<h4>Chapter 868: Chapter 870</h4>


    He didn’t answer. He carried her back to camp, the forest too quiet, the trees bending just slightly in the wrong direction as they passed. That evening, as the sun began to dip and cast long shadows through the canopy, Jude called the others together again. This time there was no pretense of normalcy. They knew something was wrong. Even the air seemed heavier.


    They gathered by the main fire pit. The mes flickered low, but none of them moved to add more wood. Jude stood, hands sped behind his back, eyes sweeping over the circle of faces he’de to love, to rely on, to protect.


    "I need all of you to tell me the truth," he said. "Has anyone else cked out recently? Even for a moment?"


    They exchanged nces, nervous, wary.


    Grace shifted first. "Earlier this morning, I went to the edge of the camp to check on the drying rack. I turned around and it was like... I lost ten minutes. I thought I just daydreamed."


    "I felt it too," said Serena quietly. "Near the cliffs yesterday. I was picking herbs and suddenly I was back at the shelter. I don’t even remember walking there."


    Natalie raised a shaking hand. "Two nights ago. I woke up in the middle of the night standing outside the treehouse. I was barefoot. My hands were bleeding. I don’t remember how I got there."


    One by one, they admitted it. Not every day, not even every week, but moments, shes, disappearances of time and thought. nk spaces that they filled in with sleep or distraction because the alternative was worse. Lucy said nothing, but Jude didn’t press her. She was already sitting close to him, too close. Her hand was gripping his so tightly his knuckles ached.


    Sophie looked around the fire. "What is it? What’s doing this to us?"


    Jude took a breath. "I don’t know exactly. But I’ve seen it. A blue smoke. It moves through the trees. It enters you. And then you change."


    Ste’s face paled. "I thought I dreamed that."


    "You didn’t," Jude said. "It’s real. And it’s watching us."


    Susan wrapped her arms around herself. "Then what do we do? We can’t fight smoke."


    "No," Jude said. "But we can prepare. We stay together. No one goes off alone. Not even for a moment. If it’s choosing us one at a time, it’s because it can’t take us all at once."


    "But why?" Emma asked. "Why us? What does it want?"


    Jude didn’t answer. He stared into the fire, watching the way the mes curled like tendrils of smoke, blue at the base, orange at the tips. The answer was somewhere deep in him, buried under years of forgotten truths. He had to find it before it was toote.


    The fire burned lower. They didn’t speak again that night. Eventually, they returned to their shelters, moving in pairs, reluctant to sleep. Jude stayed awake long after the others had dozed off, sitting by the embers. The night stretched long and quiet, but not silent. The forest whispered things he couldn’t quite understand.


    When he finally drifted into sleep, he dreamed of the ind breaking apart. The shell splitting open like a wound, revealing flesh and eyes beneath, blinking in the dark. The smoke rose from the wound, not drifting but reaching, with purpose. It spoke in a voice older thannguage. It said one word.


    Return.


    Jude woke with a gasp, sweat slicked across his back. He sat up fast, looking around. The others were still asleep. The mist was gone.


    He rose and stepped outside, onto the wooden tform. The sky was unusually clear. The stars hung overhead like old memories. And below, across the border, at the base of the mountain, a blue light pulsed once.


    Jude stared at it, breath caught.


    It pulsed again.


    And then it stopped.


    Jude didn’t sleep again that night. He sat on the wooden tform outside the treehouse, elbows resting on his knees, eyes fixed on the forest beyond the border. The image of the blue light pulsing at the base of the mountain refused to leave him. It was subtle, almost like a trick of the eye, but it hadn’t been his imagination. He felt it in his bones, the same way animals sense a storm long before it breaks the sky. Something had shifted, not just in the air or the forest, but in the ind itself. The border, which had once been a hard rule, monsters on one side, survivors on the other, felt thinner now, like it could tear if he just stared at it long enough.


    The first sounds of morning crept in with the grey light of dawn: the distant call of birds, the rustling of leaves, the low groan of the jungle stretching itself awake. Jude stood slowly, rolling his shoulders to chase away the stiffness from the night. Inside the treehouse, Lucy and Grace were curled together, their bodies tangled like vines. They didn’t stir as he stepped back in, careful not to make noise. He crouched down to check on them briefly, brushing Lucy’s hair from her face. Her breathing was steady, peaceful. The person she had been the night before, the one possessed by something else, was nowhere in sight. But Jude didn’t trust peace anymore. Not here.


    The camp was quiet when he climbed down thedder. The other shelters were still, smoke risingzily from the chimneys where a few wives had already started small morning fires. Jude found Sophie by the river, crouched at the edge with her arms resting on her knees, staring into the slow-moving water. She nced up when she heard him approach and gave a tired smile.


    "Couldn’t sleep either?" she asked.


    He shook his head. "Not much."


    She patted the space beside her. He sat down, listening to the water trickle around stones.


    "I had a weird dream," she said after a moment.


    Jude turned to her. "What kind?"


    "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.