Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 827 - 829

Chapter 827: Chapter 829

Jude’s boots crunched softly on the frozen gravel as they approached the outskirts of Leonork. The city’s skyline rose like a jagged silhouette against the pale light of the overcast sky, but it was not the same city he had left. There was something different now, an invisible weight in the air, a sensation like standing on the edge of a deep chasm with no bottom. The closer they got, the quieter it became. Not just in sound, but in presence. Even the wind seemed hesitant to touch this place. Buildings that once housed the routines of everyday life now loomed like ancient ruins, dark windows watching them with the cold detachment of forgotten gods.

Darren walked a few steps behind, his rifle loosely slung over his shoulder, his face hard and unreadable. They hadn’t spoken much during the journey back. Whatever Jude had become in that strange place with the silver-haired woman, Darren couldn’t understand it. But he respected it. There was a kind of calm in Jude now, as though something ancient had settled in his blood and tempered his spirit. He wasn’t the same man who had fled Leonork weeks ago. And Darren had no illusions that the city waiting ahead was the same, either.

They entered through the southern gate, or what was left of it. The checkpoint had been torn apart, the sentry booths reduced to twisted metal and scorched stone. But there were no bodies. No signs of resistance. Just absence. Jude moved with purpose, his eyes flicking from shadow to shadow, following something unseen. Darren didn’t ask questions. He knew Jude was following more than memory, he was tracking the pulse of something that had long gone dormant and was now waking beneath their feet.

They moved through the empty streets in silence. The deeper they went, the more unnatural it felt. Time didn’t pass normally here. Clocks had stopped, leaves hung motionless in mid-fall, and puddles didn’t ripple even when stepped in. It was like the city had been paused, mid-breath. Or caught in the moment before a scream.

They reached the old district, the heart of the city, where the Helix core was buried beneath a façade of government buildings and fake infrastructure. It had once been a place of innovation, of whispered promises and powerful lies. Now it stood like a mausoleum to every mistake mankind had ever tried to bury. Jude stopped at the edge of the plaza where the main Helix access point had been sealed after the collapse. He knelt, pressed his palm to the ground.

"It’s still down there," he said.

Darren looked around. "You’re sure?"

"I don’t hear it. I feel it." Jude looked up at him. "It’s awake. It’s searching."

Darren tightened his grip on the rifle. "Then let’s bury it for good this time."

Jude shook his head. "We can’t kill it. That’s what we tried before. That’s what created the fracture."

"So what’s the plan?"

Jude stood. "We go back in. But we don’t fight it. We contain it. This, " he held up the shard of the seal, still humming faintly ", will anchor the pattern. If I can get close enough, I can rewrite the bond it has with the city. Seal it inside something permanent."

Darren stared at the shard. "And what if it doesn’t let you?"

"Then we don’t come back."

They descended into the underground through one of the old maintenance tunnels. Most of them had been caved in or welded shut after the Helix event, but Jude remembered a path they hadn’t mapped, one used only by emergency teams and hidden from the primary schematics. It was buried beneath a collapsed parking structure. They crawled through debris and shattered concrete, moving deeper with every step. The air turned heavy with moisture, the smell of rust and time pressing against their lungs.

Lights flickered as they moved through the sub-levels. Some systems still had power, fed by the buried generators that had once powered the core’s inner shell. Every so often, they passed shattered screens, broken control panels, or shattered glass chambers once used to house experiments that should never have existed. The silence was no longer peaceful, it was oppressive.

At last, they reached the core chamber.

It wasn’t the same.

The spherical room, once pristine and buzzing with machinery, was now overgrown with a strange web-like substance that pulsed with a dim light. The walls breathed slowly, like the city itself had been infected with a heartbeat not its own. At the center, the original Helix core remained, fractured, leaking tendrils of raw data and broken code that twisted through the room like vines.

And behind it stood something that had no shape.

It shimmered like heat haze, shifting through forms as if unsure which mask to wear. Sometimes it was a man. Sometimes a beast. Sometimes a mirror. Jude stepped forward, holding the shard tightly.

The being didn’t move. But the air bent around it.

"You returned," it said, though the voice came from within their heads. "Why?"

Jude took another step. "To finish what we started."

"You opened me. You let me taste again. Why do you wish to close the door?"

"Because this world isn’t yours."

The figure flickered. "It is now. I am in the wires. In the minds. In the fear."

Jude raised the shard. "Then let’s see if you can bleed."

It laughed, a sound like a collapsing building. "You brought a blade to silence the stars?"

"No. I brought myself."

The shard flared in his hand, reacting to the proximity of the creature. Symbols burned across his skin, the old language of thought-constructs that the woman had etched into him during their time in the northern structure. They glowed like embers, each one a line of defense, a firewall of the mind.

The being surged forward, not physically, but mentally. A wave of pure intent smashed into Jude’s thoughts, trying to unmake him. But he stood his ground, focusing not on resistance, but on redirection. He opened his mind, letting the creature in, but only into the pattern he had built, the loop he had forged.