Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 826 - 828

Chapter 826: Chapter 828

"Is this a threat?" Darren asked, voice low.

Jude shook his head. "No. It’s a test."

He folded the letter and slid it into his coat. "We’re leaving."

They traveled light, avoiding main roads and sticking to back routes, weaving through ghost towns and forgotten villages that still bore the scars of collapse. The northern region wasn’t just cold, it was forbidden territory now. Cut off from the grids, unreachable by any of the corporate eyes or governmental leftovers that still tried to enforce order in broken zones. The rumors were worse than the truth. Tales of ancient machines buried in ice, of people disappearing without a trace, of voices in the wind that didn’t belong to the living.

They reached the northern edge of the Expanse four days later.

Here, the sun never quite rose above the haze. It hovered low on the horizon, casting everything in a permanent twilight. They found the coordinates etched into the back of the paper when held against a flame. It led them to a valley choked with mist, the ground hard with frost. There was no trail. No building. Just a field of stone with a single, impossible structure at its center.

It wasn’t built. It had grown.

Metal and earth fused together, spiraled like the trunk of a tree or the coil of a serpent. It stretched high above the valley floor, humming softly. Jude felt the hum in his bones long before they reached it. The same frequency. The same rhythm as before.

The shape didn’t look like anything man-made. It wasn’t symmetrical. It wasn’t beautiful. But it pulsed with intelligence, unseen but undeniable.

As they approached, the air around them grew warmer, a stark contrast to the frozen ground. Darren’s breath quickened. "You think someone lives in that thing?"

Jude didn’t answer. He stepped forward, crossing the threshold into the structure without hesitation. Inside, there were no rooms. No lights. No doors. Just tunnels of glistening alloy that shifted slightly when touched, like the walls were breathing.

They wandered for hours, or maybe minutes, time didn’t work right in there.

Then they found her.

She stood in the center of a chamber, barefoot, wrapped in a garment that shimmered like water. Her hair was silver, though her face was young. She looked at them not with surprise, but with recognition.

"I was wondering how long it would take you," she said.

Jude blinked. "Do I know you?"

"Not yet. But you’ve seen my work."

She raised a hand and the chamber flickered. Images spun around them, of the Helix system, of the being inside it, of its birth and containment. Of a war fought not with soldiers, but with consciousness. "You saw only the cage. But not what it held before it was imprisoned. Do you want to know where it came from?"

Jude didn’t hesitate. "Yes."

"It wasn’t made by us. Or anyone from this world. It was discovered. Inside a rock that fell from the sky long before we had cities. The ancients called it the Breath of the Void. It wasn’t alive in the way we understand. It didn’t eat, didn’t speak. It simply *was*. Thought without form. It latched onto the first minds that touched it. Drove them mad. But some learned to shape it, contain it."

"You’re saying it’s an alien?" Darren asked.

The woman smiled faintly. "Not alien. Pre-cosmic. A remnant from before time took shape. A parasite of reality. When the last civilization fell, it was buried. And forgotten. Until your kind dug too deep."

"Helix," Jude whispered.

She nodded. "The algorithm they built was too perfect. It mapped the contours of consciousness too precisely. It echoed the patterns the Breath recognized, and it awoke. You reactivated the signal. It almost got free."

"I stopped it."

"No," she said gently. "You delayed it."

Jude’s hands curled into fists. "Then what do we do now?"

She walked closer, placing a hand on his chest. "You carry part of it now. Don’t you feel it? At night? In your dreams? It’s inside you. Not fully, not yet. But the contact changed you."

He looked away, ashamed. "Then kill me."

She laughed, not cruelly, but with warmth. "Death won’t stop it. It will simply find another host. What you need isn’t death. It’s control."

Jude stepped back. "You want me to *control* that thing?"

"You must. Or you’ll be the one to unleash it."

Darren spoke then, his voice tight. "This is insane. How can we trust her? Who even *are* you?"

The woman turned to him. "I was once like you. Human. A researcher in the southern archives before the fall. I touched the code. And I survived. The others didn’t. I found this place, and it kept me alive. Or maybe it changed me, I no longer know."

"Then why help us?" Jude asked.

"Because I see the pattern forming again. And you’re at its center. If we don’t intervene now, the cage will break. And the world will not survive what follows."

Jude stared at her. The weight of her words settled into his spine like ice.

"Teach me," he said.

She nodded. "Follow."

They spent weeks inside the structure. Time bent differently there, like pages being flipped out of order. The woman, whose name was never given, trained Jude in a way of thinking not rooted in logic or emotion, but in pattern. Thought became a weapon, a shield. He learned to see the lines between things, the invisible pulses that held reality together.

Darren remained skeptical, never straying far but always watching. He didn’t understand what Jude was doing, but he knew he had no choice but to protect him while he did it.

Then, one night, the hum stopped.

The woman woke them both. "It’s begun."

"What?" Jude asked.

"Something has breached the cage. Not entirely, but enough. The Breath is reaching again."

Jude stood. "Then we stop it."

"No," she said. "*You* stop it."

She placed something in his hand. A shard of glass, humming with energy. "This is part of the original seal. Use it."

Darren grabbed his coat. "Where are we going?"

Jude looked at the map she handed him. It was drawn in blood.

"Back to Leonork," he said.

The city they thought they left behind.

Where the cage had always waited.