AI The air shimmered like heat haze over asphalt, but the sensation was cold, a sudden plunge into an ice bath that stole the breath from Rory’s lungs. One moment, they were stepping between two lichen-covered standing stones in Richmond Park, the next, the world dissolved into a cascade of amber light and the overwhelming scent of honey and spice.
Rory stumbled, her boots sinking into soft, mossy turf that hadn’t been there a second ago. The familiar sounds of London—distant traffic, a barking dog, the hum of a city alive—were gone . In their place was a low, resonant hum, like a thousand bees buzzing inside a colossal glass jar. The sky above was a perpetual, warm sunset, a deep amber canopy without a sun, casting everything in a golden, eternal twilight.
“Well,” she breathed, her voice sounding small and thin. “This isn’t Richmond.”
Nyx solidified beside her, their form condensing from a wisp of travelling shadow into a tall, humanoid silhouette. The faint violet glow of their eyes scanned the horizon. “The boundary was thinner than I anticipated. A solstice effect, perhaps.”
“Or someone left the back door unlocked,” Rory muttered, her hand instinctively going to the Heartstone Pendant at her throat. The crimson gem pulsed against her skin, a steady, warm rhythm that felt like a second heartbeat . It was comforting, a tether to something familiar in this impossible place.
A few paces ahead, Isolde stood perfectly still, her silver hair seeming to drink the amber light. She left no impression in the velvety moss beneath her bare feet. “Dymas,” she said, her voice a melody that didn’t quite belong to the alien landscape . “The Prince’s larder. He is a connoisseur of exquisite suffering.”
Rory took a hesitant step forward. The ground was springy, covered in a moss that released a puff of cinnamon-scented pollen with every footfall . Towering trees, unlike any she’d seen, arched overhead. Their bark was smooth and pale like birch, but their leaves were broad and veined with gold, rustling with a sound like softly clinking crystal . Between their roots grew clusters of fat, purple mushrooms that pulsed with a gentle, internal light.
“It’s beautiful,” Rory admitted, the words feeling like a betrayal. It was. It was also deeply, profoundly wrong.
“Beautiful things often have the sharpest teeth,” Nyx whispered, their voice the brush of wind through dead leaves. They gestured with a shadowy hand toward a path that wound away from the small clearing. “The energy is stronger that way. A confluence.”
They began to walk, the trio moving in a tense, silent procession. The path was lined with shrubs bearing fruit that looked like ripe peaches, but their skins shimmered with an oily, iridescent sheen. Rory reached out, curious, but Nyx’s form shifted, a cool tendril of darkness brushing her wrist back.
“Do not touch what you do not understand, Aurora Carter. Gluttony is not merely about consumption. It is about the corruption of desire . To taste that is to crave it forever.”
She pulled her hand back, a cold knot tightening in her stomach . She thought of her cramped flat above Silas’s bar, of the cheap noodles she ate most nights. This place made a mockery of that simple hunger. This was hunger as an art form, a trap.
The hum grew louder as they ventured deeper, resolving into distinct sounds: the distant clatter of pans, a shouted order in a guttural language, and beneath it all, a low, rhythmic thumping, like a massive heart beating under the earth. The air grew warmer, thicker, saturated with the smells of roasting meats, exotic herbs, and something sweet and cloying that made Rory’s head feel light.
They rounded a bend and the grove opened up.
Rory stopped dead, her mind struggling to process the vista. They stood on a ridge overlooking a vast, sunken valley. It wasn’t a natural formation. It was a kitchen, but one carved into the world itself.
Terraced gardens cascaded down the slopes, overflowing with impossible produce—squash that glowed like embers, vines heavy with grapes that dripped a dark, shimmering liquid. At the valley’s heart stood a great stone platform where figures moved with frantic, precise energy. Some were hulking , horned creatures with leathery skin, barking orders. Others were smaller, humanoid, their movements jerky and desperate as they stirred cauldrons large enough to bathe in and turned spits holding entire, unrecognisable beasts over pits of blue fire.
“The help,” Isolde said, her lavender eyes fixed on the smaller workers . Her tone was flat, devoid of its usual lyrical mystery. “Souls bound by contract. Their service is their damnation. They cook for eternity, but may never sate their own hunger.”
One of the distant figures, a man with a gaunt, hopeless face, looked up from his cauldron. His eyes met Rory’s across the impossible distance. For a second, there was a flash of terrified recognition, a silent plea. Then a demonic overseer cracked a whip of flame near his feet, and the man flinched, dropping his gaze back to his endless task.
A wave of nausea washed over Rory. The wonder curdled into pure revulsion. The beauty was a veneer, a gilded cage. The warmth of the pendant at her throat felt suddenly oppressive , a brand.
Nyx shifted, their form rippling with unease. “We are too exposed here. This is a thoroughfare.”
As if summoned by their words, a group of figures appeared on the path below their ridge, heading toward the great kitchen. They were tall, elegant, dressed in silks that seemed woven from the amber sky itself . Their faces were sharp and cruel, their laughter like breaking glass. They paid no mind to the enslaved cooks, discussing the nuances of a sauce one of them had apparently perfected using “the tears of a remorseful liar.”
Rory pressed herself back into the shadow of a gold-veined leaf, her heart hammering against her ribs. She felt the cold weight of the Fae-forged blade tucked against her lower back, its chill a welcome anchor in the fever-dream heat. Nyx melted into the deeper shadows beside her, becoming nearly invisible. Isolde simply stood, watching the Dymasians pass with an unreadable , ancient expression.
When the party had moved on, the only sound was the relentless, pounding rhythm from the valley below and the frantic, hopeless industry it drove.
“We need to find the rift point and leave,” Rory said, her voice tight . “This isn’t a place you explore. It’s a place you survive.”
Nyx re-coalesced. “The Heartstone. Does it guide you?”
Rory closed her fingers around the pendant. Its pulse was stronger now, a insistent thrum pulling away from the kitchen valley, toward a darker, quieter corner of the grove where the amber light seemed to dim and the alien trees grew twisted and close together.
“This way,” she said, and without another word, she led them away from the horrifying spectacle of damned industry, deeper into the whispering, watchful woods of Dymas.