<h4>Chapter 1153: Chapter 1153</h4>
Bent forward slightly, as if its body were being pulled toward the ground by some invisible weight.
It had no face.
But it stared.
Sophie’s fingers found Jude’s without needing to search. "That’s not a hallucination."
"No," he said.
The shape tilted its head. Not jerky like a creature. Smooth. Intimate.
Jude stepped forward, and the thing vanished behind a tree, without a sound. They waited, breath held. But it didn’t return.
"What is it?" Sophie whispered.
"I don’t know," Jude said. "But I think it’s the reason we’re not sleeping."
They returned to the camp, but the mood had shifted. By dawn, the others began waking, and one by one, he saw the same realization on their faces. They all knew. They had seen it. Rose didn’t speak at all. She sat by the fire with her knees drawn to her chest, watching the woods. La walked slower than usual. Zoey nced toward the trees every few seconds. Lucy pretended nothing was wrong, but her hand shook when she passed Jude a bowl of fruit.
By midmorning, the silence became unbearable.
"We have to talk about it," Jude said, standing.
No one looked at him. Not right away.
He waited.
Then Sophie rose and stood beside him. "It’s not just one of us seeing it. It’s all of us."
That broke the spell.
Emma stood too. "I saw itst night. Past the river."
Ste nodded. "I thought I was dreaming."
"You weren’t," said Grace. "I’ve seen it three times now."
Susan’s voice was barely a whisper. "It follows us."
Natalie trembled. "Then why hasn’t it attacked?"
"It’s studying us," Zoey said. "It’s choosing."
Scarlet wrapped her arms around herself. "Or waiting."
Rose finally looked up. Her eyes were dull, haunted. "It’s what’s left. Of her."
The silence hit hard.
Jude stepped closer. "What do you mean?"
"She was pulled out of me," Rose said. "Torn loose. She didn’t die. She didn’t disappear. She splintered. And what we’re seeing is one of the pieces."
"Pieces?" Sophie echoed.
Rose nodded. "Not all of her came out of me. Some went into the others. Into the ind. Into the trees. Into us."
A chill swept through the clearing.
"So what now?" Lucy asked.
"We search," Jude said. "We find the heart of this thing, whatever she left behind, and we finish it."
The n was simple: break into pairs, search the immediate forest, trace any unnatural changes. The same spiral formations. The bone runes. The feeling. Each pair would circle back by midday.
Jude went with Sophie.
Rose with La.
Zoey and Emma.
Lucy and Ste.
Grace with Natalie.
Scarlet and Susan.
They spread out, keeping within whistling distance, eyes scanning for signs. Jude and Sophie moved quietly. The forest was thick, but not unfamiliar, yet the deeper they went, the more wrong it felt. Branches that curved in unnatural ways. Stones that formed rings with no reason. Small bones, animal, maybe, but arranged.
"She’s still here," Sophie murmured.
They didn’t speak again until they reached the edge of a clearing.
And stopped cold.
Rose stood in the center.
Alone.
Jude blinked. "Rose?"
She didn’t answer.
She was staring at something in front of her, something none of them could see. Her body was rigid, her hands clenched into fists.
Then La appeared beside her.
And dropped to her knees.
Sophie gripped Jude’s arm. "This isn’t right."
Emma’s whistle cut through the woods.
Then Zoey’s voice, sharp: "Get back! Get away from it!"
They ran forward together, and the thing was there.
Standing beside Rose and La. Towering over them.
And this time, it looked human.
Like Rose.
But stretched. Too tall. Too thin. Bones under skin that shimmered like leaves. Its smile was all teeth. It touched Rose’s cheek.
She smiled back.
La looked up at it, and smiled, too.
"No," Sophie hissed.
Jude stepped forward,
, and the thing vanished again.
Just as Lucy and Ste burst into the clearing.
And La turned to look at them.
Smiling that same empty, wrong smile Rose had once worn.
Jude’s heart stopped.
Behind him, Zoey whispered, "She’s doing it again."
And when La reached up and touched Rose’s hand,
Rose smiled wider.
The others arrived momentster.
They surrounded the two women in the clearing.
But they didn’t speak.
They just watched.
And that smile lingered on both their faces like it had always been there.
Zoey didn’t sleep that night. Even wrapped in Jude’s arms with Ste and Sophie close on either side, her eyes remained open, fixed on the branches above. Every sound outside the camp set her nerves on edge, the shifting of leaves, the whisper of wind, the distant creak of something that could’ve been a tree... or something else. The memory of La’s smile haunted her. Not the smile itself, but the stillness behind it. It wasn’t affection. It wasn’t teasing. It was empty. Perfectly, terrifyingly empty.
By morning, she had made a decision.
She didn’t tell Jude, or Sophie, or anyone. She just rose early, dressed quickly, and followed La the moment she slipped from the shelter and wandered toward the woods. She watched from a distance as La met Rose at the edge of the trees. The two exchanged no words. They didn’t even need to look at each other. They simply moved, side by side, into the forest, like two halves of a ritual that had already begun.
Zoey followed silently, weaving between trunks, avoiding every dry branch and loose stone. She kept her distance, but she could still see them ahead, La and Rose moving in eerie sync, steps matching, posture identical, even the tilt of their heads as they moved between moss-covered roots. They weren’t searching. They were heading somewhere with purpose.
The path they followed wasn’t one Zoey recognized. It curved in ways the ind’s terrain didn’t normally allow, and though it didn’t shimmer like watcherscript, there was something unnatural about it. As if the ind itself had shaped the trail around them.