AI The heartstone pulsed against Rory’s skin, a steady, warm thrum that was not her own. It had started as a faint, almost-imagined warmth back on the mundane gravel path of Richmond Park. Now, past a ring of ancient oaks that stood too straight, too perfectly spaced to be natural, it felt like a tiny, living coal against her sternum. The air itself had changed the moment they’d stepped between the mossy stones. It tasted of honey and damp earth, of something wild and old that had no name in her world.
“Do you feel that?” she whispered, her voice swallowed by the heavy, perfumed silence .
Nyx, a column of shifting darkness at her side, tilted their head. There was no face to read, only the faint, disconcerting glow of violet light where eyes should be. “The air is thin here. Stretched. Like canvas over a vast, empty frame.” Their voice was the barest rustle of sound, a secret told on the wind. It made the fine hairs on Rory’s arms stand on end.
They moved forward, the three of them, into the heart of the grove. Isolde led them, a silver-haired spectre gliding soundlessly over a carpet of wildflowers that should not have been in bloom. Lavender, foxglove, and blossoms Rory had no name for unfurled in riotous, impossible color, their petals seeming to drink the strange, soft light that filtered down from a sky that was… wrong.
Rory stopped, tilting her head back. The sky above the canopy wasn’t the overcast grey of a London afternoon. It was a deep, bruised twilight, an eternal dusk where a few early, brilliant stars already pricked the velvet expanse. No moon. Yet the grove itself was illuminated by a gentle, sourceless radiance that clung to the leaves and petals, making everything glow from within.
“Time doesn’t hold its breath here,” Isolde said, not turning . Her words were melodic, layered, as if she spoke with more than one voice. “It exhales. It lingers. An hour here might be a minute in your world, or a day. The grove decides.”
A shiver that had nothing to do with temperature traced its way down Rory’s spine. Out-of-the-box thinking was her specialty, but this was a box she hadn’t known existed. The logical part of her mind, the part trained for pre-law, scrambled for footing and found none. The air was too sweet, the light too false, the silence too profound . It was like stepping into the illustrations of a storybook, beautiful and utterly terrifying.
Nyx flowed ahead, their shadowy form seeming to absorb the ambient light. They passed a tree with bark that shimmered like mother-of-pearl, and as their darkness touched it, the tree responded. Faint, phosphorescent runes flickered to life along its trunk, swirling in patterns that made Rory’s head ache to look at. Nyx reached out a hand that was little more than condensed night, and the runes swarmed to their fingertips like curious fireflies before fading away.
“It remembers,” Nyx murmured, their whispery voice filled with a strange, ancient sadness. “This place remembers things that were old before my first life began.”
“All places of power have a memory,” Isolde said, pausing beside a still, black pool that reflected the star-dusted sky perfectly . “Most have simply forgotten how to listen.” She did not look into the water, and Rory noticed with a fresh pulse of unease that the Seer’s feet, clad in simple leather sandals, left no impression on the soft, damp earth around the pool’s edge.
Rory’s own trainers sank slightly . She was real, solid, an anchor in this place of whispers and echoes . The crescent scar on her wrist itched, a familiar , mundane sensation that was suddenly a comfort. She reached into the pocket of her jacket, her fingers closing around the cool, smooth hilt of the Fae-forged blade Isolde had given her. The cold of the metal was a shock, a jolt of reality in the dreamlike grove. It seemed to hum in her grip, a faint, high-frequency vibration that resonated with the throbbing of the heartstone at her chest. They were connected, these artifacts from different worlds, and they were both aware of this place.
She drew the blade. In the gloom of the perpetual twilight, the moonsilver dagger gleamed with its own inner light, a cool, blue-white radiance that cut through the grove’s fey glow. The intricate , leaf-shaped blade seemed to sharpen the very air around it.
Isolde finally turned, her lavender eyes settling on the weapon. A faint, unreadable smile touched her lips. “It recognizes its kin. The magic here is old, cousin to that which forged your blade. It sings to it.”
As if in response, the grove seemed to breathe. The flowers around their feet swayed though there was no wind. A low, melodic chime rang out, like a crystal glass being struck , emanating from the depths of the woods ahead.
“What was that?” Rory asked, her grip tightening on the dagger . Her heart was beating a quick, steady rhythm against the warm pulse of the stone.
“An invitation,” Isolde said. “Or a warning. They are often the same thing in the old tongue.”
Nyx coalesced back beside Rory, their form solidifying until they stood as a tall, imposing silhouette. “The path forward narrows. The energy concentrates. We are being funneled.”
Rory looked past them. Isolde was right. The sprawling, flower-strewn clearing was indeed tightening into a natural corridor formed by two immense, intertwined trees. Their branches formed a gnarled archway, hung with curtains of silver moss that swayed gently . Beyond the arch, the light changed again, deepening to a richer purple, and the air hummed with a tangible power that raised goosebumps on her skin.
This was it. The point of no return. She could still turn back, retrace her steps to the standing stones, to London, to her part-time job and the flat above Silas’s bar. To a life that made sense.
The heartstone gave another, stronger throb , a demand. The Fae blade was cold and certain in her hand. Nyx was a pillar of silent strength beside her, and Isolde, the eternal oracle, waited with the patience of the ageless.
Cool-headed, she reminded herself. Intelligent. Quick thinking.
She took a breath of the honey-thick air and stepped under the arch. The silver moss brushed against her shoulders like cool, damp fingers. The hum in the air intensified, vibrating in her teeth. The corridor opened into another, smaller clearing, and the sight made her breath catch in her throat.
In the center stood a single, colossal tree, its trunk so wide a car could have driven through the hollow at its base. Its leaves were not green, but a burnished, shimmering gold , and they chimed softly against each other in a non-existent breeze. From its branches hung hundreds of delicate, glass-like fruits, each one glowing with a captured, swirling light—tiny galaxies suspended in amber.
Beneath the tree, the ground was not earth, but a solid, polished mirror that reflected the impossible golden canopy above with perfect clarity. It was like standing between two heavens. Looking down was as dizzying as looking up.
“The Axis Mundi,” Isolde’s voice was a reverent whisper . “A world-tree. A place where the Veil is not a wall, but a… window .”
Nyx drifted toward the mirrored floor, their own dark reflection a startling blot of nothingness in the radiant scene. They knelt, a motion that was eerily fluid, and pressed their shadow-hand against the cool glass. The surface rippled like water, the stars and golden leaves in the reflection shattering and reforming.
“It is thin here,” they said, their whisper filled with newfound intensity . “I can feel the other side. The cold of Hel. The whispers of Dymas.” They looked up, their violet gaze finding Rory. “Your stone… it is not just a key. It is a compass. And it is pointing straight down.”
Rory looked at the majestic, beautiful, terrifying tree, at the infinite reflection beneath her feet, and felt the relentless, warm pull of the pendant against her skin. Down. The answer, the next step, the danger—it wasn’t ahead of them. It was below. The wonder of the grove curdled into a sharp, crystalline unease. They weren’t just in an otherworldly place. They were standing on its doorstep.