Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT00219A0WVA8SYR7XX929W

The air changed the moment they stepped across the shimmer. It stopped being London — thin, exhaust-stung, familiar — and became something that smelled of candied citrus and iron. Aurora kept her hand tight on the pendant beneath her collar. The Heartstone had started to warm against her skin on the path in the scrubby park where the rift had opened; now it throbbed like a second heartbeat, a tiny, impatient drum against bone. "Do you feel that?" Eva's voice tasted thin, as if the sound had been dipped in syrup. She kept close, knuckles white around the strap of her satchel. Her eyes kept skimming the horizon and returning to Aurora, like she expected the world to answer back with instructions. Rory's lips pressed into a line. The crescent scar on her left wrist itched as if the skin remembered a different urgency. "It's not welcoming," she said. They had not chosen Dymas for comfort. The pendant had pulled; the pulse had been undeniable, a warmth that keyed to openings in the Veil. Aurora walked because curiosity had a particular gravity for her and because, if the Heartstone had come from here, it might answer things that hummed beneath the surface of her life. The sky above spread like a slab of amber glass, warm light pouring through as if through honey. It brightened the grapes that dotted the endless vineyards — grapes the size of fists, their skins almost translucent, veins glinting like strings of molten gold. Trees lined the avenues, trunks braided with vines that bore fruit like miniature moons. Leaves chimed softly when the breeze passed, not with a wind but with something that moved from inside them, a slow, liquid music. "Like a painting someone licked too many times," Nyx said, and the voice skimmed across their words like mothwings. They had taken solid form again, a tall slip of shadow outlined by faint violet. Where they moved, the amber seemed to swallow edges and give everything a softened outline. When Nyx reached out, a cluster of berries clung to their fingers and left no stain where shadow met fruit. Rory sniffed and tasted sweetness at the back of her throat. "You look ridiculous," she told them, and meant it as balm. She needed the normal to anchor her wandering thoughts. Nyx's shoulders shifted as if in a laugh. "I prefer 'draped in taste.'" They moved deeper and found the orchards opening into a clearing where tables had spread like islands. The tables were enormous, polished to a mirror sheen, laden with platters of food that seemed to breathe. Roasts seethed with simmering glazes; jelly domes sat with captured storms inside, lightning regular and harmless; platters of fish sparkled as if they were still breathing. The closer they walked, the louder the place became — not with people but with sound that suggested people: cutlery tapping in a rhythm that sounded like counting, distant voices layered into harmony, a laugh that trailed a second, lower undertone as though two mouths shared it. "There's so much," Eva whispered. "Everything here was made to be eaten," Nyx said, and their whisper threaded through the air, making the distant copper bells resonate. They reached a hand toward a pile of leaves that glittered with sugar. The leaves shivered under their touch and exhaled a scent that smelled of warm bread and river mud. A figure watched them from beneath a trellis: a man in an apron, his eyes too bright, his smile an arrangement of too many teeth. He moved with the same slow confidence as the landscape, not hurried but deliberate, like a predator dressing for ceremony. "New guests," he said when he stepped out so the light fell across his face. He had scars that glittered like gold leaf along his forearms. Without waiting, he presented a plate — a blossom blooming from sugar and steam. "Welcome to Dymas." Rory held up her hand. The blade at her hip, the Fae-forged dagger Isolde had given her, was an odd comfort; it gave off a cold that pushed at the heat around them. The moonsilver caught the amber light and seemed to drink it away, leaving a thin smear of blue where it passed. The pendant at her neck thudded against her breastbone, hot as if it had been set inside a living thing. It pulsed faster now, as if urging her forward. "How do we—" Eva began. "Shouldn't we leave?" someone else asked. The voice came from the rear where a man in a working jacket hesitated, hands pushing back hair from his forehead. He had been silent until that breath. He had chosen to come for reasons he refused to explain, a rare, practical presence in their odd band. Nyx stepped between them and the man at the trellis. They did not move like a person stepping forward as much as shadow rearranging itself. Their hand passed through the man's sleeve with no resistance; the man's skin puckered as if something cold had walked over it and then smoothed. "You all smell like curiosity," the cook said. "It is a fine scent. Belphegor appreciates appetite." The name landed like a stone. Nobody moved. Nobody invited trouble. The atmosphere had been decadent and unaware; the moment a proper name dropped, the place sharpened in a way that tasted like metal. "Who is Belphegor?" Eva asked, voice threaded with a child's caution. Her fingers found Aurora's and tightened. "He collects," Nyx said. "Everything that can be desired and has a price." They tilted their head, watching the plates as if reading a quiet ledger in the shimmer. "He rules here, soft and patient as a maw." The cook smiled wider. "Then taste. Taste and bind yourself to flavour." They walked among the tables as if treading through a dream reconstructed from recipes. The chairs were crafted from braided vines, their backs carved with little sigils that looked like spooned eyes. On one table a chandelier hung upside down, dripping glistening custard that never fell. On another, a fountain tossed clear syrup into the air; little fish flicked through it and left trails like ink brushstrokes. Fruit rolled once at their feet and stopped, as though obeying an inscrutable command. "I don't like it," the practical man muttered. He dabbed at his mouth though his lips were spotless. He barked a laugh that had no real heat. "It feels staged. Not staged, but rehearsed. Like they're playing at being alive." "Everything here was staged long before any of us were born," Nyx observed. "The world likes repeating itself." At the far edge of the clearing, beyond a mound of loaves that steamed with sighs, a low wall of hedges shielded a courtyard. Vines climbed the wall, their tendrils threaded with tiny mirrors that reflected the amber sky in shards. From within the courtyard came music that was almost a language; it had accents that prickled the skin, pauses that translated into memory. Rory walked toward it, and the Heartstone's throb felt like somebody running a hand along the inside of her sternum. The pendant cast a faint red wash beneath her collarbone; the glow seemed to bleed into the air and touch the vines as if they remembered colour incorrectly. "Don't go," Eva said. The plea had more backbone now, threaded with something fierce. "Then stay," Rory told her. She kept walking. Curiosity pulled; the pendant grounded it with a thirst all its own. When she reached the hedge, the mirrors tilted and reflected her face back twenty times, an echo of expressions she had not realised she'd made. Behind the wall a colonnade loomed. Statues had been carved from crystallised sugar and sat in frozen postures. They were certainly statues at first glance, regal figures with crowns of pastry. The closer she came, the more she saw the seams along their necks, the faint stitches that suggested they had been repaired and restored so often that the repairs had become decor. Between them, a doorway yawned, rimmed with moulded marzipan, and beyond that, darker air pooled, the kind that did not respect the rule of amber light. A draft sighed through the doorway like a story exhaled. The Heartstone pulsed. Rory felt it like a small animal under her palm, eager to move. "There's a thinness here," Nyx said. Their voice softened, as if from afar. "The Veil thins like cloth worn at the elbow. A place where the Barrier favors appetite." "Belphegor's garden," the cook offered, as if reciting a line from a playbook. "People come from beyond with wishes that taste like constellations. They are fed wishes until they are quiet." Rory listened to Nyx. The Shade had the odd habit of stating what they found and leaving the interpretation to other people. There was something steady in that. She stepped into the doorway. The air beyond changed again. The amber became denser, thicker, almost syrupy, and temperature dropped in contradictions — a cool that bit like crushed mint and a warmth that soothed like milk. Her fingers trailed along the wall; the sugar statue's jaw was smooth and left a dusting of sweetness on her knuckle. The Fae blade at her hip hummed against her thigh, a tiny, cold pain like ice on a cut. It glowed a ghostly silver where it touched shadow; where it did, the amber light exhaled and lost colour. A corridor opened to a vast chamber. The chamber was a banquet hall without walls, only plates of food that stretched into distance, arcs of standing tables connected by bridges of bread. The ceiling was not a ceiling but a sky of suspended candles, each flame a miniature theatre replaying a scene. Among the food, at intervals, sat small cages of glass. Inside some were people frozen mid-bite, expression slack, eyes like polished bone. Their mouths moved slowly in a loop, as if chewing through years. Eva sucked a breath that sounded like a sob pressed into a sound. "They're not asleep," she said. "They're not dead." "They are bound," Nyx replied. They drifted nearer to the cages, and a shadow leaned out from behind a frozen man, watching as much as if it were watching a performance. "Souls contracted." Rory's stomach tightened into tight knots, not hunger; a thread of obligation. Each cage bore a lacquer label, tiny letters shifting like fish scales. Names. Dates. A small glyph she recognised, an old warden mark — then crossed out, overwritten. The pendant pulsed like a frantic heart. "Look," the practical man said. He tapped a jar perched on a pedestal near a fountain. Inside, a liquid shivered with the same red as the Heartstone. Tiny whorls swam within. When he touched the jar, a memory pressed against his hand — the smell of his mother's raincoat, a laugh, a favourite alleyway. He recoiled as if he'd bitten into something bitter. "People bottled," Eva said, voice gone dry. She swallowed as if the air itself had become chewable. "They kept what they wanted." "Kept and curated," the cook observed, reverence in his tone now. "One man's hunger becomes an exhibit." A server glided past them, tray balanced on the palm of a hand that left no shadow where it passed. The server's mouth was full of sugar and grief. "Be careful where you taste," it sang, a line that might have been a warning if they had not wrapped it in song. Rory felt the Fae-forged blade tug at her waist as if it recognised the threat like a hound. She had felt its ability to cut wards once, a clean, true thing, and now it thrummed with intent. She put a hand on the hilt and felt the cold travel up her arm, whitening the skin. The Heartstone surged in tempo, an answering drum. For the first time since they'd arrived, she felt a precise clarity: the pendant buzzed at the presence of a rift. The cages were not just for bodies; they ringed something — the air at the chamber's centre shivered and bent, a thinness like a throat clearing. "That's it," Nyx said, and their voice was all rustle. "A tear. A knot pulled too tight." They walked the ring. The labels on the cages were names of missing people from the city; familiar street vendors, a boy from a post-code Rory could have traced on a map, a woman's name she had read in last week's missing notices and almost forgotten. Each label made the Heartstone warm white-hot. The pendant seemed to know the geography of this place better than they did; it drew them, tugged like a sinew connecting shoulder to bone. "Why would they keep people like this?" Eva demanded. Her voice had an edge that made plates vibrate faintly. "Sometimes a world like this kept what it liked," the cook said. "Sometimes people traded pieces of themselves for the indulgence. Sometimes things were taken." Nyx tilted their head. "Belphegor liked bargains that left him fat and others hollow." A hush fell that did not belong to the room so much as to something listening. The distant laughter stopped mid-arc. The candles winked. The vines leaned in. Rory's fingers tightened on the pendant until the metal warmed the skin of her throat. The Fae blade at her hip sang in a voice only she could hear, a small note that promised cutting and clarity. She thought of Isolde's hands when she had given the blade to her, of the Seer's she had left behind in the grove who spoke in riddles and left breadcrumbs. She had not come to Dymas for salvation. She had come because something that had come from here asked for answers. "Then we do not bargain," she said, and the words landed in the clearing like a coin on glass. She slid her hand along the blade's hilt and felt it cool the heat of the Heartstone, a counterpoint. Nyx watched her with eyes that seemed to gather shadow and spill it gently. "Or we bargain, but on our terms." They did not cross into the center yet. They walked the ring once more, letting the world show them its seams. The feast glittered and the cages breathed. Somewhere beyond the mirrored hedges a new chorus rose, a layered hymn that tasted metallic and sweet. The pendant pulsed against her breastbone like someone knocking on the inside of her ribs. The Fae-forged blade hummed with low steel. The group stood in the heart of indulgence, and awe leached into unease until it became a tool they could wield. "One step," Eva whispered. "One step," the man echoed, steady as a hinge. Nyx's grin, made of shadow and mischief, unfolded. "All doors had steps," they murmured. "Best to count them first." Aurora took a breath, long and steady, and felt the world press back with the knowledge that had been kept here, polished until it gleamed like a meal. She lifted the Fae blade and moved forward. The pendant warmed like a promise and the amber world watched, curious and patient.