AI The sensation of crossing the Veil was less like stepping through a door and more like being pulled inside out. The grey, drizzling reality of London dissolved, stripped away by a pressure that popped Aurora’s ears and stole the breath from her lungs.
When her boots found purchase again, the ground was too soft.
Aurora Carter stumbled, instinctively tucking her chin as she fought the vertigo. She reached out to steady herself against a tree trunk, but the bark felt unnervingly like warm leather. She recoiled, her hand dropping to her chest. Beneath her shirt, the Heartstone pendant hammered against her sternum, pulsing with a fervent, almost painful heat. It had only ever hummed before; now, deep within the realm of Dymas, the silver-chained artifact seared with recognition.
"Breathe, Rory," a voice whispered, sounding like dry leaves skittering over stone.
Aurora forced her eyes open. The air was thick, humid, and smelled aggressively of fermentation—honey, yeast, and rotting peaches. She looked up, expecting the gloom of a subterranean cavern or the fire of a hellscape. Instead, she found herself bathed in an eternal, golden sunset.
The sky was a bruised amber, vast and cloudless, casting everything in the heavy, saturated tones of an oil painting left too long in the sun. This wasn't the dark; it was a blinding, oppressive opulence.
"So this is the realm of hunger," Aurora muttered, pushing her straight black hair back from her damp forehead. Her bright blue eyes darted around, scanning for threats.
"Gluttony," Isolde corrected gently . The Half-Fae stood a few yards away, her silver waist-length hair shimmering with its own internal light, distinct from the amber glow of the realm. "Hunger implies a lack. Dymas is the presence of too much."
Isolde turned in a slow circle. She wore the alien landscape as easily as a silk robe, her expression unreadable . Beside her, or rather, diffused around her, was Nyx. The shade had solidified into a tall, human silhouette, roughly six-foot-two, composed of darkness so absolute it seemed to drink the golden light of the orchard. Two points of violet bioluminescence burned where eyes should have been.
"The air is heavy," Nyx whispered, their voice vibrating in the hollows of Aurora's skull rather than her ears. "It wants to be breathed. It wants to be tasted."
Aurora checked her belt. The Fae-forged blade Isolde had given her was there, its moonsilver hilt radiant against her hip. She brushed her fingers against the pommel. It remained startlingly cold, a sliver of winter resisting the Dymasian heat. The temperature difference grounded her.
"We need to move," Aurora said, her pragmatic side wrestling down her awe. "If the codex was right, the portal dropped us on the periphery. We aren't near the palace."
"No," Isolde agreed, her lavender eyes distant. "But the periphery of Prince Belphegor’s domain is no stark wasteland. Look."
She gestured with a slender hand. They stood on the edge of a sprawling vineyard that defied logic. The grapevines were as thick as pythons, twisting around trellis arches carved from what looked like giant, polished femurs. The grapes themselves were the size of apples, clustered so densely they threatened to snap the wood, their skins a deep, violent purple almost black in the amber light.
They began to walk. Aurora took the lead, her boots sinking inches into the loamy, moss-covered earth with every step. It was exhausting, like walking through wet dough. She glanced back at Isolde and felt a spike of envy; the seer walked atop the moss, leaving absolutely no footprints, her movement eerie and gliding. Nyx simply flowed, their form occasionally losing cohesion and drifting like smoke before reforming over a stubborn root.
As they pushed deeper into the vineyard, the silence began to gnaw at Aurora. It wasn't quiet—there was the sound of dripping juices, the rustle of leaves that were too large, the distant hum of insects—but there was no birdsong. No wind.
"Don't touch anything," Aurora warned, though she felt the pull herself. She was thirsty to the point of pain. The grapes glistening at eye level looked impossibly sweet. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist itched, a phantom reminder of mortal accidents in a place that promised immortal satisfaction.
"The flora here is… predatory," Nyx murmured. The Shade paused near a massive flower that resembled a hibiscus, though its petals were the texture of velvet and the color of raw meat. Nyx extended a shadow-tendril toward it. The flower shuddered, its petals flinching away from the void-touch of the Shade. "It is alive in ways your botany would not categorize."
"It’s cultivated," Isolde said, her voice tight. "Everything here is grown for the table. Even the things that shouldn't be."
Aurora halted. "What does that mean?"
Isolde pointed to a grove of trees ahead. Their bark was pale and smooth, and their branches wept sap that smelled of roasting hazelnuts. But it was the roots that made Aurora’s stomach turn. They didn't just disappear into the earth; they coiled and writhed slowly , repositioning themselves in the soil with a wet, sucking sound.
"The souls bound here," Isolde said, her truth-compulsion stripping the sugarcoating from her words. "They are not tortured with fire. They are the soil. They are the fertilizer. Their desire to consume binds them to the roots, feeding the orchards of the Prince."
Aurora looked down at the mud caking her boots. She suppressed a gag and kept moving, faster now. "Great. Fertilizer. Let’s not join them."
The path widened, opening into a clearing that stole the breath Aurora had just recovered.
Before them lay a banquet hall without walls. A long table, carved from a single slab of obsidion, stretched for a hundred yards, disappearing into the golden haze. It was laden with food—mounds of roasted meats that still steamed, towers of pastries glistening with glaze, bowls of fruit that looked like jewels. The smells were distinct and overpowering: sage, caramelized sugar, gamey venison, sharp cheese.
But there were no diners.
"It’s a trap," Aurora said, her hand tightening on the hilt of the moonsilver dagger. The cold bite of the metal traveled up her arm, clearing the fog of hunger that had begun to settle over her mind. The Heartstone at her throat pulsed a warning rhythm—*danger, danger, danger.*
"It is an offering," Nyx corrected, drifting closer to the table. "Or perhaps… refuse."
Aurora stepped up beside the Shade. Up close, the illusion of perfection cracked. The roasted shades of meat were weeping dark, viscous fluid. The pastries were crawling with iridescent beetles that shimmered like emeralds. A goblet of wine had spilled, but the liquid hadn't soaked into the table; it had eaten a hole through the stone, hissing faintly.
"It is waste," Isolde whispered, looking revolted. "Gluttony isn't about eating until you are full. It is about taking more than you can hold, and letting the rest rot. This table… this is the refuse of the Prince’s kitchens."
Aurora saw something glinting near a pile of molding pomegranates. She reached out, careful not to touch the fruit, and used the tip of her dagger to shift the pile.
It was a pair of spectacles. Wire-rimmed, cracked, unmistakably human. Modern.
"Someone was here," Aurora said, her voice hard. "Someone from home."
"A chef, perhaps," Nyx suggested, their violet eyes narrowing as they scanned the horizon. "Many are contracted. Few return."
Isolde suddenly stiffened. Her ethereal stillness broke as she snapped her head toward the far end of the table. "We are seen."
Aurora spun around. The ambient noise of the garden—the dripping, the rustling—had stopped. The silence was absolute now, heavy and expectant.
From the amber haze at the end of the table, a shape began to coalesce. It wasn't a demon with horns, nor a soldier. It was bloated and round, hovering slightly off the ground, suspended by gas-filled bladders of skin that floated like grotesque balloons above its shoulders. It wore robes of yellow silk that strained against its bulk.
"Visitors," a voice boomed, wet and gurgling. It didn't come from the figure's mouth, but seemed to bubble up from the table itself. "And so lean. So... empty."
Aurora stepped in front of Isolde, drawing the Fae blade fully. The moonsilver glowed, cutting a stark blue line through the amber twilight. "We're just passing through," she called out, channeling every ounce of the cool-headed confidence she used when dealing with drunk patrons at Silas's bar back in London.
"None pass through Dymas," the creature gurgled, drifting closer. The air around it rippled with heat. "We only digest."
Nyx expanded, their shadow-form stretching tall, becoming a towering spike of darkness that loomed over Aurora. "Aurora," the Shade whispered, the sound like a knife scraping bone. "The ground."
Aurora looked down. The soft earth around the obsidian table was churning . Vines, thick and pale as human limbs, were erupting from the soil, groping blindly for their ankles.
"Isolde?" Aurora asked, her grip on the dagger white-knuckled.
"I see the path," the seer said, her lavender eyes glowing. She pointed sharply to the left, towards a dense thicket of thorns that looked impassable. "The thorns are an illusion. A glamour to hide the servants' exit. The table is the distraction."
"Go," Aurora commanded.
As the bloated steward drifted closer, mouth opening to unleash a torrent of bilious magic, Aurora didn't run immediately. She grabbed a heavy silver platter from the table—laden with a suckling pig—and hurled it with all her strength at the creature.
It wasn't a lethal blow, but the indulgence of the realm worked against it. The creature instinctively snatched the offering out of the air, distracted by the excess even in the midst of a fight.
"Move!" Aurora yelled.
They bolted. Nyx encased them in a shroud of dimness, blurring their outlines. Isolde ran with supernatural grace, and Aurora sprinted through the cloying mud, her lungs burning with the sweet, rotten air of Gluttony. They crashed into the wall of thorns, bracing for pain, but passed through them like mist.
On the other side, the air was cooler. The golden light was dimmer. They tumbled onto a paved stone path, gasping for breath.
Aurora checked her wrist, then her chest. The Heartstone was still pulsing, but slower now. She looked back through the shimmering veil of the glamour. The massive, bloated shape was still hovering over the table, tearing into the distraction she had thrown.
"Welcome to Hell," Aurora wheezed, wiping slime from her boot. "I hate it here."
"The feeling," Nyx whispered, turning their void-gaze toward the distant spires of a palace rising on the horizon, "is entirely mutual."