Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 1027

Chapter 1027: Chapter 1027

Along the path, the quiet felt heavy. No birds. No insect hum. Even the leaves seemed reluctant to rustle. Jude pressed a hand to the nearest glyph-stone, its surface oddly warm despite the damp. "They’re watching more than before," Serena whispered. "They’re showing us something."

"We’re being invited," Jude replied. "Or tested."

Natalie knelt and placed her palm against a spiraled rune. "No. This feels like warning. Like something’s about to open."

They found the southern boundary in disarray. Several ribbons had been cut clean through, not torn or frayed, but sliced by something too sharp for bone or claw. Jude crouched and examined the cuts. A shimmer traced the severed ends, faint but unmistakable. "Watcher light," he muttered.

Serena gathered some of the pieces, slipping them into her pouch. "Should we rebuild this perimeter?"

"No," Jude said. "We need to mark it but leave it open. If this is the entrance to whatever’s coming, we need to let it show itself fully."

They returned by dusk, wind rising with unnatural rhythm, stirring the trees in circular patterns. In the orchard, Emma had finished a full tableau across three bark slabs. She showed them to Jude in silence. The drawings depicted a curve, a spiral made of mist and watchers surrounding a void. At the center: a figure, unmistakably shaped like a child, reaching upward.

"That’s Laurel," Jude said.

Emma nodded. "Or someone like her. A watcher-child. I think... I think something is being born."

That night, Jude didn’t sleep. Neither did most of the wives. They lay close around the orchard’s center firepit, the children bundled between them, and the watchers circled at the borders like sentinels. At some point near midnight, the mist shifted inward. Jude rose, quietly, and moved past Grace and Layla, past Scarlet and Susan. As he stepped beyond the circle of warmth, the watchers parted for him, revealing a path that hadn’t been there before, a narrow trail lined with blue stones and overgrown roots, leading toward the mountain’s base.

He hesitated, then turned to see Lucy rising and joining him. "You weren’t going to go alone," she said, tightening her shawl.

"I wasn’t going to wake anyone," he replied.

"You didn’t have to."

They walked in silence. The watchers followed at a distance, not guiding but observing. The path twisted and narrowed, curving around knotted trees and bramble-thick ferns. Then, unexpectedly, it opened into a clearing Jude had never seen, a smooth basin of rock filled with glimmering silver water, utterly still despite the breeze.

A single watcher hovered above the water, its form stretched tall and narrow, arms tapering into curls of mist. Its shape pulsed softly, like breath or heartbeat. Jude stepped forward. "We’re listening," he said.

The water rippled, and an image rose, a memory or a vision. The orchard, not as it was, but as it had been months ago, before the watchers came close. Then the vision shifted: firelight, chanting, the watchers hovering above glyph-covered children. Another shift: the mountain’s peak, cracked open like a wound, light pouring out in threads of gold and blue. A final shift, Laurel, standing alone, her eyes closed, her arms lifted, watchers swirling around her like a storm.

Lucy gasped beside him. "She’s the key."

"No," Jude said. "She’s the door."

The watcher extended a limb of mist, and a single drop of water rose from the pool and floated toward Jude. He held out his hand. The drop landed on his palm and sank into his skin, warm and electric. A whisper filled his head, not words, but feeling: prepare the seed, open the circle, let the child speak.

Then the watcher dissolved, and the water went still.

They returned just before dawn. The others met them at the orchard gate, eyes wide, breath caught. "You were followed," Zoey said, pointing behind them. The watchers were still coming, hundreds of them now, their forms thin as air and moving silently in strands toward the orchard’s edge.

Jude held up a hand. "It’s all right. They’ve shown us what must come."

He gathered them at the center. Children half-asleep, wives wrapped in shawls, faces tense. "Something is coming," he began. "Something born of this island and of us. The watchers need us to prepare. Not with weapons or walls, but with welcome. Laurel is the key. And the door."

Layla looked stricken. "You want to bring her to them?"

"No," Jude said. "They’ll come to her. But only when we’re ready."

So the days that followed became something else entirely. The orchard transformed again. Jude and the wives built a circle of stone around the fig-glyph tree, weaving watchers’ thread through each gap. The children helped mark the ground with pale blue chalks and memory seeds. Laurel, though only a child, seemed to understand. She stopped asking questions and started humming the watchersongs in her sleep.

Every evening, the watchers grew bolder. They approached the tree. They sang without voice. Their presence pulled dreams from everyone, shared dreams, dreams of stars falling into soil and growing wings.

Susan and Rose worked tirelessly to prepare food that vibrated with ritual, sun-dried berries, salt-cured roots, honey water stirred by candlelight. Natalie and Serena stitched garments of watchersilk, long tunics dyed with river-indigo and pressed with pressed fern patterns. The wives no longer feared. They moved with purpose, with a unity that was born from something deeper than survival. Jude watched them all with awe.

On the seventh night, the circle was finished. Laurel stood at its center, hair braided with blue and silver threads, arms at her sides. She didn’t tremble. Jude stood with her, along with Grace, Emma, and Zoey, who each placed one hand on the child’s back.

The watchers gathered at the perimeter. Then they sang. The sound, if it could be called that, was a pulse through the air, a vibration of memory and breath. Trees leaned inward. The orchard dimmed, though no cloud passed over the sky.

Laurel lifted her hand.

And they came.

A single watcher stepped forward, then two, then five. They entered the circle, not with force, but with invitation. They moved around Laurel in slow spirals, weaving patterns in the air that shimmered with every heartbeat. Laurel looked up, eyes glowing faint blue.

"I see them," she whispered.

And for the first time, so did everyone else.

Not just shapes and mist, but faces, fleeting but clear. Children. Parents. Old gods. Lost friends. The watchers were not only watchers. They were echoes of all who had been left behind. The island remembered.

Jude fell to his knees, tears streaking his cheeks. Grace knelt beside him, gripping his hand.

The ritual lasted the whole night. At its end, the watchers pulled back. Laurel remained standing, glowing slightly, eyes closed. Then she spoke, her voice layered with something ancient. "The veil is lifting. The mountain calls. We are not alone."

The orchard exhaled.

And the world changed again.