Chapter 1350
They walked as one, Jude leading, their fingers linked, the moss soft beneath their feet. The portal pulsed once as they approached, then opened without sound, its woven limbs folding inward like a curtain parting for honored guests.
And on the other side was a garden.
Not the wild, jungle-overgrown kind they had known. This was deliberate. Designed. Stones shaped into spiral paths, water flowing through carved channels that glowed with faint golden light. Trees arched overhead, bearing fruit the size of hearts and colored like dusk. Everything breathed.
Jude took a step forward and gasped softly. "This wasn’t made by the island."
"No," Rose said, her hand brushing his. "It was made by us. The dream. The memory. The place we imagined when we slept. The island brought it forward."
Sophie looked around slowly, her mouth open. "It’s our dream. The one we shared before the awakening. The place we had children. Gardens. Firelight. Laughter."
Emma knelt near a tree and touched the soil. "We mourned it. We let it go. But it didn’t leave us. It rooted itself."
They moved deeper into the dream-made-real, rediscovering what they had once imagined lost. There was the long pool where they used to bathe. The curved shelter made from driftwood. The wide stone ring where they had once danced in dreamtime. All of it born from memory and made true.
They were silent a long while.
Then Scarlet turned to Jude and murmured, "Make love to us here. All of us. Like before."
His breath caught, and Lucy smiled as she slid her arms around his waist. "This time it’s not a dream," she whispered. "It’s our reality. Our beginning."