Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 950

Chapter 950: Chapter 950

By sunset, they were packed. Supplies, weapons, dried food, the book itself wrapped in a protective cloth. Jude carried the ribbon, and Ashra carried a shard of bone carved with glyphs that pulsed faintly whenever they neared hidden passageways. The forest seemed to resist at first, paths overgrown, trails shifting, but the ground itself remembered Jude now. Remembered all of them. The forest bent. The path cleared.

Two days of travel passed in strange silence. The beasts avoided them. The birds mimicked human laughter, soft and eerie in the twilight. Once, Lucy pointed out a tree that had grown in the shape of a kneeling woman. Once, Jude saw his own face reflected in a pool where there was no water.

On the third morning, they found the entrance.

It was a circle of stone surrounded by fallen columns, half-submerged in moss and shadow. No doors. Just a symbol, the same spiral as on the ribbon, carved deep into the ground.

Ashra placed the bone shard in the center.

The earth shifted.

Stone uncoiled like a serpent, revealing a staircase of light leading down into the core.

No one spoke. They descended.

The Vault was not what they expected.

No corridors. No traps. Just a single chamber, circular and massive, the ceiling a dome of glass showing a sky filled with stars they had never seen before. In the center stood a pedestal.

On it: a mirror.

Not glass. Water. Rippling.

Jude stepped forward. His reflection stared back.

Only it wasn’t him.

It was her.

The Dreamer.

The faceless girl, now with features, soft, unfamiliar, shifting every second.

She spoke in a voice layered with hundreds.

"You remembered."

Jude reached toward the surface.

She met his hand with hers from the other side.

"You are not the last," she said.

The mirror broke.

Light spilled into the chamber, not blinding, but awakening . Memory surged through all of them, flashes of other lives, other choices, pain and joy and everything in between. They remembered the crash. The true cause. The gods that tried to erase them. The ones who survived underground. The ones who dreamed of another chance.

And then, silence.

The chamber faded.

They were standing in the orchard again.

As if no time had passed.

Only the ribbon in Jude’s hand remained.

It now bore two words.

Begin again.

They looked at each other, no one speaking for a long while.

Then Jude smiled.

And they walked back to the house.

The air was different when they returned, warmer, but not in temperature. The house seemed to breathe again, its walls humming gently like a heart slowly waking from a deep sleep. Jude stepped through the doorway first, eyes scanning for any subtle shift, any evidence that what they’d seen in the Vault had left a mark on the physical world. But everything appeared untouched. The floor still creaked beneath their weight, the fireplace flickered softly, and the smell of smoke and fruit lingered like it always had.

Yet they all knew something had changed.

They were changed.

The memory still pulsed behind their eyes, vivid and chaotic, fragments of lives once lived, languages once spoken, battles once fought in other bodies, other times. Not reincarnation. Not illusion. These memories felt shared, collective. Pieces of a forgotten truth filtered through a thousand souls and delivered now to them. Jude felt the weight of them most keenly. The Dreamer’s voice still echoed in his skull, like a lullaby woven from thunder.

No one asked what they were supposed to do next.

Instead, they quietly returned to the routines that kept them grounded. Lucy lit the lamps, one by one, their flames casting soft gold onto the wooden walls. Grace and Natalie brought in the baskets of fruit they’d left behind in their hurry. Zoey sharpened her knives in the corner, though her hands trembled ever so slightly. Susan checked the perimeter in silence, bow slung over her shoulder like always.

And Jude stood at the hearth, ribbon still clutched in his hand, watching the fire burn.

Scarlet was the first to speak, breaking the stillness.

"You think we actually did it? Changed something?"

Jude turned to her, then nodded. "We remembered. That was the test."

"Then what?" Layla asked from the kitchen. "We passed, and now what? We just go back to picking berries and surviving monsters like none of that ever happened?"

"No," Rose said, stepping into the room, her voice low. "We’re different now. The island knows it. We’re not just living here anymore. We’re part of it."

"We always were," Emma murmured. "We just didn’t know."

Jude looked around at them, one by one, feeling something unspoken settle over them all. A bond forged not by survival, or love, or lust, but by revelation. They were the keepers now. The vault’s memory lived in them.

They ate together that night. Quiet, slow, deliberate. No one rushed. Every movement seemed ritualistic. Serena passed around a plate of roasted root vegetables while Sophie poured tea from the pot Grace had steeped with dried mint and wildflower leaves. They weren’t discussing plans, not yet. They were letting the silence carry them, letting their thoughts steep the way the tea had.

After dinner, Jude stepped outside alone. The sky was clear. Stars blinked down at him like old friends, and he wondered if they remembered him, too.

He didn’t notice Susan join him until she was standing at his side, arms crossed against the breeze.

"You okay?" she asked, softly.

Jude hesitated, then said, "I don’t know."

She didn’t push. Just stood with him, staring at the sky. "I think we have time to figure it out. Whatever this is."

"You think that remnant will come back?" he asked.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe something worse will come instead."

"Or something better," he added.

Susan smirked. "You’re an optimist now?"

Jude chuckled. "Not really. Just... hopeful."

The next morning, things didn’t stay quiet for long.

They found the first anomaly just past the orchard, a tree with bark like polished metal and leaves made of glass.