The fire had long since burned down to embers when Jude opened his eyes again. The others were asleep around the pit, curled in blankets and fur throws, a quiet tangle of limbs and slow breathing.
He didn’t rember closing his eyes, and yet the last thing he recalled was watching them, watching their faces shift with the flickering light, seeing how unease still clung to them like damp air.
Now the air felt colder. He sat up and looked around the camp, squinting into the dark edges of the forest.
No movent. But sothing in him stirred, a faint thrum that vibrated not in the ground but in his chest.
He got to his feet without waking anyone and stepped beyond the circle of the fire’s glow. The wind moved strangely tonight, swaying in half-rhythms that didn’t match the rustling leaves. As he walked toward the path leading past the river, he thought again of the blue smoke. It hadn’t appeared today, not visibly. But each of his wives had given him small signs that sothing was still off. Tiny things, words repeated twice in the sa tone, lips moving before sound ca, eyes blinking in a pattern too deliberate to be random. These things haunted him now.
The river shimred faintly under the moonlight. Jude crouched and dipped his hand into the water. Cold, as it should be. Still real. Still consistent. And yet the trees leaned closer sohow. As if the island itself was watching him.
He stayed there for a long ti until he heard the soft crunch of footsteps behind him. He turned sharply, hand instinctively reaching toward the knife at his belt, but he relaxed when he saw Sophie.
She stopped a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest, her face pale in the starlight. "You couldn’t sleep either," she said.
Jude nodded. "Too much on my mind."
She stepped closer, crouched beside him. "I keep seeing things when I blink. Not full images. Just flashes. Like... different places. Or maybe the sa place but twisted. Sotis the sa tree three tis in a row but with sothing different each ti. Once it had eyes."
Jude didn’t answer. He just watched the water with her.
"I don’t want to tell the others," Sophie whispered. "They’ll think I’m losing it."
"You’re not," Jude said, his voice steady. "You’re just seeing more of it. Whatever it is."
"I keep wondering," she said after a pause, "if this is the island doing sothing to us. Or if this was always part of us, and the island’s just peeling the layers back."
Jude didn’t know how to respond to that. He had asked himself similar things, when he was alone, when the forest grew too quiet, when the wind stopped moving for a beat too long. There were monts when he rembered flashes too. A road buried in fire. A screaming crowd. Chains. But he couldn’t place them.
They went back to camp without speaking, and Jude lay awake beside Lucy and Scarlett until dawn ca in streaks of dull blue.
The next day began in tired silence. Breakfast was a chanical thing, bread flattened against hot stones, fish spiced with crushed herbs, roots boiled until soft. No one ate much. Grace and Zoey volunteered to clean the shelters while Susan and Natalie gathered kindling. Jude went to repair the roof of the small storehouse with Scarlett and Stella. Even during work, he noticed it again, those brief monts where their eyes drifted, their voices delayed, the pause just before soone responded to a question. All of it was wrong in a way too subtle to call out.
He watched Stella climb the ladder and hold a section of bark in place while Scarlett secured it with vines. Her grip faltered for just a mont, and he saw her lips move. No sound. Just the formation of a word that made no sense.
"Did you say sothing?" he asked sharply.
Stella blinked. "No. Just breathing."
But she was lying. He saw the flicker of confusion behind her eyes. She didn’t know she had spoken.
They worked in silence after that. Jude made a ntal note, then excused himself and walked deeper into the woods. He needed distance. Space to think. He stopped by a tree they’d marked early on, one of the few with symbols carved into its trunk from soone before them. A spiral. A face. A shape like an eye but horizontal. They never figured out what it ant. Jude stared at it now, and sothing inside him whispered rember .
The wind shifted again.
Behind him, twigs snapped. He turned quickly.
Emma stood there. Alone.
"I followed you," she said, then gave a crooked smile. "Not in a creepy way. Just... you’ve been tense. Thought you might want company."
Jude didn’t respond. He stepped to the side to let her co closer. She looked less tired than the others, but her skin had a strange sheen to it. Like she was glowing faintly, from within.
"You ever think about how long we’ve been here?" she asked, not eting his eyes.
"All the ti."
"Feels like years. But it also feels like... we’re stuck in the sa day, looping. Every morning tastes the sa. Every sunset feels familiar."
"Isn’t that just how routine works?"
Emma laughed, but it didn’t sound like her usual laugh. It was higher-pitched. Lighter. "Maybe. But routine doesn’t explain the dreams I had last night."
"What dreams?"
"I saw you," she said, stepping closer. "But you weren’t you. You were, bigger. Brighter. Like sothing not made of skin. You were on fire. You were hungry ."
Jude swallowed. "Emma, "
"And I loved it," she said. "I wasn’t scared. I was proud. Like I had waited my whole life to see you like that."
Her eyes glead.
Then her face shifted. Just slightly. Her body tilted forward like sothing had pulled her from behind.
A faint tendril of blue smoke exited her mouth, curled in the air between them, and vanished into the trees.
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