Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 889 - 891

Chapter 889: Chapter 891

He followed the narrow path toward the heart of the camp where the great fig tree stood. Its enormous trunk was slick with rain, its roots twisting across the ground like living serpents. He sat on one, pulled off his wet shirt, and tried to wipe water from his face, his skin was raw from grappling with the shape in the forest last night. His palms tingled from the broken memory: the shape of the figure, forest-born, shifting, its hand not attacking but reaching into his chest. That moment when he believed he might stop it with steel, but the blade shattered, the flesh parted, and nothing died. Instead, the thing had disappeared in a puff of dust and bark, leaving him bleeding, utterly alive, utterly afraid.

The sun was just reaching into the canopy when others emerged. Grace was the first. She sat beside him, no word at first, just the sound of her breathing in the humid air, in sync with the forest’s hush. He looked at her and saw dawn waking in her eyes. She touched his shoulder.

"It didn’t leave scars," she said softly.

He closed his eyes. "But it remembered me."

Lucy arrived next, barefoot, her robes dripping on the ground. She knelt in front of him, offering a cup carved from coconut shell, full of fresh water. He drank without looking. Water never tasted so clean and faultless.

"Breakfast soon," she said. Her voice was sleepy, distant. He realized just how long he’d been gone from camp. She reached out, caught his hand.

Amelia and Emma came together next, each holding small bundles of herbs, zingy roots for clearing the lungs, sweet-smelling flowers for calming their nerves. They sat on either side of him and held the packs ready to drop his pain into them.

Scarlett, Serena, Sophie, Stella, Zoey, Susan, Natalie, and Nefertari followed, bringing plates of roasted crab, boiled roots, dried fruit. All of them silent, respectful. Concern in their eyes. He understood what they were feeling: love and fear tangled like undergrowth. They’d all been touched by that presence, the blue smoke that didn’t just possess, but learned, mimicked, remembered; and the shape that bridged between the living trees and his own blood. They carried ragged wounds in their hearts, blackouts dripping like poison into their confidence. And every blade of grass they walked upon quivered with the island’s breath.

They sat around him on the humus. He accepted the crab legs, but didn’t eat. They watched him eat a piece of fruit, peel by peel, listening to the fat absence between the forest’s heartbeat. And then Nefertari spoke.

"More appeared last night."

He froze. Nefertari’s voice always carried weight, not just truth, but the quiet authority of someone who’d learned silence.

"They came in the dark. Not the shape. Not the smoke. Something else." She met his eyes. "Breathing where none should breathe."

He shivered. The island seemed to shift underfoot.

Grace leaned forward. "Where? When?"

Nefertari looked at her as though assessing how much fear she could bear. "Between the treehouses. I thought it was Zoey or Susan walking late. But it stopped at the arch, two steps from me. I felt breath on my back. When I turned, I saw... nothing. But the grasses bent toward me."

Zoey covered her mouth. Lucy stared into the trees, as if expecting to glimpse someone emerging. Jude’s jaw locked. A threat emerging into their camp, this was escalation. Not even the shape had dared show itself here; it had remained distant, drawing them inward.

Jude stood. "No one sleeps upstairs tonight," he said quietly. "We go back to the shelters, wood, earth, bark. Built for storms, but we forgot: shelter is for living things. Not just beds."

They all nodded. But when he turned to Nefertari: "Show me where you saw this."

They lingered only to break their meal into shared morsels, comforted by each other’s presence. Then, heart pounding, they followed Nefertari under the fig tree, along the winding muddy path down to where the ruined arch lay, two great stones with a tree bent across the top, a wound in the undergrowth where rain-drifted leaves collected. It was peaceful. Still dripping. But underneath, it felt alive, a faint hum like the dusk pulse of a heartbeat slowing.

Silence thickened among them. Nefertari stepped to the arch’s middle. "It stood two steps from me." Her breath caught. "Supposedly human." She smiled a sad smile. "Possessed." She touched the stone. Rain dripped between her fingers. "I tried to speak, but no sound came."

Scarlett swallowed. "What did it look like?"

"It looked like me," Nefertari said. "And then like you. It climbed the stones and dissolved."

Grace touched the stone. "It’s learning altars." She frowned. "Not bodies." Something in the dirt crackled. She jumped away, and water trickled down the stone. But the reflection in the rain caused her to flinch. "My face in the rock," she breathed.

They moved back, hearts faster, bodies held close. Back through the ferns, each footfall measured. The rain eased, but the forest trembled. They reached the camp circle. Jude took one pale breath and held it.

The arch had not yielded. The stones had not crumbled. But they had felt its approach. They had witnessed its descent into flesh, its slide out into nothing.

He waited. The others looked at him. Lucy, shaky, wiped mud from her hands. Emma twisted a cloth around her shoulders. Grace locked eyes with him.

"What now?" Emma whispered.

He closed his eyes. Thought of the furnace in his bones. The oath he’d taken when he first arrived: to take power, to become. To kill gods unborn with his own damnation. To strap a shell around his identity. When none answered his curse, he whispered back to God: I will end you all. Then he turned, found the path to immortality, to sacrifice, to children not yet born. To the island. To creation’s first friction, to new form.

He exhaled. "We fight." Nobody flinched.