Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 1000 - 1K

Chapter 1000: Chapter 1K

"What do we do?" Grace asked.

He turned to them. "We walk forward. Together. Eyes open. Hands joined. No fear."

They did. Twelve wives, one man. A singular entity made of many hearts. The creatures did not touch them. They watched. Then bowed. Then dissolved.

And the mountain... opened.

A stairway formed in the stone, leading down, not up. Not to the peak, but into the world’s memory. Into the system’s heart.

Jude looked at each of them, one by one. His wives. His soul. His anchor.

"We don’t go down to fight," he said. "We go to finish it. To complete the ritual. To give it what it needs, truth."

"And what if it rejects it?" Susan asked.

"Then it dies," Jude replied. "Alone. Forgotten."

They descended.

The passage spiraled downward, and with every step, they shed memories, not lost them, but left them like offerings. First kisses. Fights. Laughter. The scent of each other’s hair. The taste of salt on skin after hunting in the rain. Tears. Nightmares. Hope. Dreams. Every step etched those things into the walls, feeding Neluvir not with fiction or worship, but truth . Humanity. The kind it could never fabricate.

When they reached the bottom, they stood in a vast chamber. At its center pulsed the heart, not a stone, not a machine, but a cocoon of light. Inside it, a figure formed. A copy of Jude. Perfect in shape. Empty in soul.

It looked at him.

He stepped forward.

"You are not me," Jude said.

The copy tilted its head.

"You are what I would have been without them."

Then he reached out, and behind him, each of his wives placed a hand on his back, shoulder, hip, arm. Not pulling. Not restraining. Just present .

The light consumed the copy. Then the cocoon. Then the heart.

And then,

Silence.

True silence.

A silence that didn’t press, or weigh, or watch.

Jude opened his eyes.

They stood at the volcano’s base once more. But the clearing was gone. The jungle had reclaimed the land. The monolith had vanished.

The sky was blue.

Birds sang.

Watchers peeked through trees, cautious but present.

And the mountain? It was just a mountain now.

No pulse. No hum.

Just stone.

Jude turned to them.

"It’s over," he said.

And for the first time in weeks, months, maybe years, he let out a breath that felt final.

They went home as one.

The morning after their return felt unreal. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in golden shards, soft and warm instead of oppressive. The air smelled clean, sharp with dew and the tang of flowers blooming in parts of the forest long thought dead. For the first time since the blue smoke arrived, there were no strange whispers, no lurking shadows, no twisted reflections waiting in the edges of the dream. Jude woke to the sound of birdsong and the gentle rise and fall of breath all around him. Twelve sleeping bodies draped over furs and cloth, tangled together like roots of the same tree, arms and legs entwined in familiarity and comfort. No one had slept apart last night. Even those who usually preferred their space, Emma, Sophie, Stella, had curled close around him and each other, needing the reassurance of contact. Jude lay still, letting the weight of them ground him. Rose’s hand rested lightly on his chest. Natalie’s fingers were tucked under his ribs. Grace’s hair spilled across his arm. It wasn’t just sleep they’d fallen into, it was a protective spell, something deeper than rest. They had come back from the brink, from the mouth of something vast and incomprehensible, and this stillness was the silence that follows a storm’s last howl.

He didn’t want to move, but his mind was already awake. There were questions still unanswered, cracks in the island’s mask that hadn’t yet closed. The volcano had gone quiet, but the island was not done revealing itself. Jude gently shifted out from beneath the tangle of limbs, careful not to wake anyone. He stood naked, barefoot, and walked outside into the early light. The world felt new. Not reborn, but relieved. The ground was firmer, the trees brighter. Even the insects hummed with less menace. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something remained unfinished.

He climbed the short ridge that overlooked the orchard, where the border of the forbidden zone had once shimmered with invisible threat. Now, it looked ordinary. No mist. No pulsing sound. No sense of being watched. But Jude knew better. The island was not just a place. It was alive. And every inch of it had once belonged to Neluvir. If the system was truly gone, what now lay beneath their feet?

Footsteps approached behind him. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Grace. Her presence was unmistakable, calm, weighty, observant. She stopped beside him, silent for a moment, then said, "You feel it too."

He nodded. "It’s not over. The mountain is quiet, but the island isn’t."

"Maybe it’s waking up for the first time. Without anything puppeteering it."

"Or something new is taking shape." Jude narrowed his eyes. "What we did... it wasn’t destruction. It was release. Neluvir’s core was desperate for meaning, but it wasn’t the only consciousness here."

Grace looked at him sharply. "You think something else was waiting?"

"I think something else is waiting."

She said nothing more, only stood beside him until the sun rose fully over the treetops, washing the orchard in gold. When they returned to the house, most of the others were awake, some already gathering breakfast, others stretching or washing at the spring. The mood was strange, peaceful, yes, but fragile. A quiet hung between them, not heavy with dread, but with the weight of something they were all too hesitant to name.

Susan was the first to break the spell. She approached Jude with a half-smile and a plate of fresh fruits and dried meat. "You looked like a god standing on that hill," she said softly. "Just needed a crown of fire and a thunderbolt."