Run: 2026-02-19-01KHSZ1R06JXTH0QHJYFQFFNJ6

The amber sky arched overhead, a permanent sunset that cast long shadows from the twisted, gnarled trees. The air smelled of woodsmoke and roasting spices, sweet and heavy. Aurora took a tentative step forward, her boots sinking into rich, dark soil that gave off a faint warmth. Behind her, Nyx solidified from a pool of shadow, their violet eyes scanning the horizon. Isolde stood between them, her silver hair shimmering like spilled mercury in the strange light. “Dymas,” Isolde whispered, her voice hushed. “A place of eternal appetite.” Aurora’s pendant pulsed against her chest, a steady heartbeat of crimson light. She touched it, the warmth familiar now. “Which way?” Nyx pointed a shadowed hand toward a distant ridge lined with orderly rows of dark-leaved vines. “Movement. Many bodies.” They followed a worn path carpeted with velvety moss that glimmered with gold flecks. The trees around them were heavy with fruit—globes of dusky purple, clusters of crystalline berries, bulbous melons that pulsed with soft inner light. Aurora reached out, her fingers brushing the skin of a pear-shaped fruit; it was warm, like living flesh. She snatched her hand back. “Everything here feeds or is fed upon,” Isolde said quietly. A low hum filled the air, a vibration that thrummed through the soles of Aurora’s feet. As they crested the ridge, the source revealed itself. Below sprawled a vast, tiered garden, a tapestry of colors so vibrant they hurt the eyes. Coppery leaves shimmered beside emerald vines. Flowers the size of dinner plates opened and closed like breathing lungs. And through the gardens moved figures—humanoid shapes with an unnatural grace, tending to plants with careful, ritualistic motions. They were too far to see details, but their movements were synchronized, almost mechanical. “Souls bound to service,” Nyx murmured, their voice a chill breeze in the warm air. “Chefs and farmers and vintners, stolen from your world to fuel Dymas’s appetites.” One of the figures straightened, turning its head slowly toward the ridge. Its face was a smooth, featureless blank. Aurora crouched lower. “They feel wrong.” “They are not whole,” Isolde agreed. “Their memories, their desires—all distilled into a single purpose. To cultivate. To create sustenance for the Prince’s table.” They slipped down the back slope of the ridge, away from the garden. The path narrowed, winding through a copse of trees whose branches were tangled together like clasped hands. The bark was striated with patterns that shifted when Aurora looked at them directly—writhes of dark against lighter wood, forming fleeting images: a laden table, a goblet overflowing, teeth tearing into meat. She shivered. Ahead, the trees parted, revealing a clearing dominated by a structure that stole Aurora’s breath. It was a pavilion made of interlocking ribs—whale bones, she realized, bleached white and enormous, curving up to support a canopy of stretched, translucent membranes that rippled like sails. Beneath it, long tables groaned under impossible feasts. Whole roasted beasts with iridescent skins glistened next to mountains of jewel-toned fruits. Tureens steamed with fragrant soups that shimmered with oil-slick rainbows. And seated at the tables were demons. Not the monstrous forms from storybooks, but beings of unsettling elegance. Tall, slender figures with skin the color of old wine or polished brass or bruised twilight. Some wore elaborate robes, others little more than artful drapes of silk. Horns curled from temples, delicate and sharp. Tails lazily swished. They ate with a focused, ravenous intensity, hands dipping into platters, bringing dripping morsels to thin-lipped mouths. No laughter echoed, no conversation buzzed—just the wet sounds of consumption. At the head of the central table sat a figure larger than the others, slumped in a high-backed chair of carved obsidian. His face was obscured by shadows, but his presence pressed against the clearing like a physical weight. Prince Belphegor. Even from this distance, Aurora felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. “We should not linger here,” Isolde breathed. Nyx nodded, already melting back toward the tree line. “The grove’s gift. Do you feel its call?” Aurora’s hand went to the Fae-forged blade at her hip. The cool metal of the hilt was a shock against her palm, a clarity in the overwhelming sensory feast of Dymas. “I feel it. A pull… westward?” “The Veil is thin there,” Isolde confirmed. “But the way will be guarded.” They retreated, moving swift and silent through the twisted woods. The further they got from the pavilion, the more the landscape changed. The rich soil gave way to cracked, dry earth. The lush trees became skeletal things, branches clawing at the amber sky. The air grew colder, sharp with the scent of ozone and something else—something metallic and old. Aurora’s unease deepened. “It feels like we’re being watched.” Nyx paused, becoming utterly still. “We are.” From the jagged shadows of the dead trees, shapes detached themselves. They were low to the ground, moving with a liquid grace. Dogs, but wrong—their bodies elongated, their hides smooth and hairless, the color of tarnished silver. They had no eyes, only smooth sockets that gleamed with faint inner light. Their mouths were lipless slits filled with needle-sharp teeth. A pack of six surrounded them, silent as ghosts. “Hounds of Dymas,” Isolde said, her voice steady. “They track the scent of magic. Of intrusion.” One hound took a step forward, its head tilting, scenting the air. Aurora’s pendant flared hot against her skin. Nyx shifted, their form bleeding into the surrounding shadows, becoming half-there, half-not. “Do not run. They are faster.” Aurora drew the Fae blade. The leaf-shaped dagger caught the strange light, the moonsilver blade glowing with a cool, blue-white luminescence. The hounds recoiled slightly, a unified hiss escaping their slit mouths. The lead hound lunged. Aurora moved on instinct, not a combat stance but a dancer’s pivot. She stepped inside the lunge, the Fae blade slicing upward. It met no resistance, passing through the creature’s neck like cutting smoke. The hound dissolved into motes of shadow and vanished, leaving only a fading shriek of rage. The remaining hounds hesitated. Isolde raised her hands, palms outward. She began to chant, words in a language that twisted in the air, sharp and crystalline. The ground at her feet erupted with wildflowers—not the alien blooms of Dymas, but familiar Earth blossoms: daisies, bluebells, foxgloves. They spread in a ring, pushing back the dead earth. The hounds snarled, backing away from the circle of living color. A deep, resonant horn blast echoed through the skeletal forest, shaking the dry branches. The hounds froze, their headless forms turning as one toward the sound. Then, as if summoned, they melted back into the shadows, disappearing as quickly as they had come. Silence descended, broken only by the ragged sound of Aurora’s breathing. “The Prince knows we are here,” Nyx said, reforming beside her. Their violet eyes were wide. “That horn calls his guard.” “Then we run,” Aurora said, sheathing the blade. Its cold clarity was a lifeline. “West. To the thin place.” They ran. The dead forest blurred around them, a monochrome nightmare of gray and ochre. Their feet pounded on the cracked earth, kicking up puffs of dust that tasted of ash. Aurora’s lungs burned. The pendant thrummed against her chest, a beacon pulling her forward. The ground began to slope downward. The skeletal trees thinned, replaced by jagged rocks that thrust from the earth like broken teeth. The amber sky darkened toward a bruised purple at the horizon. And there, nestled in a canyon between two massive ridges of black stone, she saw it. A shimmer in the air, like heat rising from pavement on a summer day. But it was colder here, not hotter. The air wavered, distorted, and through the distortion, Aurora caught glimpses of another world—the deep green of a forest, the gray of a London sky. The Veil. It was torn here, a ragged wound in reality. Tendrils of shadowy energy leaked from the edges, snapping like black lightning. “It’s unstable,” Aurora panted, skidding to a halt at the canyon’s edge. “It is our only way back,” Isolde said, her lavender eyes fixed on the shimmering rift. “But crossing… it will not be gentle.” Another horn blast, closer this time. The ground vibrated with the approach of something heavy. Nyx placed a shadow-hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “Now.” They jumped together, into the distortion, into the tear in the world. The cold hit her first, a slicing, soul-deep chill. Then the pressure, crushing her from all sides. Colors bled together—the amber of Dymas, the green of Earth, streaks of impossible violet and void-black. She felt herself stretching, tearing, reassembling. Her last sight of Dymas was of the canyon rim, now lined with tall, armored figures silhouetted against the hellish sky, before the world unraveled into silent, screaming light.