AI Richmond Park held its usual quiet, the kind that sat behind the traffic noise like a held breath. Rory kept to the darker paths where the streetlamps thinned out and the joggers stopped pretending they liked mud. Damp grass brushed her trainers. Cold slipped through her jacket zip and pressed a thumb against her ribs.
Nyx moved beside her without weight , a stretched silhouette that folded into each patch of shade. Their violet eyes flickered when a cyclist’s light cut across the path, and the rest of them thinned to a smear on the air until darkness took them back.
Rory’s fingers stayed closed around the Heartstone pendant beneath her collar. The gem had felt like a warm coin all day. Now it pulsed against her skin, heat in small, steady beats.
“You’re doing that thing,” she muttered, more to stop her own thoughts from spiralling than to complain.
Nyx’s whisper brushed her ear like dry leaves.
“Counting steps. Counting exits. You stand in two worlds even when you only walk in one.”
Rory snorted and pushed through a stand of bracken. A low rise opened ahead, and there they were—ancient oak standing stones, half-buried, their surfaces slick with lichen. Not arranged like a neat circle. More like a broken jaw, teeth knocked loose, still trying to bite.
No signs. No fences. No “protected site” plaque. Just stone and shadow.
Rory stopped at the edge of the clearing. The air looked wrong above the stones. Not fog, not heat haze. A thin shimmer, like someone had stretched clear film and pulled it tight.
Her pendant warmed until it pressed a small, insistent burn into her collarbone.
Nyx drifted closer to the shimmer. Their outline thickened as if the place fed them.
“The Veil,” they breathed. “Thin here.”
Rory swallowed. Her mouth tasted of copper, as if she’d bitten her tongue. She glanced back at the path. Nothing chased them. Nothing followed. The trees still stood where they always did. Yet the space between the stones looked like the world had forgotten how to behave.
“Right,” she murmured. “In and out. No sightseeing.”
Nyx’s eyes tilted toward her.
“You’ll look. You always look.”
Rory lifted her chin and stepped between the stones.
The park fell away.
Sound died first. The distant road noise dropped like a curtain. Even her footfalls changed; the crunch of gravel turned into a soft, fibrous hush. The air carried a sweet-green smell, crushed stems and sap, and something like rain on hot slate though the cold still bit.
She turned her head, half expecting the stones behind her to vanish. They remained, but the view through them shifted: the path beyond looked further away than it should, as if the space had stretched like chewing gum.
Nyx slid across the boundary and solidified, taller, more defined. Their shadow-body held faint edges now, like smoke trapped in a human shape.
Rory’s breath puffed out and didn’t cloud. It vanished, swallowed by air that felt too clean.
Wildflowers covered the ground in thick, careless colour—violet, gold, deep red, white like fresh paper. They should have wilted in winter. They looked insulted by the concept. A few turned their faces as she passed, tracking her boots.
Rory stopped mid-step.
“No,” she whispered, then tried again with more bite. “No. Flowers don’t—”
Nyx crouched near a cluster of bell-shaped blooms. Their fingers hovered above a petal without touching.
“They listened,” their voice rasped . “They listened to you. The place heard you.”
Rory forced herself to move. Her pendant’s warmth steadied into a constant, a live ember against her skin. She pulled it out by the chain. The deep crimson gem held a faint inner glow, like a coal banked under ash.
It pulsed again, stronger.
“Is that you being dramatic, or is it actually doing something?” Rory held it out.
Nyx leaned in. Their violet eyes reflected in the gemstone, tiny points caught in red.
“It called to something. Or something called to it.”
Rory shoved it back under her collar. “Brilliant.”
They walked deeper.
The grove didn’t feel like a clearing so much as a room without walls. Trees stood with trunks too straight, bark pale as bone in places, veins of silver running beneath like metal threads pressed under skin. Leaves hung in layered fans, and each moved in a different rhythm, as if they heard separate songs.
A thin stream cut through the wildflowers. The water ran clear, but it carried glittering flecks that swirled and clung to stones. When Rory crouched to touch it, cold flashed through her fingertips and up her arm like a warning sting.
She jerked back, shaking her hand.
Nyx watched the stream as if it had spoken.
“Don’t drink,” they murmured. “Don’t bargain. Don’t answer questions you didn’t hear.”
Rory rose, brushing damp off her jeans.
“I didn’t plan to start guzzling mystery water, thanks.”
A birdcall rang out—sharp, three notes. Another answered from somewhere behind them, but the second call played the notes in reverse, as if the sound had rewound itself.
Rory’s stomach tightened. She kept her pace even. Her boots sank a little into the ground, which felt springy, layered with old leaves that never rotted.
“Tell me you’ve been here,” she said to Nyx.
Their shadowed head turned, the movement too smooth, like ink stirred in water.
“I slipped into this edge once,” their whisper came thin. “I didn’t step fully through. It tugged.”
“It tugged,” Rory repeated. “Like a door-to-door salesman.”
Nyx’s eyes held on the trees.
“Like a tide.”
They passed a low mound of stone. Not stacked. Grown. The rock rose from the soil in curved ribs, each rib etched with lines that looked like writing until Rory tried to focus and the marks shifted into vines, then cracks, then nothing.
Her eyes watered. She blinked hard.
Nyx angled their body between her and the carvings, blocking her view.
“It didn’t want to be read.”
“I didn’t want to read it.” Rory rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, then showed Nyx her damp knuckles. “It tried to climb into my skull.”
Nyx’s whisper scraped.
“Here, everything wanted something.”
A new smell drifted in—smoke and crushed herbs. Rory followed it without meaning to, as if the scent held a hook in her ribs. The flowers thinned, and the ground changed underfoot, packed earth flecked with pale stones that sat on the surface like teeth.
Then Rory saw footprints.
Not in the soil. In frost.
A narrow strip of ground lay dusted with white, a clean line through the grove’s spring-coloured riot. Footprints crossed it without sinking in. The frost remained perfect , unbroken.
Rory stared. Her breath caught.
Nyx’s shadow leaned toward the frost line.
“No weight ,” they murmured. “No mark. She walked and left nothing.”
Rory’s skin prickled. “Isolde.”
From ahead, a woman stepped out from behind a tree.
Silver hair fell to her waist in a smooth sheet, catching light that didn’t come from sun or moon. Her eyes held a pale lavender shine that made Rory think of bruises healing. She wore a simple dark dress that moved like water around her legs.
She didn’t look at Rory’s face first. Her gaze dropped to Rory’s wrist. The small crescent scar on Rory’s left wrist sat exposed where her sleeve had ridden up.
Isolde’s lips curved, not quite a smile .
“Old hurts learn new names in this place.”
Rory tugged her sleeve down with a sharp motion.
“Nice to meet you too.”
Isolde’s attention slid to Nyx. For a moment, the air tightened, as if the grove itself listened harder.
“A shadow with a spine,” Isolde’s voice carried a music that didn’t settle into one accent. “Aldric’s hunger dressed as caution.”
Nyx’s outline rippled. The wildflowers nearest them folded inward, petals closing.
“I carried many names,” Nyx’s whisper drifted. “Your grove carried none.”
Isolde stepped closer. Her bare feet touched frost and grass without change. No prints. No crushed stems.
“Names grew here like weeds. I pulled them up.”
Rory shifted her weight . The pendant warmed again, a beat-beat against her skin.
“I didn’t come for poetry,” Rory said. “I came because people keep handing me things from places I’ve never been and expecting me to survive it.”
Isolde’s gaze flicked to Rory’s throat.
“The crimson stone burned you with kindness.”
Rory pulled the chain out, let the Heartstone hang over her palm. The gemstone glowed faintly, and in that glow, Isolde’s eyes looked almost colourless.
“Do you know what it is?” Rory asked.
Isolde didn’t answer right away. She circled them, not stalking, not prowling—moving like smoke had decided to imitate a person. Her hair brushed flowers and none bent.
Nyx followed Isolde’s path with their eyes, shoulders squared, as if they could place themselves between Rory and anything that reached.
Isolde stopped by the frost strip. She lifted her hand over it. Frost climbed her fingers in lace patterns and then melted without water.
“Hel kissed this world through a crack,” she murmured. “Not wide enough for an army. Wide enough for hunger.”
Rory’s grip tightened on the pendant until the chain bit into her fingers.
“So there was a portal,” she said. “Or there is.”
Isolde’s lavender eyes met hers.
“Time here didn’t keep a calendar. Cracks opened and closed like mouths.”
Nyx’s whisper cut in.
“The Wardens watched rift points.”
Isolde’s mouth twitched. “Wardens watched what they admitted existed.”
Rory stepped closer, heat from the pendant spreading across her palm.
“Show me,” she demanded. “I’m not leaving with riddles.”
Isolde’s gaze slid over Rory’s face, then drifted to the trees, as if she listened to something beneath hearing.
“You carried a delivery bag once,” Isolde murmured, voice light. “You know the weight of other people’s appetites.”
Rory’s jaw clenched . “Don’t talk about my job like it’s a prophecy.”
Nyx leaned toward Rory, their whisper thin and fast.
“She can’t lie. She can still steer you into a ditch.”
Rory didn’t take her eyes off Isolde.
“You offered visions to mortals,” Rory said. “You got exiled for it. That sounded like you cared.”
Isolde moved one shoulder in a small shrug, and silver hair slid over her collarbone like silk poured from a hand.
“I cared. I still cared. Caring didn’t protect me.”
Rory’s pendant throbbed . The heat spread up her wrist, and for a second the crescent scar on her left wrist stung, a childhood memory brought forward by force—metal edge, blood, her father’s tight hands wrapping a bandage.
She hissed and tucked her hand to her chest.
Isolde’s eyes narrowed , focused.
“The stone answered the tear.” Her voice sharpened, edges cutting through the grove’s dreamlike hush . “It wanted the door.”
Nyx’s outline thickened. Shadows pooled at their feet, darker than the shaded ground had any right to be.
“Show us the door,” their whisper pressed. “Or we tore it open ourselves.”
The grove reacted. Leaves shivered without wind. A low hum rose from the standing stones behind them, faint but present, like the beginning of a note held by unseen throats.
Isolde lifted her hand, palm outward. The hum eased, not stopping, just settling like a dog that remained alert.
“You brought teeth into my home,” she told Nyx, eyes cool.
Nyx didn’t move back. Their violet glow fixed on Isolde.
“I brought survival.”
Rory exhaled through her nose, sharp.
“Both of you, enough.” She shifted her stance, grounded her feet. “Isolde. I walked through your boundary. I didn’t steal. I didn’t drink. I didn’t promise anything. I just want to understand what keeps tugging at me.”
Isolde studied Rory for a long moment. Then she turned and walked.
She didn’t gesture. She didn’t beckon. She moved with the expectation of being followed , like the grove itself cleared a path for her.
Rory followed, her boots brushing flowers that leaned away from her tread. Nyx slid at her side, shadows dragging along the ground like a cloak.
They passed under a low arch formed by two trees whose branches had fused into a living bridge. Pale blossoms hung upside down from it, petals shaped like tiny hands. Rory ducked under and felt a faint brush against her hair, cold as metal.
Nyx’s whisper drifted against her ear.
“Don’t let it touch skin.”
“It already did,” Rory muttered. She lifted her hand to her hair, fingers searching. Nothing clung. No petals. No sap. Yet the cold stayed for a beat, then faded.
Isolde led them to a pool.
It sat in a hollow of stone, perfectly circular, water black as ink. No ripples moved across its surface. The air above it smelled like struck matches and wet earth .
Rory stepped closer. The pendant pulsed hot enough that she flinched.
In the pool, the sky looked wrong. Not reflection—stars burned in the water, bright pinpricks against darkness, but the grove overhead held no stars at all, only layered leaves and pale blossoms.
Rory crouched, heart hammering.
“That’s not—” Her words snagged. She watched a star in the pool drift sideways, leaving a faint trail like a scratch in glass. “That’s not the sky.”
Isolde stood at the pool’s edge, hands relaxed at her sides.
“Windows didn’t need walls here.”
Nyx leaned over the pool. Their reflection didn’t appear. The water swallowed their shape without comment.
Nyx’s whisper dropped to something rough.
“A boundary,” they breathed. “A seam.”
Rory looked up at Isolde.
“This is where it tore?”
Isolde’s eyes held steady, lavender pale against the grove’s colour.
“It tore where something fed,” she replied, voice quiet . “Gluttony always started with a mouth.”
Rory’s fingers slid into her jacket pocket and found cold metal. She pulled it out before she remembered she hadn’t put anything there.
A dagger lay in her palm.
Moonsilver. Slender, leaf-shaped. The handle fit her grip like it had known her hand for years. Cold seeped into her skin, clean and sharp. When she angled it toward the pool, the blade caught a thin thread of light that didn’t exist anywhere else and returned it with a faint glow.
Rory shot to her feet, blade up, elbow tight.
“I didn’t have this two seconds ago.”
Isolde’s gaze dropped to the dagger, then lifted to Rory’s face.
“Gifts found the hands meant to bleed for them.”
Nyx’s shadow shifted, protective, looming half between Rory and Isolde.
“That blade cut wards,” Nyx whispered. “Fae-forged.”
Rory stared at the weapon, then at Isolde.
“You put it on me.”
Isolde didn’t move to deny it. Her voice came soft, almost bored.
“The grove didn’t like you empty-handed.”
Rory held the dagger tighter. The cold bit into her palm, steadying her more than it hurt.
“What do I do with it?”
Isolde’s eyes flicked to the pool, then back to Rory’s pendant, which throbbed with heat like a living thing.
“You listened to the stone. Now listen to the water.”
Rory looked back down.
The pool’s starfield shifted again. A line opened through the darkness, narrow and pale, like a mouth parting its lips.
Nyx leaned closer, their violet eyes brightening.
“The Veil moved,” their whisper scraped.
Rory’s pulse thudded in her throat. She lowered the dagger toward the pool, moonsilver hovering inches above the black surface, and the pendant burned against her skin as the pale line in the water widened.