AI The air hit her first. Warm, thick, and syrupy, it coated her tongue with the taste of honey and roasted spices. It was nothing like the damp chill of the London alley they’d just left. Rory’s hand flew instinctively to her throat, her fingers finding the small, thumbnail-sized gem of the Heartstone Pendant. It was still pulsing with a steady, deep warmth against her skin, a lingering echo of the portal they had just stepped through. The gem’s inner glow was a faint crimson star against the oppressive amber light that bathed this new, impossible world.
She took a breath, the rich air filling her lungs, and look ed up. There was no sun, no moon, no clouds. The sky was a seamless canopy of warm amber, a colossal vaulted ceiling that stretched to an unseen horizon. Beneath it, the landscape rolled away in gentle hills of impossible fecundity. Grapevines heavy with clusters of dark, plum-sized fruit twisted around gleaming trellises. Orchards of trees with silver bark bore crystalline fruit that refracted the amber light into a thousand tiny rainbows. The colours were too vibrant, the scents too intoxicating. It was beautiful in the way a fever dream was beautiful—dazzling and deeply wrong.
“Where the cup is never empty,” Isolde murmured, her voice a soft melody beside Rory. The Half-Fae seer stood on the rich, dark soil, her silver hair a stark cascade against the golden world. As always, she left no impression where she stood, no footprint to mark her passage. Her pale lavender eyes surveyed the scene with an unreadable , ancient calm.
“And the belly is never full,” a second voice added, a dry rustle like dead leaves skittering across pavement.
Rory turned. Nyx stood a few feet away, a humanoid silhouette of living shadow, their form wavering and indistinct in the pervasive amber glow. The light seemed to pull at the edges of them, making them look thin and stretched, a tear in this tapestry of indulgence. Their own eyes were twin violet embers burning in the shifting darkness of their face.
Rory’s fingers tightened on the hilt of the Fae-forged blade at her belt. The moonsilver was shockingly, blessedly cold against the humid warmth of the air. It was a solid, real thing in this place of overwhelming sensation. “Dymas,” she said, the name tasting strange on her lips. It was a statement, not a question. The pendant’s insistent warmth against her collarbone was confirmation enough. This was Hel. Or a corner of it, at least.
They started walking, moving down a gentle slope toward a path paved with smooth, river-worn stones of rose quartz. The grass on either side of the path was a shade of green so deep it was almost black, and it was dotted with wildflowers that bloomed in hues Rory had never seen before. They chimed with a faint, metallic sound when a breeze, smelling of baked bread and caramelised sugar, drifted through them.
Every sense was under assault. The distant sound of a stringed instrument played a tune that was complex and lovely, yet held a discordant, frantic undercurrent. The air was a cacophony of smells— roasting meat, fermenting fruit, something floral and cloying, and beneath it all, a faint, coppery tang that pricked at the back of her throat. It was the scent of a kitchen working on a scale she couldn't comprehend.
“The bounty is a gift,” Isolde said, her steps silent on the quartz path. “And every gift has its price.”
Rory glanced at her, frowning. “What kind of price?”
Isolde simply smiled, a small, sad curve of her lips that answered nothing and implied everything. Fae compulsions. She couldn’t lie, but asking for a straight answer was a fool’s errand.
Nyx drifted alongside them, their form coalescing into something more solid as they moved into the shadow of a sprawling fig tree. “Observe,” they whispered, their violet gaze fixed on something ahead.
Rory followed their line of sight. Tending one of the vineyards was a man. He moved with a practiced, efficient grace, pruning leaves from the thick vines. He was dressed in simple, homespun clothes, and from a distance, he look ed normal. But as they drew closer, Rory saw the details that were off. His eyes were a flat, milky grey, and his hands, though deft, trembled with a constant, minute tremor. He didn't look up as they passed. He didn't seem to notice them at all, his focus utterly consumed by his task. He hummed the same frantic, melodic tune they heard on the wind, a mindless, looping refrain.
Further on, they saw others. A woman with hollow cheeks meticulously arranging the crystal fruit in a wicker basket. An old man Polishing the silver bark of a tree until it shone like a mirror. They all had the same vacant look , the same obsessive dedication to their work. Contracted souls. Master chefs, gardeners, artisans, trapped in a gilded cage of endless servitude.
They rounded a bend in the path and the source of the smells and sounds became terrifyingly clear. Spread out before them in a wide valley was a city—or not a city, but a single, sprawling complex of open-air kitchens, banquet halls, and feasting pavilions. Gilded spires and domes rose into the amber sky, and pennants of silk in jewel tones snapped in the warm breeze. Thousands of people milled about. Some, like the workers in the fields, were shuffling through their duties with vacant expressions. But others… others were feasting .
They sat at long tables laden with mountains of food. Golden-brown roasted birds bigger than swans, platters of glistening , jewel-toned fruits, rivers of dark wine flowing from ornate fountains. The revellers ate with a desperate, frantic energy, stuffing food into their mouths, their faces slick with grease and juice. But there was no joy in their feasting. There was no laughter, no conversation. Only the rhythmic sound of chewing, of silver on porcelain , of wine being gulped from golden goblets. Their eyes were wide and hungry, endlessly hungry. They ate as if they were starving , even as their bellies strained against their fine clothes.
A man near the edge of a pavilion suddenly groaned, clutching his stomach, his face pale with sweat. But even as he grimaced in pain, his other hand reached out, trembling, for another slice of meat pie. He couldn't stop.
“Gluttony,” Rory breathed, the single word a shard of ice in her chest. It wasn’t just about excess. It was a curse. A hunger that could never be sated.
“They feast to forget they are the feast,” Nyx whispered again, and this time Rory understood. Their souls, their essences, were being consumed by this place, by the endless, grinding desire it manufactured.
The sheer scale of it was dizzying. Rory felt a wave of nausea , the rich smells in the air suddenly turning rancid in her nostrils. Her hand rested on the Fae blade, its familiar cold a stark contrast to the cloying warmth of Dymas. Her gaze swept over the feasting masses, the enslaved workers, the opulent, sickening architecture. They had come here for a reason, but right now, all she felt was the overwhelming urge to turn and flee, to find the tear in the Veil that had brought them here and claw her way back to the cold, honest damp of a London autumn.
Isolde touched her arm. The Half-Fae’s touch was light as a moth’s wing, yet it steadied her. “The heart of the hunger lies deeper,” Isolde said, her lavender eyes fixed on the largest dome in the centre of the complex, a structure of gleaming gold that seemed to pulse with the amber light. “Where the first plate was served, and the final bill comes due.”
Rory nodded, swallowing hard. Deeper. They had to go deeper. She look ed from Isolde's ethereal , determined face to Nyx’s shifting, shadowy form. An oracle who spoke in riddles and a shadow that spoke in chilling truths. And her. A delivery girl from Cardiff, standing at the gates of culinary Hell. She drew a steadying breath, the air thick with the promise of endless a la carte damnation. Her fingers brushed the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist, a familiar, grounding gesture. Then she took the first step forward, down into the valley of the damned.