Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 998

Chapter 998: Chapter 998

Night fell again, and the fire was kept small. Jude laid in the circle with several of the wives nestled around him, bodies warm and breathing slow. Yet his mind refused rest. Sleep came in fits, broken by flashes of memory and something stranger, not memory, but visions that felt imposed. In one, he stood on a shore made of obsidian sand, watching a shadow crawl across the sea. In another, he walked a great library, its halls filled with statues weeping black tears. Then came the final dream, the one that jolted him upright in the darkness, heart pounding. A hand, made entirely of eyes, reached out from within him, inside his chest , trying to claw its way through skin and bone. When he gasped, the eyes blinked in unison. And whispered a name. "Neluvir." He shivered. He didn’t recognize the name. But it echoed like something real . The next morning brought rain. A soft drizzle at first, then sheets of water that turned the orchard paths into rivers and the longhouse roof into a drum. They stayed inside, tending to gear, telling quiet stories, rereading carved wooden tablets from their early years. Jude carved more symbols, these ones jagged and strange, based on patterns from his dreams. They hurt his head to look at, but he knew they were important. By evening, Sophie and Grace returned. Wet, tired, but alive. And with them came something else. A smell. A taste. Ash. "The jungle’s burning," Grace said, voice low. "But not naturally. Something’s clearing it." Sophie nodded. "Big swaths of land. Geometric patterns. Perfect circles. Whatever’s doing it isn’t an animal. And it’s moving toward the mountain." "We couldn’t get close," Grace added. "The heat was too intense. But we saw tracks. Not human. Not watcher. Like claws and hooves and something that slithered." "They’re carving runes too," Sophie whispered. "In the ground. Deep ones. They glow." Jude felt cold despite the fire. "Then it’s already begun." That night, he didn’t sleep. None of them did. They gathered by the fire, silent. Waiting. At midnight, the sky turned red. No thunder. No lightning. Just red. A dome of it, stretching over the mountain, pulsing like a heartbeat. And from the jungle came a sound no one had ever heard. A voice. Deep. Mechanical. And impossibly ancient. It didn’t speak in any known tongue, but Jude understood it. Not through words, but feeling. "The gate is formed. The bindings awaken. The world-mother stirs." The children began to cry. Jude stood. "It’s coming." "What is?" Rose asked. Jude’s voice shook. "Neluvir." That name again. It wasn’t a god. It wasn’t even alive in the way they understood it. It was a concept . A force. The embodiment of hunger through knowledge, death through memory. Something that devoured civilizations not by violence, but by convincing them to give themselves up. He turned to the wives. "The bindings we made, it wasn’t just protection. It was preparation. You’re not just keeping it out . You’re keeping me anchored. If I break, " "We’ll hold you," Grace said. "No matter what comes." "You’ll need more than words," he warned. "You’ll need to hurt me. If I turn. If I become the thing in the mountain." "Then we’ll tear it from you," Layla said softly. "Together." Jude closed his eyes. He could feel it now, like something breathing just beneath the skin of the world. Neluvir wasn’t coming from the mountain. It was the mountain. The island. The watchers. The sky. It had always been here. And now it wanted out . "Tomorrow," Jude said. "We go to the center. We go to the heart." "We’re not ready," Stella said. "We never will be," Jude replied. "But it’s waking whether we move or not. And if we wait, it’ll choose the time and place. We need to meet it." The wives exchanged glances. No one argued. They spent that night in each other’s arms, whispers, touches, kisses exchanged in silence, not passion. It was love in its most fragile form. A shield against what waited beneath the earth. And as the red sky throbbed above them and the heart in the mountain pulsed like a warning drum, Jude prepared. Tomorrow, the island would reveal its truth. And whatever he found in the heart’s chamber, whether memory, god, or monster, he would face it as more than just a man. He would face it as the bound soul of twelve others. The gate. The keeper. The challenge. And maybe, if they survived, the beginning of something neither divine nor cursed, but free .

The sky was gray by the time they started walking. Not storm-gray, but that thick, unnatural hue that clung like smoke, as if the island itself couldn’t decide whether to suffocate them or protect them. Jude led the way, every step heavy with anticipation, his boots pressing into wet earth still humming with that pulsing frequency. Behind him, the twelve wives followed in silence, each wrapped in travel leathers and armed with whatever they trusted most, swords, spears, bows, glyph-etched stones, vials of blood. Grace walked close to him, her eyes darting left and right through the mist. Sophie stayed at the rear, sharp-eyed and tense. Susan, Rose, and Layla murmured soft protection mantras under their breath, their voices weaving a barrier barely visible in the air like strands of shimmering hair.

They passed the orchard’s boundary and crossed into the outer jungle, which felt different now, not just because of the ash clinging to branches or the occasional scorch marks carving through vines. The trees were taller, or maybe thinner, stretched unnaturally like arms reaching toward the sky. There were no birds. No insects. No monsters. Nothing made a sound. Even the ever-present watchers had vanished from sight, though Jude still felt them, hiding, waiting, fearful. The silence wasn’t absence; it was restraint. Something deeper than fear had taken hold of the wild.

By midday, the sun was a faint blur behind a curtain of clouds. The heat became oppressive, humid but somehow dry, like breathing through cloth.