Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 840 - 842

Chapter 840: Chapter 842

Where once there was sand, now there were ruins, columns, archways, towers broken and bent. Jude realized they were standing at the edge of something massive. The Vault of Echoes.

A staircase carved from black stone led downward into the earth. No guards, no barriers. Just a single inscription above the arch: "Speak the truth, or be undone." Nyra touched the stone. "Feels warm." "It’s watching," Jude said. "Like the temple." "Then let’s not keep it waiting."

They descended in silence. The further they went, the colder it became. Not the chill of weather, but of memory. Jude felt it first, images flickering in the corner of his mind. A boy standing in fire. A woman screaming. A hand reaching, then falling away. Nyra gasped beside him. "They’re showing me things," she said. "Things I forgot." "They want us broken," Jude replied. "We hold on."

The final step led to a chamber unlike any they’d seen. It was circular, vast, and at its center floated a sword. Or perhaps not a sword, but the idea of one, shifting metal and light, bound by invisible threads. It hummed with sorrow. Jude stepped forward, drawn without understanding. The sword pulsed. "You seek the Sorrowsteel," a voice said, female this time, soft and sharp. "But first, we must see."

The chamber darkened. Jude was alone. The ground beneath him changed. Suddenly, he stood on the battlefield at Leonork, the sky split with fire, bodies everywhere. He saw himself dragging a man through ash, saw his hands stained with blood, saw Nyra weeping beside a broken child. Then another shift, his younger self, turning his back on the orphans he couldn’t save. Again and again, the blade showed him. All the times he failed. All the moments he chose survival over kindness. Then the voice again. "And if given the choice again, would you change it?" Jude hesitated. "No." "Even knowing what came of it?" "No," he said louder. "I carry it all. But I’m still here. And I won’t let this world fall again."

The chamber brightened. The sword moved. Slowly, it drifted toward him. Jude reached out. It burned. Not with heat, but with memory. Every scar on his soul awakened. But he didn’t let go. The sword responded, its hum rising, its form sharpening. Then, silence.

When he opened his eyes, Nyra stood beside him, sword in hand. "I saw it too," she said. "Everything. But we still walked forward." Jude nodded. The walls around them shifted. The Vault opened a path, and beyond it lay the remnants of a forgotten city, overrun with vines and whispering trees. The Hollowed would come. The Table would burn what remained. But Jude now carried the Sorrow Steel, and with it, the right to fight for what would come next. They stepped into the light. There was no turning back.

The forest beyond the Vault was nothing like the Withered Sea or the cracked cities Jude and Nyra had wandered before. It was alive in the way that made you wonder whether it remembered a time before men and their wars. The air smelled of moss and electricity, and the trees were so tall their tops disappeared into mist. But the deeper they went, the more wrong everything felt. The trees grew too still. The birds stopped singing. And beneath the roots, something pulsed. It wasn’t quite sound, nor light, but a pressure in the bones that made Jude reach for the Sorrowsteel more than once. Nyra noticed it too. Her steps grew cautious, hand on her own blade, eyes flicking at every rustle of leaves.

They found the first body two days in. A scout, judging by the leather armor and burnt communication charm on his chest. His eyes were open. Mouth too. But there was no wound. Just an expression of deep, terrible fear. Jude knelt, placing two fingers on the man’s forehead. Cold. Long gone. "No sign of attack," Nyra murmured. "Something scared him to death?" "Or took something from him." Jude stood. "Whatever it is, it’s watching."

They pushed forward, avoiding game trails and keeping to thick underbrush. By the third night, the forest began to whisper. Not in words, not quite, but in echoes of voices that didn’t belong to them. Jude would hear Mira’s laughter in the wind. Nyra once jolted awake, claiming she’d heard her brother’s voice singing an old lullaby. "They never came this far west," she said after a long silence. "He never knew this place. But I heard him, Jude. I swear I did." Jude had no answers. Only the growing weight in his chest, the sense that they were walking through a wound in the world.

By dawn of the fifth day, they reached the ruins of a citadel. Vines had torn through stone, and roots split metal like paper. But the structure stood, bent, wounded, but intact. A sigil burned faintly above the rusted gate: a crescent moon and a drop of blood. Nyra exhaled sharply. "This was a Moon House," she whispered. "One of the old ones." "Thought they were all destroyed." "They were. Or so we thought."

They moved carefully through the wreckage. Inside, murals of silver and black depicted long-forgotten rites, figures cloaked in shadow standing around pools of water that glowed like starlight. The silence inside the citadel was unbearable. It felt like being trapped inside a held breath. In the central chamber, they found the pool. It was dry, cracked with time, but the walls around it pulsed with symbols that lit faintly as they approached. "Feels like we’re not supposed to be here," Nyra muttered. "Or maybe exactly here," Jude replied.

A whisper snaked through the air, clear this time. "Sorrowsteel." Both froze. Jude stepped in front of Nyra, his blade already half-drawn. "Show yourself." A figure emerged from the shadows near the far archway. She was tall, cloaked in something that shimmered between silk and smoke. Her eyes were the color of dawn, soft gold, but there was nothing gentle in them.