AI The air in the grove had been cool, smelling of damp earth and night-blooming jasmine. The air that greeted them on the other side of the shimmering rift was warm, thick, and carried the scent of honey, roasted meat, and fermenting fruit. It was like stepping from a chapel into a tavern kitchen at the height of service.
Aurora Carter—Rory—stumbled, the heel of her boot sinking into something soft. Not mud. She looked down. The ground was a velvety, moss-like covering in a deep burgundy, and it gave underfoot with a faint, springy resistance. It felt alive.
“Steady,” a voice whispered, the sound seeming to form from the coalescing shadows beside her. Nyx solidified from a dark smear in the air into their familiar humanoid silhouette, their faintly glowing violet eyes surveying the new terrain. “The crossing is always… disorienting.”
Rory straightened, her hand going instinctively to the silver chain at her throat. The Heartstone Pendant pulsed against her skin, a slow, warm throb like a second heartbeat. “It’s warm here,” she murmured, already shrugging out of her jacket. The sky above was not a sky at all, not as she knew it. It was a dome of warm, luminous amber, shot through with slow-moving currents of deeper gold and copper. There was no sun, yet the light was diffuse and constant, casting long, rich shadows.
“Time moves differently here as well,” Isolde said, her voice a melody that seemed to blend with the low, ambient hum of the place . The Half-Fae seer stood a few paces ahead, her silver hair almost glowing against the amber backdrop. She left no impression on the burgundy moss. “But the direction of its flow is less predictable than in my grove. An hour may be a minute, or a year. We should not linger aimlessly.”
They were in a garden, but it was a garden from a delirious dream. Trees bore what looked like gilded pears and sapphire-hued apples, their skins so perfectly reflective they seemed to hold miniature versions of the strange sky within them. Flowers the size of dinner plates hung from creeping vines, their petals layered like ruffled silk in impossible gradients of color: crimson bleeding into gold, violet into emerald. The air buzzed, not with insects, but with a soft, chiming resonance , as if the very pollen drifting in the warm air was vibrating .
“This is Dymas?” Rory asked, her voice hushed .
“The realm of gluttony,” Nyx confirmed, their form flickering at the edges as a particularly dense shadow from a twisted, candelabra-like tree passed over them. “A place of eternal harvest. Do not eat anything. Do not drink anything. The indulgence is the trap.”
They moved forward, the strange moss muffling their footsteps . Rory’s analytical mind, the one that had parsed legal texts and now navigated London’s labyrinthine streets for deliveries, began cataloguing. The geometry was wrong. Paths curved not around obstacles, but *through * them, with arches of woven vine forming tunnels through thickets of jewel-toned berries. A stream they crossed ran not with water, but with a clear, syrupy liquid that smelled intensely of elderflower and sunlight. Nyx flowed over it like smoke. Rory and Isolde stepped carefully on smooth, flat stones that seemed placed for that purpose .
The wonder began to curdle into unease. It was too quiet, save for that ambient hum. Too perfect . No birds sang. No creatures scurried in the undergrowth. The bounty was staggering, overwhelming, yet it felt utterly sterile. It was a display, not an ecosystem.
The garden gave way to a terraced expanse of vineyards. The grapes were black, each one the size of a small plum and glistening with a dewy sheen. Beyond the vines rose the first true structures they had seen: low, sprawling buildings of honey-colored stone, their roofs curved like the backs of resting beasts. Smoke, fragrant with wood spice and caramel, rose from countless chimneys.
A wide, flagstone path led towards the largest of the buildings. As they approached, the sounds began. The clatter of pans, the hiss of steam, a cacophony of chopping, the murmur of a hundred simultaneous conversations. It was the soundtrack of a grand, endless banquet.
They paused at the edge of a vast courtyard. Before them was an open-sided hall, its interior a scene of controlled, glorious chaos. Long tables groaned under platters of food so elaborately constructed they resembled architecture: castles of pastry, forests of carved vegetables, glazed meats arranged in sunburst patterns. Figures moved among the tables—some humanoid, their features blurred as if seen through heat haze, others more solid, dressed in simple tunics, their faces etched with a timeless, focused exhaustion. The helbound chefs.
But it was the diners that stole Rory’s breath. They were shades of magnificence and decay. A woman in a gown of woven rose petals laughed, her teeth stained purple, juice dripping from her chin unheeded. A corpulent man with skin the texture of baked clay methodically stripped the flesh from a roast fowl with his hands, then began on the bones, crunching them with apparent delight. Their eyes were glassy, fixed on the next delicacy, the next goblet. There was no conversation of substance, only grunts of pleasure, demands for more.
“The consumption is the worship here,” Isolde whispered, her pale lavender eyes wide. “They feed to feed the realm’s nature. They are both devotees and fuel.”
A deep sense of revulsion twisted in Rory’s gut. This wasn’t hunger. It was a void. The pendant at her chest gave a sudden, sharper pulse , so warm it was nearly hot. She glanced down. The deep crimson gemstone was glowing from within, a faint light thrumming in time with the beat she felt against her skin.
Nyx’s whisper was urgent. “The stone feels a portal. A working one. Not our entry point. Another.”
“Where?”
Nyx’s shadowy head inclined towards the far end of the grand hall. There, an archway led deeper into the complex , flanked by two immense statues. The statues were of a robust, crowned figure holding a cornucopia—Prince Belphegor, Rory assumed. But as she watched, the stone eyes of one statue seemed to track the journey of a serving platter carried by a bound soul. Not an illusion. The pupil, carved from a jet-black gem, swiveled minutely.
“We cannot walk through that feast,” Rory said, her mind racing . “We’d be offered food, pressed to join. Or recognized.”
“The shadows are deep at the edges,” Nyx murmured. “I can guide you. Stay close to the walls. Move as they move.” They gestured towards the helbound servants, who flowed along specific routes with their burdens, eyes downcast, never interacting with the feasters.
Isolde nodded. “I am Fae-touched. Glamour is my nature. I will make us… uninteresting. A ripple in the corner of the eye, nothing more.” She breathed out a silver-tinged sigh, and the air around them seemed to waver, like the surface of a pond briefly disturbed.
Together, they slipped into the shadow of a great brick oven, its heat blasting them in a wave. The smell was intoxicating—crusty bread, melting cheese, fragrant herbs. Rory’s stomach , pragmatic and earth-bound, growled treacherously. She clenched her jaw, focusing on the cold weight of the Fae-Forged Blade sheathed at her hip, a counterpoint to the Heartstone’s warmth .
They moved like ghosts along the periphery, Isolde’s glamour making the feasters’ gazes slide over them. Rory saw details up close that were worse from a distance. The fine cracks in the clay-like skin of the diners. The way the woman in the rose-petal gown had thorns growing from her knuckles. The empty, endless hunger in every pair of eyes.
The archway loomed . The stone sentinels upon it were even more unsettling up close. Their mouths were curved in benign smiles, but the craftsmanship was so fine Rory could see individual teeth, and something about the hollow of the throat suggested it was shaped to swallow sound, or light, or hope.
As they passed directly between them, the Heartstone flared. A surge of heat, not painful but urgent, shot through the chain . Rory gasped. At the same moment, the jet-black eyes of both statues snapped down from their survey of the hall, fixing directly on the space where Rory stood.
The glamour shattered . Isolde let out a soft, pained cry, as if the effort had been ripped from her.
One of the statues shifted, not in posture, but in substance . The stone of its cornucopia seemed to liquefy, spilling not stone fruit, but a creeping, viscous shadow that began to drip onto the flagstones, moving against gravity towards them. A low, grinding rumble emanated from its chest, the sound of millstones turning deep within the earth.
Nyx flowed forward, placing their incorporeal form between Rory and the animate stone. “Go,” they whispered, a sound like wind through a canyon. “The portal is close. The guardians stir to its call. I will delay them.”
“Nyx—”
“Go, Rory!” The whisper was a command. Nyx’s shadowy form expanded, deepening, becoming a wall of absolute darkness that swallowed the advancing, dripping shadow from the statue.
Rory didn’t hesitate. Seizing Isolde’s arm, she sprinted through the archway, leaving the sounds of the feast and the silent, grinding struggle behind. They plunged into a narrower corridor, the amber light dimmer here. The pulse from the pendant was a frantic drum against her breastbone, pulling her forward, a compass needle pointing true into the heart of the alien, wondrous, and terrifying dark.