Chapter 1284

You are mine. All of you.

They stepped into the garden together.

Twelve wives.

One man.

One goddess.

And one final surrender.

The garden exhaled as they entered.

It wasn't like the forest above - this wasn't wild. It was cultivated. Sacred. The trees were taller, impossibly tall, their trunks black and glistening with veins of amber light. Their roots curled in elegant spirals that framed the ground like a woven rug. Thick vines dripped from their branches, beaded with golden sap. Everything here shimmered, not with sunlight, but with life. The Source hovered at the center, suspended between the trees, pulsing like a heart. It was perfectly round, a sphere of glowing light that shifted with slow movement inside, like a storm beneath the surface.

Jude stepped forward, hand still clasped with Lucy's. The others followed in a loose arc, eyes wide, lips parted - not from fear but from awe.