Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women

Jude had Lucy in one arm and Sophie in the other. Emma lay across his legs, her head against his thigh, humming softly as she drew lazy shapes on his skin. Zoey curled against his other side, kissing the slope of his ribs. Grace and Natalie pressed close together, giggling in whispers. Stella dozed on Scarlet's chest, their legs knotted together. Susan and Rose sat at the edge of the circle, watching the others, hands clasped in the moss.

Everything felt right.

Everything felt possible.

Just before sleep claimed him, Jude whispered, "This doesn't feel like the end of something."

"It's the beginning," Lucy said.

The next morning, the golden sky shifted to soft coral, and a breeze whispered through the camp that carried something new - music. Not song. Not rhythm. But tone. A single, sustained note that resonated in their bones, low and loving, like the forest was singing them awake.

They gathered again beneath the canopy, blinking and stretching, hair tangled, skin glowing, all of them smiling in that soft, stunned way only deep pleasure and magic can inspire.

Scarlet pointed toward the west. "Something's changed."

Where once there had been only trees, now there was a shimmer - like heat mirage, like a veil.

Jude rose, his body still humming with power. "Another door?"

Rose stood beside him. "Another invitation."

Sophie narrowed her eyes. "Shouldn't we rest? It's only been one night."

Emma shook her head. "It's never just night anymore."

Without discussion, they moved again, barefoot and unafraid, following the shimmer. This time, the island gave no path. They had to trust. But the roots didn't rise to trip them. The vines bent aside. The animals watched but did not run. When they reached the edge of the shimmer, it parted like mist.

Beyond it was a lake.

Circular.

Still.

Too perfect to be natural.

It reflected nothing.

Not the sky.

Not their faces.

Just blackness.

Lucy swallowed. "I don't like it."

Zoey walked forward. "I do."

"No," Grace said gently. "You want to. But you don't."

They turned to Jude.

He stepped forward and knelt at the edge of the lake.

His reflection did not appear.

But something else did.

A glow.

From within.

He placed his palm against the surface.

The water rippled once - twice - then stilled again.

Behind him, he heard the intake of breath from multiple mouths.

He looked up.

The trees around the lake had begun to shift.

Not visibly. Not loudly.

But with suggestion.

Their bark grew darker. Their branches thicker. Their leaves silver.

They were changing.

"Something's happening," Stella whispered.

Then Jude felt it.

A pull behind his navel.

Soft at first.

Then urgent.

He gasped as his spine arched and light bloomed from his chest.

Lucy grabbed his hand. "What is it?"

He was trembling now.

The glow spread through his veins.

His skin.

His eyes.

And then…

He fell.

Not down.

In.

Into the lake.

The surface didn't break.

He passed through it like mist.

Vanished.

Lucy screamed his name.

But it was too late.

He was gone.

And the lake began to sing.

The sound the lake made wasn't like water. It was like breath, or the first note of a song so old the earth itself had forgotten the words. The tone thrummed through the trees, made the silver leaves shimmer as if trembling in awe. Lucy stood frozen at the edge, her feet nearly in the water, her fingers trembling where they'd last held Jude. Her heart pounded. Her breath caught.

"He's gone," she whispered.

"No," Rose said calmly, stepping forward until she stood beside Lucy. "He's listening."

The others gathered quickly - Sophie with a storm brewing in her eyes, Zoey and Stella behind her, both of them wide-eyed, lips parted. Natalie, Grace, and Emma circled around the lake's edge, watching the water like it might crack open. Susan and Scarlet moved slower, hands linked, their faces pale with wonder.

"What does that mean?" Sophie demanded. "You said the heartstone was the threshold."

"It was," Rose said. "But this... this is the mirror."

Zoey looked at her sharply. "The mirror to what?"

Rose didn't answer.

Lucy dropped to her knees and pressed both hands against the lake. "Come back," she whispered. "Come back to me."

The water pulsed faintly under her fingers. Then again. A soft rhythm. A heartbeat.

Emma dropped beside her. "He's alive in there."

Stella crouched nearby. "Can we go after him?"

"No," Rose said. "Not yet. He has to go alone."

"Why?" Sophie's voice cracked with fury and fear. "Why now? After everything? After all we've become?"

"Because the island isn't finished," Rose answered. "It wants to show him what it truly is. And it wants to show him alone."

Inside the lake, Jude drifted.

He couldn't tell if he was moving or if the world was.

There was no up, no down. No sound. No time.

Only light.

Only sensation.

He could feel the thread still tied to each of his wives - twelve points of golden warmth spread across his chest like a constellation. They tethered him. Anchored him. But still, he drifted.

Until -

A shape appeared.

A figure.

She looked like Alara - but wasn't.

She was older. Taller. Made of light and stone and breath. Her body shimmered like the lake's surface, her eyes full of galaxies, her smile as ancient as roots.

She reached toward him.

When her hand touched his chest, he didn't flinch. He burned.

But it wasn't pain. It was remembrance.

Suddenly, he saw it all.

Not visions this time - memories.

The island had always been alive. But it had been sleeping for eons, waiting for something. Someone. The first dreamers had only brushed against its mind. They'd lit fires, carved symbols, made love in the moss, but they hadn't been enough. They weren't ready. The island waited, again and again, across cycles, across centuries.

Until now.

Until them.

Jude gasped as the figure filled him with everything - its grief, its joy, its hunger, its desire to be known.