Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXM4WABYB4VJBTMTWSD9Q

The wildflowers never moved with the wind in Isolde’s grove. There was wind—Aurora could feel it cool against the sweat on her neck, could hear it hiss softly through the tall, unmoving grass—but the blooms stood utterly still, cups of impossible color raised to a sky that was more blue than London ever managed. She stepped between the ancient oaks that marked the boundary, sneakers whispering over moss that felt like carpet soaked in moonlight. A crow called somewhere far behind her, distant and muffled, as if through glass. Before her, the grove opened like a held breath. Isolde waited at its center. She never sat, never leaned. She simply stood, silver hair spilling down her back, pale lavender eyes fixed on something that was not quite Aurora and not quite the world behind her. Light did odd things around her—bent a little, softened, as if reluctant to touch her directly. “You are late,” Isolde said, though there was no reproach in it. Her voice was like water running over stones, shaped by old currents. “The hour has eaten itself thin.” “District line was down,” Aurora said automatically. “Signal failure.” Isolde’s gaze refocused, faint amusement flickering at the corners of her mouth. “Metal worms and broken veins. The city forgets how to carry its own blood.” Aurora stopped a few steps away. The air here tasted different—sweet and green and sharp, like biting into an apple and finding starlight on her tongue. Her heart beat too fast. The pendant at her throat throbbed once, a soft pulse of heat against her skin. It had begun about three days ago, the faint warmth flaring at odd moments as she ran deliveries across the city. On the bus. In the stairwell to her flat. Worst of all, when she’d cut through an alley in Soho and seen, for half a second, the air along the brick wall ripple like heat on tarmac. She raised her hand to the Heartstone now. The deep crimson gem glowed faintly against her fingers, inner light breathing. “You feel it,” Isolde said. Not a question; the Fae never asked when they already knew. “The red mouth that calls across the dark. Always hungry, always home.” Aurora swallowed. “You said you could show me where it’s…coming from.” Isolde inclined her head. “A door born of appetite. You carry its tooth.” Her gaze dropped to the pendant. “It seeks its parent.” Aurora’s other hand brushed the hilt at her belt, fingers tracing the cold moonsilver of the Fae-forged blade. The dagger never warmed, no matter how long she wore it. She’d slept with it under her pillow the first night she’d had it, desperate for some comfort in metal. It had been like holding a piece of winter. “Is it Hel?” she asked. The word tasted wrong in such a green place. “The seventh feast,” Isolde replied. “The table that eats the guests.” She smiled then, sharp and almost kind. “Dymas. The glutton’s garden.” “Of course,” Aurora muttered. “Why would it ever be something simple like…Bournemouth.” “Nothing simple waits for you,” Isolde murmured. “You do not belong to simple roads.” A chill walked itself down Aurora’s spine. She opened her mouth to argue—she belonged to takeaway orders and missed trains, thanks—but shadows on the far side of the grove rippled, and the words died. They weren’t shadows, she realized. Not exactly. The darkness between two oaks deepened, thickened, peeling itself away from the bark in a tall, lean shape. It stretched, gaining edges, then took on the suggestion of a person: rough shoulders, narrow waist, height leaning toward the lanky. Within that silhouette, twin points of faintly glowing violet opened like eyes. “Aurora,” Nyx whispered. Their voice was always soft, but it traveled cleanly through the grove, touched every leaf and petal. “You came.” “Didn’t think you’d miss a field trip to Hell,” Aurora said, because the alternative was acknowledging the way her skin prickled when they emerged like that. “Afraid I’ll get lost without you?” “In Dymas,” Nyx said, “no one gets lost. The land finds you.” Their shadow-head turned toward Isolde. “You are sure?” “Certainty is a mortal luxury,” Isolde said. “But the pattern speaks. The stone in her throat would open with or without your hand. Better the knife that walks beside her.” Nyx’s gaze slid back to Aurora, those violet embers unreadable. “You will not go alone,” they said simply. “I remember the taste of that sky.” Aurora licked her lips, which had gone dry. “Great. Guided tour.” The wind that didn’t move the flowers threaded through her hair, lifting the straight black strands off her neck for a moment before setting them down again. Somewhere beyond the grove, a dog barked; the sound came in delayed, like an echo arriving before its source. “Time frays differently here,” Isolde said, noticing her glance. “On the other side, it is not a thread but a feast. It stretches and snaps. Mind your steps.” “I’ll bring you back a souvenir,” Aurora said, trying for lightness and landing somewhere near brittle. “Demonic fridge magnet. Nice for the mantle.” Isolde tilted her head, as if listening to words Aurora hadn’t spoken. “Bring back your name,” she said quietly. “Hel likes to salt its meat with such things.” Before Aurora could decide whether that was metaphor or a very direct warning, the seer turned away, bare feet whispering over moss without leaving so much as a hint of disturbed green. She stopped between two of the oldest oaks, their trunks thick and twisted, bark ridged like the skin of an elephant. The air between them had always seemed slightly denser to Aurora’s eye, even the first time she’d stumbled into this place. A shimmer, a faint distortion, as if the world’s texture was thin there. Now Isolde lifted her hands, palms up, and murmured something in a language that tasted of cold iron and wild honey. The distortion thickened. Light warped into a shallow curve, then deepened into a visible ripple. It was like looking at the space above a hot stove—but instead of heat, Aurora felt cold pour off it, sharp and clean, cutting through the summer-warm air. The Heartstone flared against her chest, warmth surging into a steady burn. The gem’s inner glow intensified, crimson deepening to the color of arterial blood. “Ah,” Nyx breathed. “It recognizes the call.” The air between the oaks shimmered again, then split. There was no flash, no dramatic crack of thunder. It simply parted, like a curtain of glass being drawn aside. Beyond it, space was…wrong. The colors didn’t match anything she knew. Warmth poured through—no, not warmth. Richness. The air itself had weight, thicker and more saturated, heavy with scents that rolled over her in a dizzying wave: roasting meat, crushed grapes, sugar caramelizing on hot metal, spices she couldn’t name. Her stomach clenched. She wasn’t hungry. She’d eaten before coming, very deliberately. But the air wrapped around that rational knowledge and squeezed. Isolde lowered her hands. “The Veil thins,” she said. “Walk quickly. Do not look back until you stand again beneath my sky.” Aurora swallowed hard. “Any last-minute riddles? Tips? Don’t eat the yellow snow of Hell, that sort of thing?” Isolde’s smile was small and sharp. “Take nothing freely given,” she said. “Offer nothing you cannot live without. And remember: in the house of gluttony, sometimes the feast is you.” “Comforting,” Aurora muttered. Nyx stepped closer to the rift. Their form darkened, edges firming in the face of the other place beyond. “Stay near me,” they said. “The shadows there know old tricks.” “You’re a shadow,” Aurora pointed out. “I am a guest,” Nyx replied. “Guests are…optional.” The not-door yawned before them, its border a thin edge of shimmering light where grove-blue met the warm, close hue of the other sky. Aurora could feel the line between here and there like a wire drawn across her chest. She took a breath that tasted of damp earth and wildflowers, then stepped through. Crossing the Veil wasn’t like stepping through a doorway. It was like being threaded through the eye of a needle. For an instant her body compressed, every atom of her squeezed into something narrower than a thought. Her ears popped—no, imploded. There was sound, a high, peeling note like glass stretched to shattering, and beneath it a deep, swallowing hush. Her vision folded: she saw Isolde and the grove and herself from above and below and within, all at once, then none of it. Then she was out, stumbling, her foot catching on unfamiliar ground. Nyx’s hand—cool, with the give of thick smoke—closed around her elbow, steadying her. Aurora sucked in a breath and nearly choked on it. The air was…delicious. She hated that word, but there was no other. It rolled into her lungs like cream, like the scent of bakeries at four in the morning multiplied by a thousand. Roast fat, crackling and hissing. Citrus bright enough to burn her nose from the inside. Dark chocolate’s bitter edge. Bread, warm and soft and yeasty. Wine, rich and grapey, slightly fermented. And beneath it all, something else: a sweetness that had gone too far, sugar burned black. “Careful,” Nyx murmured. “Breathe small.” She obeyed, taking shorter sips of air, letting the taste brush her tongue without swallowing it whole. Her eyes watered. When she blinked them clear, the world resolved. The sky was not blue. It was a warm amber, the color of honey held against the sun. It seemed closer than it should, low and thick, with slow rivers of darker gold moving through it like currents in a deep sea. Whatever light it gave off was diffuse and intimate, as if the whole realm existed inside a vast, glowing bottle. They stood at the edge of a terrace, the ground underfoot a dark, glossy substance that might have been stone and might not. It looked like cooled caramel, smooth and glassy in some places, bubbled and cracked in others. Her foot scuffed it; tiny crumbs came away, sticky on her sole, releasing a sudden puff of scent like burnt sugar. Before them, the land fell away in a series of descending shelves, a vast amphitheatre of cultivation. Rows of vines stretched in improbable neatness along each terrace, but they were nothing like the vineyards she’d seen in travel documentaries. The vines themselves were thick, their bark not bark but something smoother, more like tightly wound muscle. They gleamed faintly in the amber light, cords twisting and knotting together. From them hung clusters of fruit the size of her fist, each one translucent, colors ranging from deep garnet to pale rose. Within each orb, something moved—a slow, pulsing throb. Aurora’s skin crawled. “Tell me those aren’t…alive.” “They are,” Nyx said. “And they are not.” “Comforting,” she said again. Further down, beyond the vineyards, she saw orchards: trees with trunks like polished bone, branches arcing gracefully under the weight of impossible produce. Some bore fruits shaped like spiraled shells, others like folded tongues of flame. Water—or what she assumed was water—ran in channels between the rows, except it wasn’t clear. It shimmered red and gold, viscous, catching the light like molten resin. Distantly, she heard laughter. Clinks of glass. The murmur of many voices overlapping in a constant, hungry susurrus. None of it came from anywhere she could see. The Heartstone against her chest burned hotter, its warmth pushing through the cotton of her t-shirt. Aurora pressed a hand to it, fingers feeling the rapid, steady pulse. It was like touching something living. “Welcome to Dymas,” Nyx said softly. She realized her mouth was watering. She swallowed hard. “Great. Very…picturesque. Does everything smell like a Michelin star restaurant mated with a diabetes ward?” “This is the edge,” Nyx replied. “The kitchens begin closer to the heart.” The way they said heart sent a prickle through her, like static. Something rustled to their right. Aurora spun, hand going automatically to the dagger at her belt. The moonsilver was shockingly cold even through the thin leather wrap of its hilt, a slice of winter in the sugared air. A plant—if it could be called that—had grown up over the lip of the terrace. It resembled a cluster of oversized pea shoots, tendrils a glossy, hungry green. Each tendril ended not in a leaf but in a small, cupped pad fringed with soft-looking cilia. The whole mass leaned toward her, questing. As she watched, one tendril stretched closer, the pad opening like a miniature hand. The scent that rolled off it was outrageous: fresh-baked bread, butter melting into crumb. Her stomach tightened. She hadn’t been hungry. She was now. The tendril inched toward her wrist, cilia twitching. Nyx’s shadow elongated without them moving, sliding across the caramel-glass ground like spilled ink. It touched the plant, and where shadow met green, frost crackled. The tendril recoiled with a shrill, almost inaudible squeak, shriveling in on itself. The cluster pulled back over the terrace’s lip, sulking. “They feed you if you let them,” Nyx said. “And then you feed them.” “Noted,” Aurora said. Her pulse pounded in her throat. “Hands to myself.” She forced her fingers to unclench from the dagger’s hilt. The blade hummed faintly, as if pleased or alert. A sliver of her tension loosened; at least something here belonged to a set of rules she recognized. Weapon good. Hungry plants bad. “Where are we going?” she asked. Nyx turned their head, scenting the air—or something like it. The edges of their silhouette shivered, then stilled, pointing slightly to the left. “There,” they said. “Can you feel it?” Aurora closed her eyes for a moment, focusing past the riot of sensory input. The endless feast-scent. The warm thickness of the air. The subtle stickiness on her soles with each step. Beneath it, yes. A tug, deep in her sternum. The Heartstone’s heat pulling like a magnet toward…something. Down-slope and inward, toward the terraces’ center, where the amber light seemed densest. “Yeah,” she said. “Like a really aggressive sat nav.” She opened her eyes. Nyx’s gaze lingered on the faint red glow at her throat. “Old things stir when their children come home,” they murmured. “Again with the creepy phrasing.” “You prefer I lie?” Nyx asked mildly. The humor in their whisper was fragile, brittle as sugar glass. “No,” she said, surprising herself with the speed of it. “Just…maybe a little sugar-coating.” “In this place,” Nyx said, “that may be the most dangerous thing of all.” They moved. Walking down the terraces felt like descending into a bowl. The air grew warmer, the scents stronger, until breathing felt like eating. Aurora’s teeth ached; her tongue felt coated, as if she’d gorged on sweets. Not everything was grotesque. That was the problem. The beauty here was almost obscene. On the second terrace, the vines’ fruits were paler, almost clear, each orb containing a slow swirl of color that moved like smoke trapped in glass. When the wind-not-wind brushed them, they chimed softly, a delicate, crystalline song. On the third, the bone-trees’ fruits opened and closed in slow motion, revealing interiors that glowed with their own light: luminous pulp, pearlescent seeds. Tiny, winged things flitted from fruit to fruit, their bodies made of facets like cut gemstones, wings beating so fast they hummed. When one passed too close to Aurora’s face, the scent of honey filled her head, warm and narcotic. For a second, the overwhelming wish to taste it nearly drowned her. She clenched her jaw until it hurt. “This place is weaponized pastry,” she muttered. Nyx’s almost-shoulder brushed hers, a stripe of cool against the heat. “It was built for souls who signed away their hunger,” they said. “The architects were…thorough.” On the fourth terrace, they found the path. It began as a barely perceptible depression in the glossy ground, then deepened into a channel where countless feet had once passed. The caramel-stone there had worn away to reveal something beneath: a darker material that absorbed the amber light rather than reflecting it. Embedded along its edges were small, dull points of metal—forks, Aurora realized, their tines hammered into the ground, handles sticking up like tiny, skeletal boundary markers. The tug in her chest intensified as soon as she stepped onto it. Heat flared from the Heartstone, warmth spilling up into her throat, down into her ribs. It was not painful, exactly, but it was demanding. “Easy,” she told it under her breath. “We’re going.” No answer, of course. But the pulse steadied, syncing uneasily with her own heartbeat. They followed the fork-lined path down, the terraces now less focused on cultivation and more on…architecture. Structures emerged from the caramel ground: low, sprawling pavilions with roofs like layered pastry crusts, walls encrusted with what she first took for jewels before realizing they were preserved fruits, candied and lacquered until they shone. Through open archways, she glimpsed flashes of interior spaces: ovens big enough to park cars in, their mouths red and hungry; counters piled high with vegetables that twitched faintly, peeling themselves; knives that moved through the air without hands, chopping in precise, endless rhythms. No one seemed to be there, but the work went on. The laughter and clinking she’d heard earlier grew louder, though she still saw no diners. “Where is everyone?” she whispered. “Eating,” Nyx said simply. “Or being eaten.” She shot them a look. “Would it kill you to be just a little less ominous?” They didn’t answer, but their shadow-hand brushed her back as they guided her around a large, round building half-sunken into the terrace. Up close, she could see that its walls were not smooth; they were formed of layered plates—like the scales of a great fish, each one the size of a serving platter, engraved with tiny scenes of feasts. As the amber light shifted, the engravings seemed to move: hands passing dishes, mouths opening, eyes closing in bliss or horror. It was hard to tell which. The Heartstone flared hotter as they approached. Aurora’s breath shortened, not entirely from the air. “Is that…?” “The banqueting heart,” Nyx said quietly. “Old, even by their measure. I did not think it would still be standing.” “Reassuring,” she said weakly. A doorway yawned before them, tall enough for three people to walk through side by side, its threshold marked with a double line of embedded spoons. Beyond, darkness. Not the absence of light, but a fullness of it, thick and velvety. The air that drifted out carried a new undercurrent beneath the food-scents: something metallic and sour. Like old blood. The dagger at her hip thrummed, a faint, eager vibration. Its cold seeped more insistently into her palm when she touched the hilt. Aurora’s throat worked. “How far in are we going?” “Until the stone tells us to stop,” Nyx said. “Or until Dymas itself objects.” “Love that.” She hesitated at the threshold. The urge to look back, to see the amber sky one more time, hit her hard. Isolde had said not to. Don’t look back until you stand again beneath my sky. She stared into the dark instead, jaw clenched. Nyx stepped in first, their outline rippling, then firming as the shadows took them. Violet eyes glowed a little brighter. Aurora took one more breath of sugared, spiced air. It coated her lungs, set her teeth on edge. Then she stepped over the line of spoons. Inside was not silence. It was sound stretched thin. Her footsteps echoed too long, as if the hall she’d entered were larger than the building’s outside suggested. The darkness was not total; it had texture. Soft glimmers here and there, like reflections caught in the curve of a wineglass. The air was cooler, the overload of scents dialed back to something bearable, though the underlying wrongness of them remained. Gradually, her eyes adjusted. She stood in a vast hall. The floor beneath her feet was a mosaic—no, not tile. Bones. Tiny ones, fitted together in intricate patterns, polished to a dull, ivory sheen. Above, the ceiling arched high, supported by pillars that curved slightly inward, like ribs. She realized, with a cold shiver, that they probably were ribs. Long tables ran the length of the hall, each one hewn from some dark, richly grained wood that glistened wetly. On them lay places already set: plates of hammered gold, goblets of cut crystal, napkins folded into elaborate shapes. No chairs—only low, cushioned benches, their surfaces stained darker in patches that might have been old wine. Or might not. The feast was already served. Dishes lay along the tables in riotous abundance. Platters piled with fruit that glistened under some invisible light, meats roasted to glistening perfection, bowls of steaming things that changed color if she looked at them directly for too long. There were pastries that rose and fell with slow, breathing motions, soups whose surfaces reflected not the hall but something else—forests, oceans, cities of fire. Nothing moved, yet the impression of recent motion hung in the air, like the echo of laughter. “Empty,” Aurora whispered. “For now,” Nyx said. She stepped closer to one of the platters despite herself. The smell coming off it was indescribable: everything she’d ever loved to eat layered atop one another and multiplied. Her eyes watered. The food itself, though, was wrong. At first glance, the dish looked like a simple roast—a golden-brown bird, skin crisp, juices pooled beneath. But as she leaned in, details resolved. The wing joints bent the wrong way. The texture of the flesh where it had been carved was too striated, more like muscle than poultry. Beneath the crackling skin, something pulsed once, a slow twitch, then went still. Aurora recoiled. The Heartstone seared against her skin, as if in response. She gasped, a small sound of pain escaping. “Here,” Nyx said quickly, moving to her side. The heat wasn’t just warmth now; it burned, an urgent, demanding throb. Her fingers fumbled at the pendant, trying to lift it away from her chest. The gem’s crimson light flared, casting bloody reflections on the polished bone floor. “The hall recognizes its child,” Nyx murmured, something like awe in their voice. “Tell it I’m returning it for a refund,” Aurora hissed through her teeth. As if answering, the light from the Heartstone surged outward, a pulse that rippled through the air. It struck the nearest table; the dishes rattled, goblets chiming. The sound spread in a wave down the hall, silver and sharp. In its wake, things woke. Not the food. Not quite. Reflections in the crystal goblets shifted, the liquids within darkening, swirling. The ribs overhead creaked faintly, as if stirred by some deep breath. Shadows pooled thicker in the corners of the hall, then oozed along the floor, drawn toward the crimson glow at Aurora’s throat. “Nyx,” she said, voice tight. “Please tell me that’s just the ambient creepiness and not, say, the building noticing we broke in.” “Dymas notices everything,” Nyx said. “But this… This is old work.” Their gaze tracked the spreading shadows. “Older than your benefactor, perhaps. Or the same.” “Reassuring,” she said again, and her laugh rang too loud in the bone-quiet hall. The warmth in the Heartstone peaked, then, blessedly, began to ease, settling from searing into a deep, steady heat. The crimson light dimmed to its usual soft glow. In the center of the hall, between the two longest tables, something glinted on the floor. Aurora found her feet moving toward it before she’d fully decided to. The mosaic of bones underfoot shifted subtly as she walked, patterns reconfiguring, tiny vertebrae and ribs rotating to form new designs. Faces, for an instant, their mouths open. Then gone. At the glinting spot, the bone mosaic gave way to a smooth inlay of dark substance—not quite stone, not quite metal. In it was carved a shallow depression the exact size and shape of the Heartstone pendant. She stared down at it. Her throat felt too small. Nyx’s shadow stretched beside her, their violet eyes burning faintly in the dim. “There,” they said softly. “Now we know why it called you.” Aurora’s hand closed around the pendant, feeling the steady heartbeat of its warmth. She did not move to place it in the waiting hollow. Deep above them, in the arch of ribs, something shifted. Dust—if it was dust—fell in a slow spiral, sparkling faintly as it caught stray glimmers of light. The scent in the hall thickened, the sweetness edging sharper. Wonder and unease wrapped tight around her ribs, indistinguishable. She stood at the center of an ancient hunger and realized, with a clarity that cut through the cloying air, that stepping through the Veil had only been the first bite. “Next time,” she murmured, fingers white-knuckled on the pendant’s chain, “I’m insisting on Bournemouth.” Nyx’s whisper brushed her ear like a draft. “Next time,” they said, “we may not be able to leave at all.” In the amber-lit world beyond the ribbed walls, unseen, the vineyards of Dymas shivered in anticipation.