Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 906 - 908

Chapter 906: Chapter 908

On the other side the forest grew wilder, darker. The path rotted underfoot. Light scattered. They pressed on. The island tested.

Night fell as they reached the tree-lined ridge where a crater’s edge dipped unseen. No moon. They lit torches and formed a circle. Flames flickered wildly in their hands. Jude held Lucy’s and Grace’s. Another wife held each torch, circled around. Eleven flames linked, no third party between them.

They turned inward.

Jude spoke softly: "Tonight we stay present. We speak each other’s stories. We awaken each other if memory falters. We watch until dawn."

Silence, then pledges came in low voices: I will name you. I will hold you. We remain.

They shared stories. Each wife told of their first arrival, their first love, their reasons to stay. They named fears: loss, despair, forgetting. They spoke of hope: memory, unity, freedom.

Around them the forest listened. Leaves rustled in soft applause. The fire breathed.

At midnight they felt a shift. Light in the darkness pulsed, blue glow among the trees. Then smoke drifted. Blue smoke. It shaped itself, moved deliberately. A shape came, a woman indistinct, bone pale, but voiceless. She wore Grace’s face, Lucy’s, Emma’s. They gasped. Then the shape smiled.

Jude spoke lightning: "Name!"

But the shape collapsed. Blue vapors moaned, scatter, vanish in a blink.

The women clutched each other; torches dropped. None fell.

Grace whispered, "They tried."

Jude held the circle tighter. "But we named. We remembered. We held."

They sat until dawn came slow and radiant. No more shapes returned. Just dawn, wet and patient.

In morning they emerged, weary but alive. New lines were scored in their faces, wounds healed by choosing themselves together.

Jude summoned them. "We stay. We do this again. We remain."

They nodded.

The island sighed around them.

They did not fear night anymore.

They feared forgetting.

And they would not.

Mist hung in the early morning air, a pale hush drifting through the trees. Jude stepped out onto the wooden platform of his treehouse, barefoot, silent, and breathed in cold sweetness. He stood with his staff planted ahead of him, waiting for the first signs of movement. To his left and right, distant silhouettes told of wives already awake: Grace tending to herbs, Lucy moving near the small shrine, Emma inspecting fish traps on the beach. They kept the old routines alive, cultivating normalcy even as the island bent around them.

Jude thought of the shapes last night, pale, hollow, shaped like his wives but absent. He thought of the ritual circle, the eleven flames they held until dawn broke scorching through the canopy. He thought of the ache of unity in his belly, and the brittle taste of fear in their shared breath when the shape dissolved.

Now the world felt like fresh paper, still waiting for fresh strokes.

He noticed Zoe and Serena approaching with water flasks. Grace joined them, and together they carried the pots and flasks toward the central area. Light caught on Lucy’s braid, on Emma’s boots, on Natalie’s shoulders. Jude counted their breath. Eleven steady counts, rooted as trees. They would need that power.

They reached the clearing, where the earth was damp from night and the air glowed silver-white. The altar stones waited, placed in precise arrangement days before. Around them, the forest pulsed faintly. The ritual circle had changed last night: blue smoke etched new patterns in the dirt, but nothing remained but waking whispers. After cooking, they would begin mapping.

Jude knelt beside the first altar stone: the iron stake where runes lay faint beneath weather. He touched the carving carefully, rewrote the lines, making them clear for the next visitor. Grace thought to write their names too, but Jude shook his head. They would speak names, not carve them. Names were alive. Stone was still.

They moved together, kneeling at each node, the dried-mushroom clearing, the broken fish traps, the opening with no plants, that last they’d named "Void Circle." At each they revived offerings: seeds, water, petals, carved bone, braided vine. At each they spoke their vows:

"We remain. We remember. We hold each other."

They sealed each with a soft beat, Lucy tapping her staff on the ground; Emma folding her arms across her chest; Grace pressing a hand to her lips. In each gesture, unity.

When they finished the altar tour, they gathered at the mound of soft earth where they buried the shattered scroll shards from weeks before, the ones that spoke of partnerships and forgotten pacts. They dug a small hole. Together they placed the fragments deep. Then they poured the last drops of morning water over them, sealing the memory beneath the soil. Each wife laid a hand over the earth in quiet prayer.

Then Jude stood.

"Today we go toward the mountain crest," he announced softly. "We mark every node along the path and offer our unity. We need one more statement to hold the boundary. After the ridge, we circle back. We’ll share words, ties, and names while light is strong."

No one flinched. They had heard their own names already, heard them spoken against memory’s prowling. They would go forward and affirm once more.

They packed supplies: waterskins, woven blankets, flint, small buckets for tokens, ribbons for marking. Jude carried wooden pegs carved with each wife’s emblem, vine, spiral, petal, fish, flame, dragonfly, seed, nest, crescent, root, leaf. Each emblem stood for a piece of their souls, offered to the island as signposts on the map of their resolve.

They set out in a line, ascending through ferns, vines tangling around ankles, moss damp underfoot. The path curved upward, shifting between carved stones and fresh roots. They climbed steadily, silence between them grown by each breath. The island resisted their steps, but allowed them forward.

At the midpoint, halfway to the ridge,Grace paused. She looked at the trees lining the slope. "I can’t stop thinking I saw that shape again." Her voice was low, trembling.

Lucy touched her arm. "We all did."