previous one.
He turned left and moved a bit. Another came out of nowhere.
He turned right. Another one.
Now all four directions were filled with eyes.
He looked above.
Another one.
He gave up.
A cold sweat ran down the back of his neck. He wiped it away, trembling. The cold had made his body feel lifeless.
The eye creatures flapped their wings, moving in circles around him.
At that instant, he heard the howl ringing in his head.
He trembled and breathed heavily. A couple of shallow breaths escaped him, and his heartbeat grew louder and louder.
His eyes widened.
He saw something charging towards him through the sky, its claws extended like an eagle catching its prey.
Within a second, he was grasped by the claws piercing the flesh of his chest.
He vomited blood, and his eyes closed.
After a while, he came back to consciousness and opened his left eye.
He was in the air.
When he tried to move, the claws prevented him from doing so.
Struggling, he turned his head back.
He saw a giant maw.
It was the pet.
It had no eyes.
When he looked to the other side, he realized he was countless feet above the ground.
Struggling, he grabbed a piece of ice spike about the size of a knife and started tearing into its flesh.
With all his might, he pierced the skin of the pet again and again, screaming, his face covered with blue blood.
The pet let out a long howl and released Jeevan.
He was now hopeless and slowly dying, and at the same time, he was falling.
Later, he realized it was not the ice spike that caused it.
Instead, the pet itself had planned to drop him.
'The pet has no eyes, and the eye things have no mouths. Now everything is settled.'
Before finally closing his eyes, he saw himself falling into a giant hole filled with complete darkness.
The light slowly faded as he went deeper and deeper into the hole.
When he finally closed his eyes, all he saw was the dull star.