<h4>Chapter 1119: Chapter 1119</h4>
Later, while they gathered fruit under a canopy of twisted vines, Sophie whispered that she had seen something, something she hadn’t told the others yet. During the night, after her smile had faded, she had woken to find Rose kneeling in the woods, her palms pressed to the dirt. The earth had glowed beneath her fingers. And when she rose, she whispered something into the air.
A name.
One Sophie couldn’t understand.
"She’s calling something," Sophie said. "Or someone."
Jude clenched his jaw. "We need to know what."
They returned to camp only to find Ste and Grace gone.
Zoey, now firmly in Rose’s orbit, imed they had gone for water. Her tone was too sweet, her eyes too steady.
That afternoon, Jude and Sophie followed faint footprints northeast, toward the ce they’d seen the pit.
They didn’t reach it.
They found Grace first, crouched in the middle of a ring of mushrooms, eyes closed, humming a low tune that echoed the hum in the forest. Her clothes were wet. Her hair was tangled with vines. And she smiled without seeing them.
"She’s halfway gone," Sophie whispered.
"Where’s Ste?"
Grace’s hum grew louder.
They found Ste deeper in the jungle, lying on her back in a bed of moss, eyes wide open to the sky. She was whispering Rose’s name over and over.
Jude reached for her, but she didn’t blink.
By the time they led both women back to camp, the others were waiting. Rose at the center. La beside her. Zoey at her left. All smiling.
"Everything’s unfolding," Rose said. "Everything is bing."
That night, Jude and Sophie retreated to the cliffs again, far from the fire. They didn’t speak for a long time. When the moon rose, they made love slowly, like clinging to thest fragments of their shared reality. Sophie cried when she came, tears mixing with the salt air.
Afterward, shey against him, breath warm on his chest.
"I dreamed of them," she said. "All of them, together. Around that ck pool. And something was rising. It had a name. I heard it. But when I woke, it was gone."
"You have to remember it."
"I’m trying. But every time I get close, it slips away."
The next day, Ste and Grace were fully changed.
They smiled, theyughed, they touched each other’s hands often. They wore petals in their hair. The same petals from the pit. Jude watched them from a distance, heart sinking. Sophie gripped his hand tightly, her knuckles pale.
That evening, they confronted Natalie.
She was quiet, distant, and for the first time, she didn’t sleep beside them. Instead, she wandered into the woods as the sun dipped low. Jude and Sophie followed.
They found her standing by the river’s edge, holding a shard of white bone. Its surface pulsed with light.
Rose stepped out from the trees behind her.
"She’s ready," she said, brushing Natalie’s hair behind her ear.
Jude moved forward, but Sophie stopped him.
Natalie turned, held the shard up.
It sang.
Not a song like the watchers used to sing. Something darker. Hungrier.
Jude pulled Sophie back, retreating. They watched as Natalie stepped into the river, the water glowing around her. The light spread with her steps.
"She’ll forget us by morning," Sophie whispered.
But they couldn’t stop it.
By dawn, Natalie was among the others. Changed.
Only Emma still seemed on the edge, sometimes distant, sometimes herself. She watched Jude and Sophie with something like longing. But she didn’te close. Not anymore.
That night, Sophie sat beside Jude at the fire.
"They’re building something," she said. "I feel it. In my dreams. It’s not just a ritual. It’s... a gate."
"A gate to where?"
"Not where. What. Something wants toe through."
Jude stared at the mes. "Then we have to close it."
"How?"
"I don’t know yet. But I think we need watcherscript."
Sophie nodded slowly. "The real kind. Not what Rose is mimicking."
They made ns to return to the old watcher sites. To retrace their steps and uncover the original memories. But before they could leave, Rose summoned the others.
All of them.
Even Sophie.
She stood, eyes zed, moving toward the center of camp.
Jude grabbed her wrist. "No."
"I have to," she said, barely conscious.
"Sophie."
She blinked.
And something cracked.
She gasped and stumbled back. The spell broke.
But it was toote. Rose saw it.
She stepped forward. "You’re resisting again."
Jude stood between them.
Rose tilted her head. "You always did try to be the savior."
"You’ve changed."
"No," she said. "I’ve be."
Behind her, the others circled closer. Smiling. Waiting.
But something was different this time. Something sharp and angry rippled through the air.
The hum was louder.
And then the ground shivered.
The ck pit opened again, miles away, but its pull was felt even here.
The ritual had begun.
And as the wind shifted, carrying that sickly sweet scent of rot and petals, Emma stepped forward, slow, deliberate.
But her eyes... they flickered.
And then she whispered a word.
The name.
The one Sophie had forgotten.
The one Jude didn’t recognize.
But it changed everything.
Because the moment she said it, the forest screamed.
The scream wasn’t sound. It was pressure, trembling through the soil and the trees, rattling every bone in Jude’s body like a deep drumbeat echoing from beneath the earth. Sophie staggered beside him, her fingers clutched around his arm, her eyes wide with a kind of awareness he hadn’t seen before, not fear, not confusion, but recognition.
Emma copsed to her knees, her lips still forming the name she had spoken, though no more sound came out. Her hands dug into the dirt as if trying to hold on. The others didn’t react. Rose, La, Zoey, Grace, Ste, Lucy, Susan, Natalie, and Scarlet all stood eerily still, their bodies swaying just slightly in perfect unison like trees in a wind that wasn’t touching anything else.
Jude knelt beside Emma, brushing hair from her face. "What did you say? Emma, what was it?"