Chapter 1714

The dream was not a vision, not exactly. It wasn't bound by time or shape. It unfolded as a sensation first - a heat that radiated from within, spreading outward through every limb, every breath, every secret space inside them.

Jude drifted in it, body suspended in golden dark, the rhythm of the island beating inside his chest. But he wasn't alone. He felt them all - his twelve, his heart. Their bodies pressed to his, their thoughts tangled with his own.

Lucy's laughter brushed his ear. Rose's moan stirred his skin. Zoey's hunger curled low in his belly. Grace's breath was his breath.

Then shapes took form. The valley, glowing in a warm dusk that never ended. The Heart platform, no longer wood and vine but something far more - pulsing, alive, the center of something immense. Around it, structures had grown like flowers - dwellings, open and curved, welcoming.