Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQJ363WTTE7SW7SZYNYQJR

The transition was not a walk through a door, but a violent tear in the fabric of the world. One moment, Aurora Carter was standing in the damp, deer-trodden grass of Richmond Park, the winter chill biting at her nose. The next, the universe inverted. The grey London fog evaporated, replaced instantly by a wall of heat so thick it felt like walking into a preheated oven. Aurora stumbled, her boots scuffing against dry, packed earth. She gasped, expecting the exhaust fumes of the city, but inhaled a cloying sweetness instead—roasted figs, heavy wine, and the metallic tang of ozone. "Steady," a voice whispered. It didn't come from her left or right, but seemed to drift on the humid breeze, brushing against her ear like a secret. Aurora straightened, brushing a stray lock of shoulder-length black hair from her face. She looked down at her chest. The Heartstone pendant, usually a cool weight against her skin, was pulsing with a rhythmic heat, glowing with a deep, crimson light that was visible even through her jacket. It had led them here, vibrating faster the closer they had gotten to the ancient oaks marking the Veil's weak point. Now, it beat in time with her own racing heart. "Nyx?" she asked, her voice sounding small in the open space. "I am here." To her right, a shadow detached itself from the elongated shade of a twisted tree. It rose, stretching upward until it formed a humanoid silhouette, roughly six and a half feet tall. The edges of the figure blurred and smoked, leaking darkness into the amber-tinted air. Two eyes, glowing a faint, spectral violet, blinked open within the void of the face. "Welcome to Dymas," Nyx whispered, their voice layering over itself, the echo of a man named Aldric buried under centuries of shade-existence. "The Garden of Gluttony." Aurora turned in a slow circle, her breath catching in her throat. The sky above was wrong. It wasn't blue, or even the black of the void. It was a churning, translucent amber, like honey held up to a candle. There was no sun, yet the light was everywhere, golden and diffuse, casting long, bruised shadows that didn't seem to match the objects casting them. They stood on the edge of a vineyard that defied logic. The vines were thick as tree trunks, gnarled and ancient, twisting around trellises made of blackened iron that soared thirty feet into the air. The leaves were the size of shields, deep purple and veined with gold, and the grapes hanging in clusters were swollen to the size of grapefruit, their skins taut and glistening. "It looks... bountiful," Aurora said, though the word felt inadequate. She reached for the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit she hadn’t been able to shake since childhood. The skin there was slick with sweat. "Excess is the currency here," Nyx said, drifting forward. They didn't walk so much as flow over the terrain, legs dissolving into mist before reforming with each step. "Do not eat anything. Do not drink anything. The hunger of this realm is contagious." "I'm not hungry," Aurora lied. Her stomach gave a treacherous growl, loud in the unnatural quiet. For a moment, the memory of the chow mein she’d delivered for Yu-Fei earlier that day flashed in her mind, but it seemed grey and ash-like compared to the scent radiating from the giant fruit. It smelled of summer and sugar and perfect satisfaction. She shook her head, forcing the legal, analytic part of her brain to take the wheel. *Observe. Catalogue. Survive.* She shifted her jacket, checking the weight of the Fae-forged blade tucked into her belt. The moonsilver handle was freezing cold, a sharp contrast to the humid air. Isolde had given it to her for a reason. The seer didn't give gifts lightly. "We need to find the rift point on this side," Aurora said, stepping onto the path between the towering vines. "If the Veil is weak enough to let us in, it’s weak enough to let things out. We need to know what's coming through." "The Warden's duty sits heavy on one so young," Nyx murmured, floating beside her. "But you are right. The geometry here... it folds." They moved deeper into the vineyard. The silence was heavy, lacking the usual chitter of insects or birdsong. The only sound was the crunch of their movement and a distant, wet sound—like a heavy stone dropped into mud—that repeated at irregular intervals. Aurora felt exposed. In London, she knew the streets. She knew which alleys behind the Golden Empress to avoid and which lights stayed red too long. Here, the landscape felt predatory. The violet vines seemed to lean toward her as she passed, the massive leaves pivoting slowly to track her heat. "Nyx," Aurora said quietly. "Are the shadows... watching us?" The Shade paused, their form flickering from solid silhouette to wispy smoke. The violet eyes narrowed. "The shadows here are old, Aurora. They are not empty places where light cannot reach. They are the bellies of the world. Stay in the light, paradoxically. I can navigate the dark, but you..." "I'm digestible," she finished dryly. "Precisely." They crested a small rise, and the view opened up. Aurora stopped dead, her boots skidding on the loose soil. Below them lay a valley that stretched to the horizon, a patchwork of orchards, fields, and gardens, all supersized and bursting with grotesque abundance. Rivers of thick, dark liquid—wine or nectar—cut through the landscape like veins. But it was the structures scattered among the fields that made her skin crawl. They weren't houses. They were kitchens. Massive, open-air stone slabs the size of city blocks steamed in the heat. Even from this distance, Aurora could see figures moving around them. They were humanoid but wrong—limbs too long, movements jerky and frantic. They stood over cauldrons that could boil a whale, chopping and stirring with a manic intensity. "The laborers," Nyx whispered, a note of genuine unease entering their wind-swept voice. "Helbound souls. Contracted. They cook for the Prince’s table. An eternity of preparation, never a moment to taste." "Prince Belphegor," Aurora recalled the name from the codex Isolde had forced her to memorize. "The Prince of Gluttony." "To stand in his presence is to starve to death while eating," Nyx said. "We must not draw his gaze." A sudden snap, loud as a gunshot, rang out to their left. Aurora spun, her hand flying to the hilt of the moonsilver dagger. She drew it in a fluid motion, the blade humming as it bit into the humid air. The pale light of the Fae metal cut a clean, blue-white arc against the amber backdrop. A vine, thick as a python, had lashed out from the trellis. It had struck the space where Aurora’s head had been a second before. Now it recoiled, quivering, the tip split open to reveal a dripping, maw-like interior lined with thorns. "The garden feeds itself," Nyx hissed. The Shade surged forward, their form expanding. Nyx thrust a hand composed of absolute darkness toward the vine. The shadow solidified into a spear, skewering the plant. The vine screeched—a high, tea-kettle sound—and thrashed, leaking purple ichor that smelled of spoiled grapes. "Move, Aurora!" Nyx commanded, their voice dropping an octave, resonating in her chest. Aurora didn't argue. She scrambled back, but the ground beneath her shifted. The soil wasn't earth; it was a mulch of decaying fruit and bones. More vines uncoiled from the trellises, sensing the vibration, sensing the moonsilver, sensing *blood*. "It’s a trap," Aurora realized aloud, her mind racing. "The whole place. It’s not a farm. It’s a stomach." She slashed at a tendril grabbing for her ankle. The Fae blade sliced through the tough vegetable fiber as if it were smoke. The vine withered instantly upon contact with the cold metal, turning grey and ash-like. "The blade!" limits Nyx shouted, batting away a heavy branch with a whip of shadow. "The Fae magic creates a void in their gluttony. Use it!" Aurora ducked under a swinging limb, the air rushing over her head smelling of heavy pollen. She wasn't a soldier; she was a delivery driver, a student, a survivor of bad choices. But she knew how to find the weak point in an argument, and this was an argument of physics. The vines were anchoring themselves to the iron trellis. She lunged, not at the attacking vines, but at the base of the trellis structure. She drove the Fae-forged blade into the main root knot twisting around the iron. The effect was instantaneous. A shockwave of cold, blue light erupted from the dagger, racing up the iron trellis like chain lightning. The vines clamped onto the metal screamed—a collective, wooden groan—and released their grip, shrinking back from the Fae chill. The massive heavy vines collapsed under their own weight, crashing down around Aurora and Nyx in a heap of bruised fruit and shattered leaves. Silence returned to the hill, save for the heavy breathing of the human and the quiet, static hiss of the Shade. Aurora yanked the dagger free, her hand trembling. The Heartstone at her throat was burning so hot it felt like it might sear her skin. "We need to go," she panted, wiping sap from her cheek. "Now." Nyx reformed their silhouette, shrinking back to human size, though the violet eyes burned brighter than before. "The disturbance. It will be felt. The chefs... the Prince..." "We saw what we came to see," Aurora said, holstering the blade, though she kept her hand on the hilt. "The Veil isn't just thin. It’s leaking. This place isn't staying contained." She looked back at the tear in the reality they had stepped through—a shimmering distortion in the air a few hundred yards back. It looked impossibly far away now. "Run," Nyx whispered. And for the first time since entering the realm of Gluttony, Aurora didn't feel the heavy, lethargic drag of the amber air. She felt the sharp, cold clarity of fear. She turned and sprinted for the rip in the sky, the shadows of the giant vines stretching out to snatch her heels.