<h4>Chapter 885: Chapter 887</h4>


    Jude watched them. He sat with his arms around Lucy and Amelia, letting their warmth settle into him. But his eyes flicked from face to face.


    Natalie had been distant all day. Susan had dropped a basket of roots earlier, then stood staring at it for almost a full minute before shaking herself. Sophie had called Zoey by the wrong name twice. These weren’t things they usually did.


    He waited until after dinner, until the tes were washed and everyone was wrapped in woven nkets, the circle drawn close around the fire. Then he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said quietly, "Has anyone cked outtely?"


    The fire cracked. At first, no one responded. Then Zoeyughed softly. "Like... passed out? No. Why?"


    Jude’s eyes didn’t leave the mes. "Not passed out. I mean, have you lost time? Like... you’re doing something, and then suddenly it’ster, and you don’t remember what happened in between?"


    Theughter stopped. Even the jungle seemed to hush a little. The wives looked at each other. Some frowned. Some blinked. Sophie’s hand tightened around her cup. Ste shifted ufortably. Nefertari nced sideways at the shadows between the trees.


    Emma broke the silence. "I thought I was just... tired. It happened near the beach. I blinked, and I was holding fish I didn’t remember grabbing."


    "Same here," Grace said quietly. "Up in the banyan tree. I thought I’d zoned out."


    Susan swallowed, looking around. "Me too. When I was washing the leaves this morning. I was bent over the pot, and the next thing I knew, everything was clean."


    One by one, they nodded. Lucy. Amelia. Scarlett. Even Serena.


    Jude’s stomach twisted.


    "I think it’s happening to all of you," he said. "Not just one or two. All of you."


    "Why didn’t you say something earlier?" Natalie asked. Her voice was calm, but her hands were clutched tightly around her knees.


    "Because I wasn’t sure," Jude said. "I didn’t want to scare anyone. But now..."


    "You think it’s the smoke again," Nefertari said. It wasn’t a question.


    Jude nodded. "I saw it in the forest. It touched Grace. It left. Then she was confused. I saw it again with Emma. I’m starting to think it’s using all of you. One by one."


    Scarlett stared into the fire. "What does it want?"


    No one answered.


    They sat like that for a long time, listening to the jungle breathe, the fire crackle, and their own hearts beat too loud.


    Sophie finally whispered, "Do you think it’s trying to take us? Or... change us?"


    Jude looked at the women around him. The faces he loved. The souls he trusted. "I think," he said slowly, "it’s not after you. Not exactly. I think it’s trying to get to me."


    The mes bent in the wind, casting shifting shadows across their faces.


    "But why us, then?" Zoey asked. "Why not juste for you?"


    "Because I don’t think it can. Not directly. Not yet." Jude exhaled. "But it knows you’re my heart. If it changes you... then it changes me."


    They all went quiet again.


    The forest sighed, and somewhere far off, an owl-like cry echoed through the trees.


    Scarlett said, "We need a n."


    Ste nodded. "We need to write everything down. Track what we do. What we remember. What we don’t. Even the little things."


    Amelia bit her lip. "What if it finds out we know? What if it gets angry?"


    "It already knows," Serena said quietly. "It’s watching. It’s always watching."


    They slept with weapons that night. des under pillows. Nets at the door. Jude didn’t sleep at all. He sat at the window of his treehouse, watching the trees, the mist, the spaces between stars. He thought about the voice in the smoke. About what it had said. That it was the breath of the ind. That it was bing them. That it wanted to be him.


    He remembered fire. The stake. The curse. His real body, hidden inside a lie. He remembered the pact he made to be a god. To bring the end of the divine. And he thought, not for the first time, that maybe something else had heard him back then. Something older than the gods. Something that had been waiting, in the corners of the world.


    Something that had found him.


    And now, it was using the people he loved to w its way into him.


    He looked at the sleeping faces of Lucy and Grace, curled around each other on the mat of woven grass and leaves. He wanted to believe he could protect them. That he was still strong enough to hold back the tide. But the smoke was clever. It had already slipped past them once.


    He thought of L, still trapped in the other realm. He thought of Nefertari’s family, lost in time. He thought of the mountain, the volcano, the border they could never cross. He thought of the crab-ind they lived on, its shell the size of a nation. Was it alive? Was it the source? Or was it just another piece of the trap?


    Jude whispered into the night, "What are you?"


    And somewhere, beyond the fog, a blue light flickered once. Then vanished.


    The morning sun filtered through the leaves like thin sheets of gold, dappling the ground in a flickering mosaic of light and shadow. Jude stood at the edge of the stream with his boots sunk ankle-deep in the muddy soil, staring at the rippling surface where tiny fish darted like silver knives. The water was cool, moving with azy rhythm that usually brought peace to his mind. But today, his hands wouldn’t stop clenching. His eyes kept flicking toward the dense wall of trees as though expecting something to emerge, something silent, something blue.


    Behind him, Emma and Scarlett were carrying woven baskets filled with root vegetables, theirughter light and unbothered. It was the kind of normalcy that once would have settled his heart. Now, it unsettled him.