Chapter 869 - 871
"Not like before," she added quickly. "Not like the smoke. Just... weird. I was underwater. The river was gone and there was only the sea. And the sky was gone too. Everything was blue. Not just blue, *alive*. And I could breathe, but I wasn’t supposed to. I felt like I was being watched. Not in a scary way, not exactly. But like I was being examined."
Jude ran a hand through his hair. "You think it’s connected?"
"I don’t know," she said softly. "But I woke up and my hands were wet. I hadn’t left the bed, but they were *soaked*."
They sat in silence for a while longer. The rest of the wives began to wake and emerge from their shelters. Soon the familiar sounds of camp-life returned, Grace and Scarlett collecting kindling, Zoey and Stella preparing breakfast, Emma humming to herself as she sharpened a spear by the fire. It was all normal, everything perfectly in place, and that made it worse. The more the island pretended to be calm, the more Jude felt like it was coiling for something bigger.
He gathered everyone after breakfast. No one argued this time. They circled around the fire pit, some still holding plates, others with dirt on their hands from morning chores. Jude stood in the center.
"I saw something last night," he began. "A blue light. It was pulsing at the base of the volcano, just across the border."
Gasps fluttered across the circle. Scarlett’s hand immediately dropped to the hilt of her blade. Grace’s brows drew together.
"Did anything cross the border?" Susan asked.
"No," Jude said. "Not that I saw. But it wasn’t there before. It was like... a signal. Or a heartbeat."
"What does it mean?" Zoey asked.
Jude shook his head. "I don’t know. But I think we’re running out of time to figure it out."