Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 716 - 718

Jude felt his breath catch. The streets that had been nothing but ruin, the structures that had been crumbling under time's weight, all of it was **whole.** Alive. Lights burned in the windows of towering spires, the sky above them no longer empty but **filled** with shifting, golden constellations. The streets were no longer silent, they **hummed** with the sound of something moving, something unseen but present, something **waiting.**

Mira whispered, "What the hell?"

Eldara exhaled. "It's… intact."

Jude stepped through the gate, his heartbeat hammering against his ribs. The fire inside him **recognized** this place, even if his mind did not. He could feel it in the way the energy wrapped around him, in the way the very air seemed to **know his name.**

Because this wasn't just a hidden part of the city.

This was a **memory.**

A memory so strong, so deeply woven into the bones of the world, that it had refused to fade.

Vaelin followed behind him, his voice quiet. "It's a fragment."

Jude swallowed. "Of what?"

Vaelin's eyes met his. "What the city used to be."

The realization settled heavy in his chest. This wasn't just some secret chamber, some hidden remnant of the past. This was **the past.** Preserved. Waiting.

And it had been waiting **for him.**

The fire in his veins burned hotter. The golden constellations above them shifted, realigning themselves into patterns Jude didn't fully understand but somehow **recognized.** The energy of the city whispered at the edges of his thoughts, pulling him forward, leading him deeper into its preserved memory.

He didn't resist.

They moved through the streets, silent but not alone. The presence of the city surrounded them, watching, waiting, guiding. The structures around them were untouched by time, as if this fragment had been pulled **out** of history itself, sealed away until it was ready to be seen again.

Until **he** was ready to see it.

And then, at the very center of it all, they found **her.**

A figure stood at the heart of the city's memory.

She wasn't alive. Not in the way they were. But she wasn't just a vision either. She was **both** a presence woven from light and fire, from the same golden energy that coursed through the city itself.

She turned as they approached, her gaze locking onto Jude's.

And she **knew** him.

Not just recognized. Not just acknowledged.

She knew who he was.

Who he had been.

Who he was meant to be.

Jude's pulse thundered in his ears.

The woman's lips parted. When she spoke, her voice was fire.

"You finally came home."

And Jude remembered.

Jude staggered under the weight of memory crashing into him. It wasn't a slow realization, not a gradual understanding creeping through his mind. It was everything at once. Like a dam breaking, like a flood swallowing him whole. His vision blurred, shifting between two worlds, the present and the past superimposing over one another, indistinguishable, inseparable. The city around him, whole and untouched, flickered with ghostly echoes of something even older, something more.

He knew this place.

Not just because he had walked its streets in his dreams. Not just because the city had called to him. He remembered walking these paths before. Not as a stranger. Not as an outsider.

As one of them.

The woman watching him did not move, did not speak again. She didn't need to. Her presence alone was a door, an opening into something Jude had buried, forgotten, or perhaps something that had been taken. His breath hitched as the weight of it all pressed against his skull, his thoughts unraveling and reweaving into something new. No…not new. Old. Older than his name. Older than the version of himself he had always believed to be real.

He had been here before.

He had stood in this very place, beneath these very stars, when they had still been bright, when they had still belonged to this world. He had known these streets before they became ruins.

He had built them.

The truth lodged in his chest like a blade, sharp and undeniable. The fire in his veins wasn't new. It hadn't come from the city it had always been his. The city had only woken it. Reminded him of what had been forgotten. Of what he had lost.

Jude took a step forward. The energy surrounding the woman shifted in response, golden threads of light moving with her, around her, through her, as if she were made of the very essence of the city itself. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she had become something beyond human, beyond mortal, a part of the city in a way that no one else had been able to achieve.

And yet, she looked at him with eyes that were unmistakably **human.**

"You finally came home," she had said.

Jude's throat was dry, his thoughts a storm. He forced himself to speak, though his voice was barely more than a whisper. "Who are you?"

The woman tilted her head, the strands of golden light flickering with the motion. "You already know."

A thousand memories pressed against his skull. Whispers of a name, a presence, a connection he couldn't fully grasp. Yet it was there, just out of reach. His fingers curled. "I don't."

Her expression softened. "Then let me remind you."

She lifted her hand. The air shifted. The city around them moved. The golden constellations above rippled, their patterns shifting, rearranging, reforming into something else. A story written in stars.

And Jude fell into the memory.

Not his memory.

The city's.

The world blurred, and when it settled, they were no longer standing in the quiet streets of an abandoned past. They were inside it. The city was alive, truly alive. People walked its streets, their bodies woven with golden fire, their voices murmuring, laughing, calling to one another. The air hummed with power, with purpose, with something greater than mere survival. The buildings pulsed with light, responding to the movement of those within them, as if the city itself breathed along with its people.

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