Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 892 - 894

Chapter 892: Chapter 894

He stepped forward, toward the crater.

They followed.

At the edge of firelight, he paused and knew:

They had changed the island.

Now the island would change them.

And they would face whatever came, with memory, with love, as named and living selves.

Between ground that trembled and crater depths that glowed, they stepped into the breach.

The wind carried a strange freshness as they descended from the crater’s rim, each step damp with ash and embers that cooled underfoot. Jude led the way, shoulders squared, face lit by quiet triumph, a victory they’d claimed together. Lucy held his hand tightly; Grace walked beside Nefertari, whose eyes reflected an ancient sorrow freshly purged. Emma hovered close to Jude’s back, while the others followed in pairs, eyes alert and hearts pounding.

They reached the plateau again, where strange vents hissed toward the sky. Before, they had belonged to the island’s shell; now they felt like gates. Each breath they took was free yet weighty, as though they carried the memory of the barrier’s breaking in their lungs. The wind rustled through them, carrying traces of blue smoke, not the possession that had manipulated them, but something softer, curious. As though the island was breathing around them, alive and responsive.

They stopped at the fissure where the barrier had cracked. It snaked across the earth in thin silver veins that glowed faintly against the black rock. A low hum, the island’s pulse, pulsed through the ground. Judging by the formations, walls of rock had shifted, stones bent, as though the land had exhaled violently. Crystals lined parts of the rupture, opal veins shimmering in the rain-washed dawn. Light bent through them, sprinkling the slope with spectral light.

Jude swept his gaze across his wives. Each looked back with awe, relief, exhaustion. They’d come so far, and yet what lay ahead was uncertain, and immense. The trickle of cave-heat wind brushing against his neck felt like an invitation and a warning.

He cleared his throat. "We go on, or we return."

Shaking, Lucy met his eyes. "We go... forward."

Grace nodded. Emma’s hand tightened on his back. The others murmured agreement. They would press deeper into the island’s heart, past the shell, past the barrier, into the core.

The first steps downward were cautious. The slope underfoot shifted between jagged obsidian shards and smoother river-worn black stone. Each footfall echoed like fate. As they walked, they noticed the ground beneath the fissure: slick, burnished, yet throbbing. Energy hummed there, a line of living power within the island’s veins, from crater to coast. Roots of trees reached into it, ferns brushed it, fungus glowed faintly about it. This fracture was more than geology, it was architecture of consciousness, veinwork of collective memory.

They came to a collapsed stone formation, maybe part of a temple or altar long swallowed. Overgrown now, but carvings visible: figures with arching arms, crabs, spirals, half-moons. Patterns echoed the shapes carved by the wives earlier. Jude knelt, running a finger along a spiral groove. The stone vibrated beneath him. He heard it: whisper-soft laughter. It coaxed memory, youngest memories, running in rivers, holding a baby sister, a promise unspoken. He closed his eyes and breathed it in: nostalgia, power, dread.

He opened them and rose. "This place... it stored something." He brushed off a blade-shaped carving. "Token worlds. Names. Oaths. Memories. And in return, it held the island’s... shape."

Nefertari stepped close. "It’s a library." Her voice shook. "A living archive."

"So we gave the arch, the basin, and ourselves... as records," Grace added. "And the island... read us. Learned us."

Emma knelt. "So the barrier... it was their defense against forgetting. Against losing their dream of us."

Jude nodded. "But we’ve stepped into their archive. Now it knows we know. And we can read, can write. Might even write ourselves in as authors."

Zoey swallowed. "Do we dare? If we change pages, might we erase parts of ourselves? Or the island?"

Susan touched her. "But if we don’t, we stay ghosts in its dream. Let it write what we become."

They passed deeper into the collapse, footsteps soft. Overhead, a fractured tree canopy drifted stray light. The ground fell off sharply beyond, a ravine yawning. They crossed a narrow handhold, stone stepping-stones smoothed by ages. On the other side, the fissure wound upward again, toward terrain shifting, grasssprouts in gas cracks, vines drifting with faint luminescence.

Then the earth trembled. Not like an earthquake, but like a pulse, slow, deliberate. Wind rippled upward. The fissure glowed. Their breath caught. It felt like a heartbeat, no wind, no thunder, just an in-breath that moved through the island’s shell as though it were waking again.

Jude braced himself. "It’s answering."

Lucy pressed her forehead to his shoulder. Grace gripped his arm. The others clustered, torchlight wavering.

Then the path before them changed. A portion of rock lifted as though limb removed, then sank back, settling flat. Stone fragments crackled around the fissure. The ground felt younger, molded by something, like a door opening inside a muscled spine.

They crossed onto it. The creak of wet roots. Then wind: warm, scented with sulfur and spice. Not the stench of death, but of life in extremity, volcanoes, hot springs, creation warring with destruction.

Before them spread a chamber: vast, vaulted with lava columns that glowed red at core and gold at opposite edges. Steam hissed from stone spouts. Each pool shimmered. Colors shifted: violet, copper, amber. Hum echoed from every crevice, a choir of resonant chords.

They entered together, hearts pounding. Each footstep echoed like lyrics. The space dwarfed them. The island’s heart hollowed overhead.

In the center stood twelve pillars carved with wives’ faces, each crowned with their tokens: a braided hairlock, a carved rune, an infant’s cradlewood piece, a scarlet root, a painted shell, a child’s toy, a letter on burnt paper, a carved bead necklace, the symbol Lyla scratched, a flower pressed in clay, the last note from Nefertari’s cabin, and DNA of a child they’d been or lost with memory. All hung as reliquaries.