Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 952

Chapter 952: Chapter 952

He heard fragments, melodies, colors with names that didn’t exist. They dreamed of futures, of other worlds, of a second Vault waiting in the sky. And beyond that, something else. Something beautiful.

Jude closed his eyes.

And whispered, "We’re ready."

Jude opened his eyes before dawn. The world outside was silent, the kind of silence that didn’t just lack noise, it seemed to actively hold its breath. He sat up slowly, careful not to disturb the sleeping bodies around him. Susan’s fingers were still looped loosely around his wrist, and he gently slid out from beneath her touch. A few of the others stirred but didn’t wake. The warmth of their shared sleep clung to his skin as he slipped out into the cool morning.

The island greeted him with a kind of solemn patience. Mist clung low to the ground, curling around his ankles like something alive. He walked toward the orchard, needing space to think, to breathe, to make sense of the weight pressing in behind his eyes. Since the Vault, time had lost its rhythm. The sun still rose and set, but everything in between felt stretched thin and warped, like they were walking through water instead of air.

The metallic tree was still there, standing impossibly still among its organic cousins. Its glass leaves tinkled in the windless air. Jude touched the trunk again and felt a flicker, some recognition, some presence, but it was faint today. Distant. He wasn’t sure if that meant it was weakening or preparing for something else.

Behind him, quiet footsteps. He turned to find Stella approaching, her eyes calm, her presence different than before. She hadn’t spoken much since her incident in the clearing, but when she did, it was with unsettling clarity.

"Something’s shifting again," she said, voice soft.

"You feel it?"

"We all do. Even if we’re not saying it."

Jude nodded, looking past her toward the house, then the mountain, then the sea. "Something’s waiting."

Stella didn’t answer, just reached out and took his hand. Her skin was cooler than normal. Not cold, just... stilled.

Later, when the others woke, the air had turned heavy. Grace was the first to say it aloud.

"There’s a hum," she muttered, pressing fingers to her temples. "Like a pressure. Like a string pulled too tight."

No one disagreed. Zoey paced the main room, unable to sit still. Natalie was chewing the inside of her cheek, a habit she hadn’t had in years. Rose, Serena, and Emma stood by the window, scanning the jungle like they expected something to burst from the trees. It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was anticipation, but threaded with dread.

Jude stood before the fireplace, arms crossed. "We need to understand what’s happening. If something’s coming, we can’t wait for it to reach our doorstep."

Scarlet stepped forward. "You’re thinking of the mountain."

He nodded. "We’ve avoided it. There’s always been something unnatural there. The monsters don’t cross that line. We never questioned it too deeply. But what if that’s where the answers are?"

Susan looked up sharply. "Or the things we don’t want to find."

"It’s both," said Lucy. "It’s always both."

For a while, no one spoke. Then, quietly, Sophie said, "We’re not the same people we were when we washed up here. We’re stronger. Together."

"And we’re not going in blind," added Layla. "We go prepared. For anything."

Jude met their eyes, one by one, then nodded. "We leave tonight."

The hours that followed were spent in tense, methodical preparation. The house buzzed with movement, quiet, precise, purposeful. Serena and Grace packed supplies: dried fruit, firestarters, bandages. Zoey and Susan checked the weapons, sharpening blades and reinforcing the spear tips. Natalie and Rose sewed charms into the inside of their clothes, woven cords of hair and thread, little tokens they’d made without thinking, things that had come from dreams and instinct.

Emma scrawled symbols from the Vault into small sheets of bark, pressing each one to her chest before handing them to the others.

Lucy, unusually solemn, lit candles at every threshold of the house, whispering something under her breath as she did.

When the sun began to dip, the sky was a pale bronze, cloudless and wide. The twelve women stood outside the house beside Jude, each of them wrapped in shadow and memory, armed with the kind of courage that only came from living through too many impossible things and surviving all of them.

They moved silently through the jungle, their path lit by the flickering blue glow of the anomalies still pulsing across the terrain. The closer they drew to the mountain, the more the island seemed to resist. Vines slithered across paths that hadn’t been blocked before. The air thickened. Branches snapped behind them when nothing was there. The sounds of nocturnal creatures faded to nothing.

When they reached the border, the line where monsters had always stopped, the world seemed to tilt.

There was no visible line, but they all felt it. A drop in pressure. A sharp coldness in the back of the throat. The trees beyond looked the same, but wrong, taller, darker, somehow older. No birds. No wind.

Jude stepped forward first, passing through the invisible veil. For a heartbeat, everything inside him pulled tight, like something inside his chest tried to resist. Then it passed, and he was through.

One by one, the others followed. The moment Scarlet crossed, the silence shattered.

A sound, not a roar, not a scream, but a low, vibrating tone, filled the space around them. It didn’t come from any direction. It just was, as if the world itself was humming a warning.

They didn’t turn back.

The climb began immediately. The forest here was dense, almost claustrophobic. The trees pressed in close, their bark slick with some kind of resin that shimmered faintly in the dark. The ground was uneven and soft, as if it had been recently turned.

Halfway up the mountain, they found the first remnants.

Bones.

Thousands of them.