After my short conversation with Yibo, we waited for the other three to wake up so I could tell them about my dream. Yibo said that I should prepare myself for the fact that they will not believe me. However, I had considered that before. I probably wouldn't believe it either just because someone told me.

When Cheng slowly woke up, and Haikuan and He Peng too, I gave them some time to wake up properly. A few minutes until they were a little more awake. After all, we had time. The expected attack of the jungle warriors would hardly happen in the next moment. I watched the three as to see when they were ready to receive.

And just when I thought, now is the time, now I can tell them. I saw Cheng staring into the corner of the room. He was frozen and I followed his gaze in confusion. What I saw then I could not believe at first. There was a huge shadow and this shadow was moving! And then, from one moment to the next, the shadow was gone!

Cheng cried out and kept pointing to the corner. "What was that? Who was that? Where did it disappear to?" He was so startled that he was shaking all over.

The next moment the door flew open and one of the guards yelled at us, "Why are you yelling? Shut your mouths!" Then he slammed the door shut again. I listened and waited for a certain sound. But it didn't come.

"He didn't lock it!" I said quietly to Yibo. Yibo nodded, indicating to me that he too had overheard.

"Maybe they'll let us go right back outside to the toilet. Or they know we have no chance to escape." Whispered Yibo. This time I nodded in agreement.

While Yibo turned his gaze back to Cheng, my attention fell again on the torch whose fire was flickering and dancing once more. I had noticed it once before last night, but I thought that I might have been mistaken. Because the torch did not flicker and dance after that. But now it did again. Even if only for a short moment.

I stood up and walked over to the torch. I put my index finger of my right hand in my mouth and moistened it with saliva. Then I held my finger at the same height as the torch and spun once in a circle. I definitely felt something like a draft. So I moved toward the place from where I thought I felt the draft.

On the wall where the draft was coming from, there had been a shelf with a back panel. It was empty and the shelves were screwed tight. That was all I could see. So I took the torch and held it directly in front of the shelf and then Yibo and the others also saw what had so caught my attention. The torch flickered and danced again. And this time much stronger.

Immediately, the others began to investigate why the torch was flickering. Yibo and Haikuan took a closer look at the shelf and Haikuan finally found something. Together with Yibo, he pushed the shelf aside. Behind it was a passageway! An open door, where a stone staircase led down. But we did not recognize where to, because there was complete darkness.

We would have liked to go down immediately and see what was there. However, we kept our hopes for a secret exit low. Because a lot of these very old farmhouses at that time still had these extra rooms down in their basements. Because they didn't have refrigerators. And down in a room with no light and deep in the ground, it was practically always cold. So they could store their sausage, vegetables and fruits for a while. BUT, there was this draft there and at least that meant that somewhere there the draft had to come from.

But since we heard footsteps in the hallway outside our cell and then conversations, Yibo and Haikuan quickly pushed the shelf back. Cheng and I distributed the hay again and finished just in time. For the next moment the door opened and we were again taken one by one upstairs and outside to empty our bladders.

Each of us was given a piece of bread-like pastry, a bottle of water and two fist-sized almost burnt pieces of meat on the way back. After that, they locked us up again. This time we heard the sound of the door being locked. I wondered where they even got the keys from? Were they perhaps still stuck in the door when they infiltrated the house?

And even though we were locked up again, we haven't tried to figure out where it goes there yet. This we held off for the evening. We thought it was safer to try it when the Demoids let us out for the last time and started to drink and get tired. So we had a leisurely breakfast and afterwards I told Cheng, Haikuan and He Peng about my dream.

He Peng didn't say anything, just nodded in between or shook his head. Haikuan said he wasn't sure if this was just a very real dream where my imagination had spun something like this together because of all the events. "After all, it was also a suggestion from you to ally us with the jungle warriors, and you were a little angry because Yibo was immediately against it. So maybe you were dreaming what you secretly wished for. A alliance with the strongest creatures we have ever known. And your imagination did the rest." Said Haikuan.

Cheng saw it similarly to Haikuan and said he didn't want to rely on some bloodsucking monsters that had literally slaughtered quite a few people only 24 hours before. And he also said, "It's a strange coincidence that you had such a dream last night, after Yibo was against your idea of allying with the jungle warriors and we were too. I think you were desperate for the help of such strong and seemingly unbeatable creatures as these, and got caught up in the idea that they would ally with us, and then dreamed about it."

After Cheng said that, we all fell silent for a moment. Then He Peng said, "But what if it wasn't just a dream? What if Zhan really had contact with this Queen Janala? Yes sure it sounds unbelievable. But hasn't everything already been unbelievable since one year? Creatures of various kinds have been crawling out of sinkholes, attacking people, taking our cities, and the survivors are hiding. King Bac appears before Zhan, considers him a friend and marks him as such. He gives Zhan to drink from his blood and makes a pact with him. We were saved by Bac and his warriors. They took care of us and made Yibo and me allies as well. Bac also made the pact with Yibo and me. They taught us so many things. Then we are attacked and no one knows how the gray hairless creatures and the Demoids even found our cave. We were all scattered, I was kidnapped but not killed. Zhan and Yibo fell into the hands of Raha, a Demoid, the king of the Demoids and he let Zhan, Yibo and Haikuan move freely around the camp and even leave on their own! The flying creatures are also still there. Whereby not all seem to be hostile. And now the jungle warriors too. What is still credible? Who of us would have ever thought that such a thing would happen? So why do we immediately believe that Zhan just had a very lively dream?"

After that, neither Haikuan nor Cheng could say anything against it, and Yibo took the floor. "I believe Zhan. I was awake watching him sleep. I SAW how his spirit fell through the ceiling and slipped back into his body. It couldn't have been just a dream. And I have a constant feeling that we are being watched here. What about that giant shadow earlier? Bac told us there are many kinds of creatures in their world. Are there perhaps also shadow creatures? And if so, which side are they on? Are they a danger to us? Could they be silent observers? All we know is, we know nothing except what we have seen with our own eyes. And I saw Zhan's spirit fall through the ceiling and into his body. So yes, I definitely believe him. And I think we should be ready for the attack in any case."

I thanked Yibo and He Peng for their assistance. I explained, "If you don't want to or can't believe me, that's fine. But at least consider that it happened exactly as I said. Let's stay alert and see if the attack comes. I believe Janala. I think she will come."

Cheng and Haikuan nodded and Haikuan said, "I'm sorry I immediately dismissed your experience as fantasy. You are right. What we have been experiencing for a year cannot be explained with logic. And yes, we will be ready. But I hope we will continue to look for a way out."

"We will." Yibo confirmed, pointing to the shelf that now hid the secret door again.

With nothing to do but talk and sleep, we did just that. Talked and slept. In between they let us out to go to the toilet. We even got lunch. Which was the same as breakfast and again we got the same for dinner. And so the day went by and after our last walk outside, the guards locked us back in and said, "Good night." After that we just had to wait for them to start drinking too.

When we were sure that no one would come to check on us, we got ready to reveal the secret of the secret door. We listened at the door for a moment, but heard nothing and pushed the shelf aside again. Yibo took the torch from its holder and went through the secret door first.

I walked behind Yibo. Behind me was Cheng and behind him was Haikuan. He Peng was at the very end. We were holding on to each other. Each had held onto the other's shoulder with one hand. Since Yibo had the torch and was holding it in front of him, he was practically the only one who could really see where we were going.

Since I didn't count the steps, I don't know how many steps the stairs had before we reached the end. If I had to guess, I would say it was only about 25 steps. Although the steps were wide and high. But it wasn't more than that.

At the bottom we found ourselves in a room that must have been used as a cold storage room at that time. Still there were two barrels filled with salt. They used this salt at that time to make meat last longer. There were a few butcher's rakes hanging from the ceiling on old rusty iron chains. There were two large shelves in which even still jars with pickled vegetables and meat were. Too bad that they were certainly no longer edible.

What we did not see was a window. But where did the draft come from? We really checked everything until Cheng heard a thudding sound under his feet on the floor. He stomped several times and suddenly something broke and he almost fell down into a hole if Haikuan hadn't been able to grab him in time.

So there was a hatch in the ground there and there was a strong breeze coming out of it. Even more so now that the wooden hatch was broken. There was no ladder or rope or anything else that we could have used to get down. We didn't know how far it went down there either. But Yibo had a great idea. He broke out a board from one of the shelves, which was not difficult, lit it with the torch, as dry as it was it burned quickly and then threw it down.

Burning, the wood landed on the floor after about two meters. We could see that the walls had been carved in stone as in a mine. And the air did not seem stale. It couldn't, considering the draft.

We would have liked to climb down there to see where this passage led. But unprepared, we didn't want to do that. Only one torch was not enough and we needed something to climb down. Sure it's only two meters, but you can still get hurt. And what if something happens that forces us to run back and climb up again? Who wants to be the last one down there and help the other one to climb up and then maybe not make it himself?

No, we knew we needed gear and flashlights. Now we just have to figure out how to get everything. I know Yibo and I had everything in our backpacks. But they were still up there with the Demoids. Time to start thinking about how to get our equipment back!