AI Mud tasted like spiced wine.
Aurora spat the grit from her mouth, scrambling for purchase on soil that felt disturbingly like rising dough. The ground beneath her gave way with a wet squelch, threatening to swallow her boot whole. She yanked her foot free, the sound obscene in the heavy silence , and rolled onto her back.
Her lungs heaved, trying to process air that was too thick, too sweet. It coated the back of her throat like syrup.
"Check your corners."
Aurora’s hand flew to the moonsilver hilt at her belt before her eyes fully adjusted. The voice was a jagged whisper , the sound of dry leaves skittering over pavement.
Nyx stood—or rather, hovered—three feet to her left. The Shade was flickering . In London, Nyx was a void, a silhouette cut from the fabric of reality. Here, under a sky the colour of bruised amber, they looked frayed at the edges. The relentless, gold-tinged light seemed to gnaw at their substance.
"I'm clear," Aurora rasped, pushing herself upright . Her delivery uniform was soaked in something stickier than water. "Isolde?"
"Present."
The answer drifted down from above. Aurora looked up to see the Seer perched effortlessly on the twisted root of a tree that defied botany. Isolde looked immaculate. Her silver hair caught the amber light, shimmering with an iridescence that hurt to look at directly. She didn’t embrace the gravity of this place; she ignored it.
"Where is this?" Aurora wiped the sweet mud from her cheek. "The coordinates were for the transit station."
"The Veil is tempestuous." Isolde stepped down from the root, her feet finding purchase on the sponge-like moss without leaving a depression. "We aimed for a hallway. We landed in the larder."
Aurora scanned the horizon and felt her stomach drop.
They stood in a valley of excess. To the north, mountains of bone-white stone pushed against the ochre sky, their peaks shrouded in clouds that looked like spun sugar . But the immediate vicinity was a vineyard of nightmares. The vines were thick as pythons, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic thud that vibrated through the soles of Aurora's boots. Leaves the size of umbrellas cast long, ruddy shadows, and the grapes...
The grapes were the size of human heads. They hung heavy and dark, their skins stretched taut to the point of bursting.
"Dymas," Nyx hissed, their form compressing into a tighter, sharper shape . "The Garden of Gluttony."
Aurora’s hand went to her chest. The Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt wasn't just warm; it was searing . It throbbed in time with the vines, a synchronized beat that made her teeth ache. "My necklace is going haywire."
"It recognizes its home," Isolde said, her pale lavender eyes scanning the tree line. "We should not linger. The flora here... feeds."
As if in response, the nearest vine shifted. It wasn't a sway of the wind—the air was dead still. It was a muscular contraction. A tendril, thick as Aurora's wrist and covered in fine, translucent hairs, uncoiled slowly from the dirt, blindly seeking heat.
"Move," Aurora ordered.
She didn't need to tell them twice.
They picked a path through the overgrowth, heading toward the distant white mountains. The walking was arduous. The ground seemed to want to keep them, the mud clinging with the tenacity of a jealous lover. Every step required deliberate force.
"don't touch the fruit," Nyx warned, drifting through the trunk of a massive, twisted olive tree. "Whatever you see, whatever you smell. Don't touch it."
"I wasn't planning on it." Aurora ducked under a low-hanging branch that dripped a viscous, golden resin. The smell was overpowering now—roasted meats, fresh bread, and the cloying scent of overripe peaches, all underscored by a faint, metallic tang of copper.
"You say that now," Nyx murmured. "Wait until the hunger sets in. The air here carries enzymes. It digests you from the outside in, triggers a metabolic crash. You will want to eat."
"Comforting." Aurora checked the crescent scar on her wrist, a nervous habit. "So, we're walking through a stomach ."
"A palate," Isolde corrected. She paused by a cluster of crimson flowers that looked suspiciously like open mouths. "A stomach implies function. This realm is entirely about sensation."
The Seer tilted her head, her long silver hair defying the humidity. "Something approaches."
Aurora froze. She didn't hear footsteps . She heard *slurping *.
A wet, dragging sound echoed from the density of the vines ahead. It was accompanied by a low, chittering click-clack, like silverware hitting a plate.
"Hide," Aurora whispered.
She dove behind the bole of a tree that smelled like cinnamon and rot . Nyx dissolved, stretching thin to become a shadow upon the bark. Isolde simply stepped backward, and the light seemed to bend around her, rendering her into a blur of motion and background.
Into the clearing stumbled a creature.
It was vaguely humanoid, hunched over on four spindly limbs that ended in porcelain -white claws. Its skin was pink and raw, glistening as if flayed. But its face was the stuff of fever dreams. It had no eyes, only a massive, vertical mouth that split its head in two, filled with rows of flat, grinding teeth.
It dragged a sack behind it. The sack moved.
Aurora held her breath, her hand gripping the Fae-Forged blade so hard her knuckles turned white . The cold of the moonsilver bit into her palm, grounding her against the humid heat of the realm.
The creature stopped by one of the massive grape clusters. It reached out with a trembling claw and punctured the skin of a fruit. Red juice sprayed out, thick and arterial. The creature squealed—a high, ecstatic sound—and shoved its face into the rupture, drinking frantically.
"A Harvester," Nyx’s voice was a vibration against Aurora’s ear, soundless to the outside world. "Low-level demon. Driven only by consumption."
"The sack," Aurora mouthed.
The burlap fabric kicked violently. A muffled cry, human and terrified, barely escaped the heavy weave.
Aurora didn't think. The pragmatic part of her brain, the part that survived law school and the abusive ex and the streets of London, screamed that this was a stealth mission. But the part of her that drove a scooter through rainstorms to feed people, the part that couldn't walk away, took over.
She stepped out from behind the tree.
"Hey. Ugly."
The creature’s head snapped up, ruby liquid dripping from its vertical maw . It hissed, the sound like steam escaping a pipe.
"Let the bag go." Aurora drew the leaf-shaped dagger. The moonsilver blade flared with a soft, pale light, cutting through the amber gloom .
The Harvester shrieked and lunged.
It was fast, blurring across the doughy soil. Aurora sidestepped, her boots sinking, compromising her balance. The creature’s claw slashed the air where her throat had been a second before.
"Dodge left!" Nyx roared, abandoning stealth.
Aurora twisted, dropping to one knee. The creature overshoot, its momentum carrying it into the cinnamon tree. Before it could recover, Aurora drove the Fae blade upward.
It didn't sink into flesh; it felt like cutting through wet clay . The creature howled, a sound of pure resonance that shook the leaves overhead. It dissolved not into blood and bone, but into a pile of ash and sticky, black tar.
The sack lay on the ground, still kicking.
Aurora scrambled over to it, slicing the twine at the top. "I've got you. You're okay."
She ripped the fabric open.
She recoiled, scrambling backward on her hands and heels until her back hit Nyx’s solidifying legs.
"What is it?" Isolde asked, materializing beside them.
Aurora stared. "It's… nothing."
The sack was empty. No person. No victim. Just a heap of rotting vegetables—turnips and potatoes that had been carved to look like faces. Their mouths were sewn shut with black thread.
"A lure," Isolde said, her voice dropping an octave . "The sack did not contain a prisoner, Aurora. It contained the *idea * of a prisoner."
"It sounded human," Aurora insisted, her heart hammering against her ribs . "It kicked."
"Poltergeist activity bound to organic matter," Nyx said, kneeling to inspect the tar where the demon had died . "This realm anticipates what will draw you out. For you, evidently, it is the need to save something."
Aurora stood up, wiping her blade on her trousers. Her hands were shaking . "It knew I’d step in."
"Dymas is a realm of desire ," Isolde said, her eyes fixed on the path ahead where the vines had begun to knit together, blocking the way they came. "It knows what you hunger for. Food, power, heroism… it makes no difference to the soil."
The ground beneath them rumbled. Not the heartbeat thud from before, but a deep, tectonic shifting . The amber sky darkened to the colour of dried blood.
"We have attracted attention," Nyx said, their shadow-form billowing like smoke in a gale . "The Prince does not like his gardeners being pruned."
Aurora looked at the carving of the turnip face. It looked vaguely like her father. She kicked it away, jaw setting tight.
"Fine. If they know we're here, we stop tiptoeing." She grabbed the Heartstone pendant, letting the burn focus her. It pulled north, toward the bone-white mountains. "We have a delivery to make. Let’s go break something."
"That is the spirit," Nyx drifted forward, the violet light in their eyes burning brighter. "Though I suggest we run. The trees are starting to drool."
Aurora looked up. The canopy was indeed weeping a caustic, sizzling sap.
She ran.