Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 957

Chapter 957: Chapter 957

After an hour, the glyph trail ended at a fallen column of stone, half-sunken near a small pool. The glyph was etched deeply at its base. By moonlight, it glowed. At its center was a spiral that shifted if you looked too long, like a door opening in memory.

Jude knelt and brushed water from the pool’s surface. He cupped his hand and drank. The water was cold, unnaturally so, but left his chest alight. "It speaks drowningly," he murmured.

Susan leaned in to inspect the etching. It wasn’t human. Not entirely. It wove into the stone unnatural shapes, roots, tendrils, the hint of a face hidden under bark patterns.

Grace plucked a petal and dropped it into the pool. It floated, shimmered, sank. A pulse rolled outward, rippling across the surface. The glyph glowed brighter.

Jude’s breath caught. He touched the pool’s edge again. This time, it responded, cold at first, then warm, then humming. He felt awareness beneath his palm, shifting.

He stood and looked at Grace and Susan. "It wakes."

They both nodded. Grace held his arm. "Now?"

Jude inhaled. "We continue."

They followed the glyph eastward again, deeper into the undergrowth. For two more hours, no watchers appeared, no beasts. Only the silent forest and glyph after glyph, each carved more elaborate, spiral crowned with tendrils, step patterns, branching roots, each one echoing previous discoveries.

Then they reached a clearing. At its heart stood a single tree growing through a stone arch. Its leaves silver against shadow. The glyph on its trunk was vast, covering half the bark visible. It pulsed gently.

Jude exhaled. "This is it."

He stepped close. The air changed. Each of them felt it. Sus, Susan’s breath caught. Grace’s hand trembled on Jude’s. They looked at the tree, the arch, the glyph.

Then Jude reached forward and touched the bark.

The truth unfurled.

In his mind, he saw the island as once whole, mountain, orchard, rooms built from stone. He saw the watchers not as mist but as caretakers, not gods but mantles passed down by those before. He saw humans arriving, others, not them, carrying fire, carving glyph, shaping memory. The watchers naming them. Welcoming them.

He saw the mountain erupt, people fleeing, watchers retreating. Memory fracturing. The watchers going dormant. The land forgetting itself. And then, new arrivals. One man. No women. A single seed planted. A man named Jude. The first dreamer. He held all those lives in him. All those possibilities. The watchers stirred again. The land exhaled.

Jude staggered and pressed against the tree. Grace caught him. "What did you see?"

He closed his eyes. "The beginning. And repeats. And resets. We’re not new. We’re echoes. Rays. Something broken to be healed."

Susan knelt and pressed her palm on the soil. "Then we have to heal it."

Grace nodded against him. "Not break it again."

Jude straightened and gestured upward. "This tree. The glyph. We need to honor it."

He stepped back and took a ribbon from his belt. He tied it around the trunk, over the glyph. Grace placed petals around the base; Susan added carved stones, bits of colored shell, a woven band of vine.

They didn’t speak. They honored.

A light breeze stirred, lifting ribbons, scattering petals. For a moment, clouds parted and sunlight broke through, lighting the tree and their circle in pure white. Then clouds closed again.

They left without descending further, returning along the glyph-lined trail in respectful silence. The watchers stayed near but unseen, spirits waiting for news.

At the well again, they found the orchid, a single blossom growing from the glyph’s rim. The petals were silver. It glowed faintly.

Jude plucked it and handed it to Grace. "This is ours now."

She studied it. "A promise."

He kissed her palm. "For the next run."

---

Jude unrolled the map months later, by the fire, and traced their steps from well to column to silver-tree. Each mark glowed faintly, memory sleeping, semi-remembering. They had built lines of safety, respect, offering. They had acknowledged the watchers. Honored the island’s remnant self. And they had uncovered an origin, one older than any man.

Twelve wives circled, including Jude cradling Grace’s hand and the bouquet of silver orchid blossoms. The watchers had grown, now visible as slender, smoke-threaded forms among the trees. Not hostile. Not worshipful. Present.

Jude began to chant, the old offering melody, this time layered with new words: names of men, of watchers, of beginnings, of resets. The wives joined and the air rang with shared resonance.

Petals flew. Glyphs glowed. Silver forms gathered silently. Roots shifted, leaves shivered. The watchers kneel before the silver-tree.

In that moment, Jude understood: the island wasn’t a cage. It was a seedbed. They were heirs. And the watchers were its guardians, not gods to be worshiped but caretakers aiding remembrance.

They knelt before the silver-tree, offering hands on bark and soil. And for once, not just naming watchers, but naming each other as part of the island’s memory.

"Remember us," Jude whispered into the wind.

And the watchers pulsed in answer.

---

Spring came earlier this year. Responses rippled through the orchard: flowers bloomed in ghosts of frost, watchers stood while blossoms opened, and Jude stood in wet soil tying new ribbons around saplings whose roots now reached deeper than before. The island was healing in patches, slowly mending the fractures time inflicted.

And each ribbon, each blossom, each chant, wove them closer into the watchers’ endless remembering.

Moonlight bathed the orchard last night, silvering every leaf and sending the mist dancing in ethereal waves. Jude woke before dawn, the cold damp pressing at his skin, drawing him out of bed and into the hush of early morning. None of the wives stirred behind him. He stepped barefoot across dew-laced grass to the old well, drawn once again to the glyph that had appeared on its stone rim. It glows faintly in the moonlight, an echo from the watchers’ ritual or something deeper. He pressed a palm against it, feeling a pulse not his own. The glyph pulsed back.