Run: 2026-02-19-01KHSZ122BZ8Y946Z5TRF3AE6W

The air in the clearing changed the moment Rory stepped between the ancient oak standing stones. It wasn’t just the smell — from damp London park to something like crushed mint and wet stone — but the weight of it, as if the atmosphere had thickened. The late afternoon light, which had been a flat November grey outside the stones, bled into a soft, perpetual twilight. It was neither day nor night, but something suspended in between. “Alright,” Nyx’s whisper brushed against her ear, though they were a few paces behind her, a humanoid silhouette of shifting shadow. “This is… not Richmond Park.” Isolde walked ahead of them, barefoot and soundless. Her silver hair seemed to drink the muted light. She left no footprints in the carpet of moss and fallen petals. “Mortals would call it a pocket. A fold in the world’s fabric. My home.” The grove unfolded around them. Trees Rory didn’t recognize towered overhead, their bark smooth and pale as bone, their leaves a deep, shimmering violet. Between their roots, mushrooms glowed with a soft, bioluminescent blue. The ground underfoot was spongy with moss of impossible colors: emerald, gold, a blue so deep it was almost black. Wildflowers bloomed in chaotic profusion — star-shaped blossoms of silver, bell-like flowers that chimed softly in a breeze Rory couldn’t feel, and ones that looked like tiny, frozen flames. “Don’t touch the singing bells,” Isolde said without turning. “They’re having a conversation you wouldn’t understand.” Rory kept her hands close to her sides. The Heartstone pendant against her chest pulsed, not with the sharp warmth she associated with Hel portals, but with a cooler, rhythmic beat, like a slow, distant drum. Nyx flowed past her, their form condensing from a wisp of shadow into a more solid shape. They reached out a hand of darkness towards a trickle of water that ran over a stone covered in luminous lichen. The water looked clear, but where it pooled, it swirled with tiny, shimmering motes like suspended glitter. “The water remembers,” Isolde said. She knelt by the pool, her reflection perfectly still despite the gentle flow. “Every story it has ever carried. It can show you things, if you know how to ask.” “Can it show us how to get what we need?” Rory asked. Her voice sounded too loud in the hushed space. Isolde’s lavender eyes lifted to hers. “It shows what it chooses to show. Not what you want to see.” Further in, the trees began to arch over the path, forming a living tunnel. The air grew cooler. Strange, floating seed pods drifted on unseen currents, each one emitting a faint, musical hum. One drifted close to Rory’s face, and she saw it wasn’t a seed at all, but a tiny, winged creature with gossamer wings folded around a glowing core. It hovered for a second, then darted away. The unease started as a prickle at the back of her neck. It wasn’t fear, not exactly. It was the feeling of being watched by something vast and ancient that had simply paused to note their passing. The wonder of the place was still there — the impossible beauty of it — but underpinning it was a stark, unsettling truth: this was not a place meant for humans. Nyx stopped, their shadowy form blending with the deeper gloom under the tree-tunnel. “Do you feel that?” “The silence,” Rory murmured. She’d only just noticed. There were sounds — the chime of the bell-flowers, the hum of the seed-creatures, the whisper of the strange leaves — but no bird calls. No insects. No scuttling of life in the undergrowth. As if the grove was a beautiful, empty stage. “Life here is… different,” Isolde said. She placed a hand on the pale bark of a tree. A soft, answering light pulsed beneath her fingertips and traveled up the trunk, vanishing into the canopy. “It does not need to chirp or scuttle. It simply is.” They emerged from the tunnel into a wider clearing. At its center stood a structure that Rory’s mind struggled to process. It looked like a tree had decided to grow into a house. Its walls were woven from living branches, thick with silver leaves. Windows were gaps in the foliage, revealing a warm, golden light within. A door, shaped from a single curved piece of wood that looked both incredibly old and still alive, stood slightly ajar. No smoke rose from the chimney-like opening in the roof, but the scent of herbs and something sweet — like baking fruit — drifted out. “Home,” Isolde said, a rare, soft note in her voice. But Rory’s attention was caught by something else. To the side of the living house, half-concealed by a curtain of weeping, glass-like vines, was a pedestal of the same pale stone as the standing stones. On it rested a shallow basin carved from a single piece of crystal. The water within was perfectly still, black as obsidian. Nyx flowed towards it. “A scrying pool.” “One of them,” Isolde acknowledged. “This one looks forward. And sideways. And sometimes back. It is… capricious.” Rory approached. The black water showed no reflection. It was a void. As she watched, a single ripple crossed its surface from edge to edge, though nothing had touched it. The Heartstone pendant gave a single, hard throb against her skin, so sharp it made her gasp. “It knows you carry a piece of another world,” Isolde said, appearing beside her. “Hel resonates here. An unpleasant chord.” “Can you use it?” Rory asked, rubbing her chest where the pendant lay. “To see Dymas? To see what we’re walking into?” Isolde looked from Rory to the pool and back. Her ageless face was unreadable. “I can ask. The water may answer. Or it may show us something else entirely. The future is not a straight road. It is a… a tangle of roots.” She moved to the pedestal and knelt before the basin. She breathed a word onto the water’s surface, a sound that had no English equivalent, all soft consonants and bell-like vowels. The black water shimmered. Then, like ink dispersing in milk, images began to form. Not a clear picture, but impressions. The warm amber sky of Dymas. The overwhelming scent of roasting meats and exotic spices that was almost a taste in the air. Then, a figure — large, imposing, seated on a throne that seemed carved from marbled fat and gemstones. Prince Belphegor. His face was indistinct, but the aura of lazy, oppressive power was not. The scene shifted to a long table groaning under platters of fantastical food, and around it, figures eating with a desperate, frantic intensity that had nothing to do with hunger. Then the image fractured. For a split second, Rory saw herself, standing in a vineyard under that amber sky, the Fae-forged blade cold in her hand. Her own face was grim, set. Behind her, shadows writhed. The water clouded and went black again. Nyx let out a breath that was more a rustle of darkness. “So it’s a party. With a demon prince. And we’re crashing it.” “More than crashing,” Isolde said, rising. The vision seemed to have cost her something; her ethereal pallor was even more pronounced. “You will be entering a realm of obsession. Gluttony is not about sustenance. It is about consumption for its own sake. It is a hunger that can never be filled. It will be in the air, in the food, in the very thoughts of those bound there. Your own desires will be… amplified.” Rory stared at the now-still water. The image of her own determined face lingered in her mind. “What was that last part? The shadows?” Isolde’s lips pressed into a thin line. “The water showed a possibility. One thread in the tangle. Shadows are… plural. They do not belong only to our friend here.” She glanced at Nyx. “There are other things that move in darkness in Dymas. Things that serve the Prince.” The wonder of the grove had evaporated, replaced by a cold, practical dread. The alien beauty was still there — the glowing fungi, the chiming flowers — but now it felt like a mask. A beautiful trap. This was a place of power, of ancient, capricious magic, and they were borrowing a piece of it for a dive into hell. “We need a plan,” Rory said, her voice firm. The cool-headed logic that had gotten her through law tutorials and Evan’s tirades kicked in. “We know the realm. We know the ruler. We have a weapon that can hurt them.” She touched the cool hilt of the Fae-forged blade at her belt. “And we have a way in.” She held up the Heartstone pendant. It pulsed gently, a crimson star against her palm. Nyx solidified beside her, their faintly glowing violet eyes meeting hers. “We also have the element of surprise. They won’t expect mortals to walk in willingly.” Isolde watched them both, her head tilted. A silver flower fell from her hair and dissolved into light before it hit the moss. “You have resolve. That is something the gluttonous cannot comprehend. Their hunger makes them impatient, predictable. Your hunger… is different. Sharper. Use it.”